How would you like a free pass to the Green River Festival? Free parking?
There must be a catch, right?
Well, it depends how you feel about putting in a few hours of work as a festival volunteer. Is that a catch? Or a fair-and-square bargain that earns you free passes and free parking for the iconic event that brings three days of music and hot air balloons to the Greenfield Community College campus?
The Green River Festival started out as a homegrown event to celebrate radio station WRSI’s fifth anniversary and has grown into a full-blown festival celebrating 30 years this July. Last year, Rolling Stone magazine listed it in its “Summer 2015 50 Must-See Music Festivals,” designating it, “…the rare festival designed to welcome families.”
It’s true that the GCC fields take on a casual, picnic-ground feel during the festival, creating a great place to bring kids. People stake out camps with blankets and sun umbrellas, while vendors sell an enticing variety of food and beverages around the perimeter. And as if the music and the balloons weren’t enough, there are lots of other activities to keep kids busy.
The Art Garden, based in Buckland, hosts a large tent where kids can make cardboard birds and other creatures to carry on poles in a joyful, Mardi Gras-style parade. There’s usually a small train kids can ride (for a fee) around the lower field and hula-hoops and Frisbees to play with for free.
But, with the cut-off age for free kids’ admission dropping to 10 years old and full-price weekend passes at $119, the festival can get pricey for families.
That’s where volunteering comes in.
It has been long enough that the years are starting to blur, but Elisha DiMatteo estimates it may be five years that her family has been volunteering at the festival. DiMatteo thinks they probably started as her daughters, now 18 and 14, passed the cut-off age for free kids’ admission.
DiMatteo lives in Guilford, Vt., but she grew up in Leyden. As a kid, she attended the festival with her parents, Kathy and Rich DiMatteo. As an adult — she’s now 41 — DiMatteo and her husband Rich LePape started taking their kids, Asha and Juniper DiMatteo-LePape.
“It was great because when our kids were little, all of our friends had little kids and we’d all go together,” DiMatteo said. “There’d be a bunch of families and all the kids would play and run around and we’d all listen to music together.”
Rich LePape, says, “There’d always be the Leyden camp and the Vermont friends’ camp, and we’d be back and forth between the camps.”
His daughter, Asha LePape, nods and smiles, saying, “The blankets everywhere.”
Between them, the DiMatteos and LePapes have done a variety of volunteer jobs: they’ve taken tickets at the main gate, worked the merchandise booth and staffed the off-site parking lot. Last year the LePapes signed up for a 7-hour shift Friday night, checking in bands on the lower field, and they have signed up again this year. That shift earns them a full weekend pass, and the work’s — not bad, Dimatteo says.
“You’ve got this nice little tent and you get to see all the bands come in and meet them and watch them set up. It’s really fun,” she says.
Generally speaking, a three- to four-hour shift earns you a day pass and a parking pass for the day you work. Longer Friday night shifts, or jobs that Signature Sounds volunteer organizer Abbie Duquette describes as “more intense,” such as staffing off-site parking or handling recycling and trash, earn a full weekend pass.
Duquette says it takes more than 300 volunteers to keep the festival running smoothly.
“We can’t do what we do without the volunteers,” Duquette said. “They’re so important to the success of the festival. And, it’s so wonderful that people keep coming back year after year. It’s nice having those people to rely on. They know a lot of things that we don’t even know. They know the tricks and how to get the job done effectively.”
For the DiMatteos and LePapes, volunteering at the festival has become a family tradition. Rich LePape says some years he and Asha have biked the 14 miles from their home in Guilford to the festival, following the Green River.
“There’s just so many great people you get to work with or see,” LePape says of volunteering.
Different jobs are great for different reasons, he says.
“Taking tickets, for instance, you get to see all the people come in. You see your friends, you see families, people you haven’t seen in years.”
Elisha DiMatteo says working the ticket line is like being part of a welcoming committee.
“You get to say, ‘Hey, how are you? Welcome!’ And how fun is it to welcome people in?” she asks.
“It’s fun,” her mom, Kathy DiMatteo agrees. “You really feel like you’re a part of the festival.”
“That’s what I was going to say, too,” says Asha DiMatteo-LePape, Rich and Elisha’s daughter, and Kathy DiMatteo’s granddaughter. “It’s an involvement, for sure.”
DiMatteo-LePape observes that, as the size of the festival has grown, the variety of music has grown, as well.
“If you don’t like one band, there’s going to be another one that you like,” she says. “I feel like I always find new bands when I go there. And I really like that aspect of it.”
An example is the band Parsonsfield, a five-piece alternative folk band from Northampton that she heard first at Green River Festival and has sought out since.
Her mom offers another example in Rubblebucket, an indie dance band from Brooklyn that rocked the festival’s lower dance stage in 2011 and then played last year on the main stage. Hardly anyone had heard of Rubblebucket that first year, but now they’re well-known.
Some relatively local bands, such as Boston’s Lake Street Dive, have gone on to have a national presence, and it’s fun to have seen them first on one of the festival’s smaller stages.
“You know how when you’re younger and you’re just hearing the music and you don’t really know who it is or if you like it or not?” Dimatteo asks. “Now that she’s older, Asha will hear a band and think, ‘Oh, that band was at Green River Fest when I was ten!’”
Everybody’s got a Green River Festival memory.
Kathy DiMatteo remembers being at that first festival, dancing to the original NRBQ. Elisha DiMatteo remembers taking her kids home during a lightning storm, even though one of the family’s favorite bands was playing.
We indulge in a little stroll down Memory Lane, name-dropping bands: Trombone Shorty, Michael Franti & Spearhead, the Carolina Chocolate Drops, CAKE, Richard Thompson, Gogol Bordello, Steve Earle, Gypsy Caravan …
With less than a month left before this year’s festival opens on Friday, July 8, Signature Sounds’ Duquette said, “We’re seeing a lot of success already. And excitement. We’re trying to get everybody super pumped for the 30th celebration. We’re prepping for a huge party.”
For more information about volunteering at the Green River Festival, including a list of frequently asked questions, visit: www.greenriverfestival.com/volunteer or contact Signature Sounds volunteer organizer Abbie Duquette at: greenrivervolunteers@signaturesounds.com