DEERFIELD — At the close of this year’s Summer Stage concert series at Tree House Brewing Co., town officials say the changes made to mitigate sound likely made an impact.
“We thought it’d be prudent to take stock of the concert season,” Town Administrator Christopher Dunne told the Selectboard on Wednesday night.
According to Assistant Town Administrator Greg Snedeker, the town received 44 noise complaints over the course of the concert season. Although the tally comes to five fewer complaints than 2025, Snedeker explained that the complaints were “more concentrated” this year, with 57% of them coming from three households. While 11 households wrote in with noise complaints this year, the town received complaints from 15 households in 2025.
“We should be looking at the sound and how it’s traveling toward those residents and continuing to monitor that,” Snedeker said.
Last December, the Selectboard laid out new conditions in Tree House’s entertainment license, including a 10 p.m. end time and a limit of no more than two concerts per week in September, along with a ban on concerts on Aug. 26 and Aug. 27, the first two days of school for students in the Frontier Regional School and Union 38 school districts. With these changes in place, Tree House closed out the season on Saturday, Aug. 22, after 27 concerts, six fewer than last year.
Under other license conditions, Tree House’s sound engineer or production manager must “make all reasonable efforts” to follow the World Health Organization’s “Global standard for safe listening venues & events,” which recommends a 100-decibel sound level limit. According to MDHearing, hand dryers and motorcycles roar at 100 decibels.
To help lower the noise, the brewery adjusted the positioning of the subwoofer speakers to reduce the intensity of low-frequency sound waves, or the booming bass reverberations residents described in noise complaints during last year’s concert season. When Selectboard Chair Blake Gilmore asked about the bass volume this summer, Snedeker said the position change “appeared” to have helped lower the bass volume, based on his several Tree House visits and travels through nearby areas.
“It’s not perfect. Sound’s going to travel,” Snedeker said of the repositioning of the subwoofers, “but I do think it definitely had a positive impact this year.”
Selectboard member Tim Hilchey confirmed that Snedeker has shared the statistics on the noise complaints with Tree House. He said he hopes the brewery will take a look at the connection between specific performances and noise complaints to determine any especially noisy acts.
Selectboard member Trevor McDaniel also visited the brewery to check in on the changes and noise. While he said he does not want to diminish the fact that residents are still concerned about the noise after reading every complaint, he said the town has made progress on addressing these concerns.
“I do think we have made great strides in trying to tamp down the noise as best we can,” McDaniel said, adding that the town should “continue to work on that and try to find ways to make it more palatable for the people that are having to deal with those noise issues.”
