Little Lollapalooza: Inside The NMC Class That’s Mounting A Full-Fledged Music Festival

For students in the audio technology program at Northwestern Michigan College (NMC), next weekend is showtime.

On Saturday, April 22, NMC will host the first-ever Future Generation Celebration, a seven-hour music festival on campus that will feature a lineup of seven different local and Michigan bands. The twist? This particular music festival was planned entirely by students, who will also shoulder event-day responsibilities like stage management, video livestreaming, and sound mixing. The project is an ambitious example of NMC’s growing commitment to experiential learning – and it’s an experience that students say has already helped them land jobs and identify potential post-graduation career paths.

Music festivals are all the rage in the live music world, from small local festivals to some of the biggest events in the world – Chicago’s world-famous Lollapalooza, for instance, or the equally iconic Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, which started this weekend in Indio, California. Music festivals tend to have broad appeal for a variety of reasons: the (usually) outdoor setting; the opportunity to see a wide variety of musical acts in one place; the carnival-like atmosphere of the whole enterprise. These aspects and others explain why music festivals have become a $12-billion-per-year industry in the United States.

However, the same attributes that make music festivals so appealing to concertgoers tend to make them difficult to pull off. Booking several artists – and managing the flow of a multi-band lineup on event day – presents big logistical challenges, and running sound for an outdoor concert is markedly more difficult than doing so in a consistent, controlled indoor environment.

That degree of difficulty is precisely why the Future Generation Celebration will double as the major semester project for students in NMC’s audio tech program. According to Brady Corcoran, who serves as audio tech program coordinator, an assignment like this one can deliver more benefit in the space of a day than students get from sitting in the classroom all semester.

“Experiential learning is really the name of the game for our program,” Corcoran tells The Ticker. “It’s more valuable for our students than what they actually learn in class. They can learn all the theory and the concepts that they want to, but unless they're applying it, it doesn't stick and it doesn't lead to employment after graduation. Events like this one, not only do they teach the hard skills of audio technology – like running sound and all of the technical aspects that go into that – but they also teach a lot of important soft skills: Collaborating and working together; staying professional and positive no matter what happens; just interacting with the bands on a personal level. That’s all part of this job.”

In past years, audio tech students at NMC have mounted a similar festival-like concert to celebrate Earth Day. But where previous versions of the event took place on a Friday, this year’s celebration has moved to Saturday and effectively merged with another NMC staple: the Big Little Hero Race, itself an experiential learning project for the college’s professional communications class. Big Little Hero kicks off with a fun run at 9am and 5K and 10K races at 9:30am. After an awards ceremony at 10:45, the program will roll right into the Future Generation Celebration, with the first band – The Bourdains – taking the stage at noon.

Once the music starts, it’s a chance for NMC’s audio tech students to shine.

“Everyone has a role,” says Aaron Rossan, one of the students in the class. “There’s a stage manager; there’s a camera director; there’s a livestream mixer; there’s a front-of-house manager; there are lighting directors; there are stagehands who are going up on stage and moving stuff around for the bands…”

“Basically, the entire event is going to be run by audio technology students,” adds Geoff Anderson – who, as a student in both the audio tech class and the professional communications class, is acting as an “ambassador” between the music festival team and the Big Little Hero team. “Our faculty will obviously be around, and they can help out if needed, but the students are running the show.”

Rossan and Anderson say the experience this project provides has already helped them land professional opportunities in music and audio production. Rossan works for AV Studios, a recording studio on Carter Road, and previously worked at Studio Anatomy. Anderson, meanwhile, is interning with New Leonard Media – a recording studio that specializes in music, podcasts, and other audio – and also runs sound and video at Unitarian Universalist Church.

Sam Briggs, a third audio tech student on the team for next weekend’s festival, is also building an impressive resume: He works for Oncore AV, a Grand Rapids-based company that provides audio-visual services for clients around the state of Michigan, including the Traverse City Pit Spitters. “We handle the live streaming of the Pit Spitters’ home games, which has been a really fun experience,” Briggs says of his work with Oncore. “My learning at NMC, which is audio-based, has led me to the video side of things. Which I wasn't expecting when I first started the program, but I'm happy it did, because those two worlds really go together.”

Briggs also does work with MusicHub.Live, a business co-owned by local musician (and NMC audio tech instructor) David Chown. That company works with bands and other clients locally to provide professional livestreaming services.

After the opening noon set by The Bourdains, Saturday’s music festival will see performances by Eliza Thorp (1pm), Funky Uncle (2pm), Ted Alan and the Under-Privileged (3pm), The Marsupials (4pm), East Bay Drive with special guests SkyeLea and Ryan Critchfield (5pm), and Dixon’s Violin (6pm). An eighth band, Brotha James, will perform earlier in the day, while the 5K and 10K races are in progress. All performances will be livestreamed via the NMC audio technology Facebook page. In addition to the live music, Anderson says there will be two food trucks on premises – a taco truck and an ice cream truck – as well as carnival games and other activities. The event is free of charge and will take place under a tent outside of NMC’s Timothy J. Nelson Innovation Center.