NORTH PARK ROCKS
ALL-AGES MUSIC FESTIVAL SHIFTS TO MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND THIS YEAR, FEATURING LOCAL FAVORITES MINIATURIZED, MATTSON 2, EL TEN ELEVEN, SARA PETITE AND DOZENS MORE
Haikus and jungle gyms are not typically key ingredients for an annual indie-music event. But there’s little typical about the all-ages North Park Music Fest, which debuted last year with 40 bands over two days.
It returns this weekend with more than 50 bands performing outdoors Saturday and Sunday, plus a new indoor preview night today at Queen Bee’s and Seven Grand with four bands from last year’s festival. There’s also a free 11 a.m.
Saturday San Diego Music Thing panel discussion — hosted by the San Diego Music Foundation — at Queen Bee’s.
The lineup for the weekend includes such diverse acts as the surf-jazz duo The Mattson 2, the electronic-loopingfueled El Ten Eleven, the genre-blurring Montalban Quintet, the brassy Mr. Tube & The Flying Objects and the countryrocking Sara Petite, whose arresting new album, “The Empress,” will be released June 6.
Also performing will be the all-star band Miniaturized, which teams members of such San Diego favorites as Buckfast
Super Bee, Pinback and Rocket From the Crypt. The group’s terrific debut album, released in March, was produced by R.E.M. veteran Mitch Easter.
But the playing won’t be confined to the three stages at this homegrown festival, which is produced by the nonprofit North Park Main Street and supported by area businesses.
The event’s largest stage faces the playground at the $5 million North Park Mini Park, which covers 21,780 square feet and opened in January 2022. The festival’s footprint covers a four-block area behind the Observatory North Park concert venue, which until 2015 was known as the North Park Theatre.
Links and haiku a must
Yet, while artistic creativity is a criterion for all the performers, each act was also asked to submit a haiku to Dang Nguyen, the festival’s principal music curator.
Nguyen, who is the president of the San Diego Music Foundation and former president of Balboa Park’s Spreckels Organ Society, answered each haiku with a haiku of his own. With both playfulness and pragmatism in mind, he introduced the unusual requirement to submit a haiku — a 17-syllable, threeline poem — while planning last year’s North Park Music Fest debut.
“I wasn’t sure I would do it again, but I started receiving haikus this year before even asking for any,” said Nguyen, the former co-owner of North Park’s Bar Pink, which went out of business during the COVID-19 shutdown. (It has since reopened as Part Time Lover, a record bar that champions nearly all things vinyl.)
“To me, it’s a privilege to be selected to play at a festival like this, but it’s not like an exclusive thing,” Nguyen continued. “So, all I asked bands for are two things: An online link to their music and a haiku.
“It was like a test to follow directions and provide what is asked of you, which is our expectation with the festival. If you can’t provide those two simple things, how can I count on you to show up and give a good performance?”
The haiku submitted by the band Dive Bar Saints this year is one of Nguyen’s favorites. It reads: Sonic waves soaring /
Echos many sleepless nights / Insomniac’s bliss
His response: Needed not is sleep / Manifest a lucid dream /
Beware of driving
But Nguyen takes his haiku seriously, as one band learned when its humorous submission failed to adhere to a strict haiku format: Philistine! / A band sounds out / the critique is writer?
Nguyen responded: Not quite a haiku / Syllables short by a few / Five seven five, too. (That band did not make the cut.)
He laughed when asked if a band called Haiku would be approved to
perform at the festival on the basis of its name alone.
“If you can’t have fun with it,” Nguyen said, laughing again, “maybe you shouldn’t be playing at a festival like this!”
Last year’s edition was the first North Park Music Fest to be presented by the business association Main Street North Park. It had previously produced the annual North Park Festival of the Arts, which — after being dark during the pandemic shutdown — morphed into North Park Music Fest last year.
New annual music events typically take several years to build an audience and to just break even before earning a profit. Mark West, who heads North Park Main Street, worked hard to attract more sponsorship funding this year from area businesses. He succeeded.
“That took some of the (financial) pressure off us,” said Main Street board member Jim Sakrison.
“From a logistical standpoint, what we learned last year is we needed more stage managers and a little more security to keep kids from sneaking in. And this year, we’ll have one public entrance — at North Park Way and 30th Street — instead of two.”
There will be more food and drink options this year. A new VIP pass option, priced at $200, includes catered food from local chefs, craft cocktails, beer and wine, snacks, a private bathroom, and the opportunity to meet and mingle with the bands.
This year’s festival is on Memorial Day weekend, a week later than last year’s edition. The move was made with the hope that more people will attend Sunday since the next day is a holiday.
Nguyen and Sakrison both cite San Diego Street Scene, which was held from 1984 to 2008, as a key inspiration for North Park Music Fest. The early Street Scene’s slogan, “Five bands, five bucks, five hours,” is echoed by the new event’s billing as “Local bands, local art, local beer & spirits.”
The North Park Music Fest’s location,
which straddles a residential area and adjacent businesses, makes it unlikely the festival can expand its physical footprint. But there is another prospect for expansion in future years.
“We’d like to activate more North Park venues so that we can have music on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, and maybe late Sunday as well,” Sakrison said.
“It would be like Austin City Limits Music Festival or Jazz Fest in New Orleans, which have nearby evening events. We hope our Friday night preview this year, which will be at two venues, can be expanded next year to three or four.”