08/19/2025
In 2010 the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival switched from a four-day to a three-day music format, myself (Scotten Jones), Ethan Baird, and Jake Bush decided to fill in on Thursday for the festival by putting on our own stage.
Without any approval and frankly not sure how what we were doing would be received, we put on our stage in the campground at the top of ten acres. I brought a 10’ x 20’ pop-up for the artists to perform under, a sound system and a generator and Ethan and Jake booked the performers. When I found out Ethan and Jake had booked acts until 10pm I bought some LED stage lights. The Lounge Stage was born! It was generally well received by the camping community and the festival embraced what we did.
In 2011, and 2012 we continued at the top of ten acres with progressively more complex set ups.
After a significant portion of our 2012 program was rained out the festival gave us the family tent to use for the stage, in 2013, and 2014 the Lounge Stage was put on in the family tent.
After the crowd overflowed the family tent in 2014 to the point that approximately half the people were outside the tent, we were given the use of the dance tent for 2015. In the dance tent SAVI (the sound company) were already setting up on Thursday, so we had to set up a stage in the corner of the tent.
We presented the Lounge Stage in the dance tent in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019.
In 2020 COVID shut down Falcon Ridge, in 2021 the festival returned but as a one-day festival at a new site. In 2022, when I heard, the festival was returning to 3 days of music I talked to Ethan Baird about bringing back the Lounge Stage in the new location, but Ethan and Jake no longer wanted to book the stage.
For 2022 I recruited Kathy Sands-Boehmer to book that stage and approached Anne and Bub about a “Thursday Night Music Stage”. Anne and Bub agreed but a complicating factor was there was nowhere to set up a parallel stage for a day in a corner of a building. I agreed I would set up my sound system, lighting and stage gear for Thursday night and leave it in place and run it for the Workshop stage Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, but this meant even more complicated set-ups and more gear.
The Thursday Night Stage was once again very well received. With Kathy booking the stage we put it on in 2022, 2023, and 2024, ahead of 2025 Kathy decided to step back and Aaron Nathans stepped up to book the stage.
For me personally every year has been a massive undertaking and since 2022 the scope of what I am responsible for has really ramped up. I could go on about what is involved but it is an incredible amount of work – a significant portion of which I do alone. This year I also ended up in the emergency room on Friday night after I finished mixing the Slambovians dance set. The emergency room visit really made me rethink what I was doing. I have had many wonderful experiences putting on the Thursday night stages and the last fours years working with Jim Schultz and his workshop stage crew putting on the Workshop stage (and portions of the dance stage). I have met and gotten to know so many wonderful musicians, it is hard to walk away, but I realized this year that it was too much for me to continue. I am therefore no longer going to be involved in working stages for the festival.
In terms of Thursday night Anne is working on some ideas and I will leave it to her to announce what she wants to do when she is ready.
I want to thank Ethan Baird and Jake Bush for the amazing job they did booking the Lounge Stage, the Lounge Stage couldn’t have grown to the size it did without my production work, but ultimately people came because of the amazing lineups they put together. Kathy Sands-Boehmer and Aaron Nathans also did an amazing job booking the Thursday Night Music Stage.
I want to thank all the amazing artists who played the Lounge Stage and Thursday Night Music Stage. The Lounge Stage artists all worked for free, the Thursday Night Music Stage artists received some compensation from a kick starter Kathy ran and tip jars but nowhere near what an artist would normally be paid to perform at a festival. Ethan, Jake, Kathy, Aaron, and myself all worked for free including the work I did on the workshop stage.
Finally, I want to thank everyone who helped me over the years, it truly has been an honor to work with you!
