Local music and arts lovers can let their freak flags fly in a family-friendly space on Saturday at the Harmonic Flow Music & Arts Festival at Strangeways Brewing.
IF YOU GO
Harmonic Flow & Arts Festival, Saturday, Oct 11, 1-11 PM, Strangeways Brewing, 350 Lansdowne Rd, Fredericksburg, click here for tickets $23.18
This is the third year for the festival, which was previously called Strangefest. The organizers had to change the name because of a conflict with rapper Tech N9ne, who held an event with that same name in 2018. The local festival will feature a full day of live bands, artists, performers and crafts.
Organizer Dustin Moon of local EDM (electronic dance music) guitar group WOOKIE FLiP was inspired to create Harmonic Flow based on EDM festivals he and his music partner Jordan Wagner attended for years.
“For the last 15 years of our lives, we went to a ton of festivals every year,” Moon said. “A lot of stuff you’d see there is like the crazy laser light shows, the art, the community, that special vibe; you don’t see a lot of that around here. That was our way of trying to bring that here to Fredericksburg.”
Along with WOOKIE FLiP, the music lineup for this year’s festival includes Kendall Street Company from Charlottesville; Uncle Kunkle’s One Gram Band from Baltimore; and local favorites Good Time Alibi, Lucid Evolution, and Mark Vollten & The Scenic Roots.
Visual artists and dancers will perform while the music plays, and vendors will be set up outside and inside the brewery.
“We have a pool of different flow artists, people who have lighted hula hoops and do dancing,” Moon said. “There’s also fire spinners. We’re going to have Natural Mystics come out; one of their guys is doing some live glass blowing. We’ll have some live painters and a few live art installations set up for people to enjoy. Once the sun goes down, we have a pretty cool laser light show that goes on with the music. People seem to really love that.”
The festival has grown each year, and a large crowd is expected for the event. Last year’s festival brought in over 900 people. To accommodate the anticipated turnout, The Fredericksburg Fairgrounds has partnered to offer parking and free shuttles to Strangeways. Only vehicles with handicapped placard vehicles can park at the brewery.
“The whole venue is filled with vendors, food trucks, music acts and it is such a great day for the community to come together,” said Lauren Kuskey, event director at Strangeways. “Even though it’s more geared to adults, last year kids were playing with the flow artists, the hula hoops and the napkin things they throw around. It’s just such a great day to enjoy the music, shop local, and eat local and just have a really good day.”
“We try to keep it family-friendly without being corny about it,” Moon said. “It’s still really good bands, but nothing overly vulgar. The kids love all the flow artists. This year we did a face painter, too, and henna artists. The kids seem to really love the music and they get to run around all day while parents party a little bit. It’s for all ages.”
Several nonprofits have also helped sponsor this year’s event. Whole Greens of VA will have their bus for the Green Thread Project collecting gently used clothing at the fairgrounds parking lot. Old Dominion Humane Society will have dogs available for adoption. Stage Door Productions will have representatives to talk about their upcoming theater shows.
“People always say when they see us play around here, ‘You should go down to Richmond,’” Moon said. “So the idea was to bring a little bit of that fun Richmond vibe to Fredericksburg; a combination of the culture from all the festivals we attend all the time, bring a little taste of it here to our hometown.”
