Nearly a year in the works, Asheville’s first music festival in the River Arts District since Tropical Storm Helene will take over Foundy Street on Saturday, Oct. 3, led by a group of women determined to prove the storm couldn’t drown out the city’s music scene and creative spirit.
Foundy Fest, produced by the female-led Leona Wild Collective, will bring food, drink and some very special musical performances to the heavily damaged district, where organizers see live music as another marker of a neighborhood still rebuilding two years after Helene.
For Leona Wild co-founder Lisa Rose, who lost her own interior design office in the Biltmore area during the storm and spent months afterward helping others, staging the festival carries an emotional significance beyond putting bands on a stage.
“To be able to come to this area and create something and create music and hopefully spark more of that here,” Rose said, “it’s this beautiful kind of surreal, emotional moment.”
She called staging the first post-Helene festival in the district “a beautiful responsibility.” Rose said she doesn’t feel the weight of that distinction as much as its opportunity.
“It’s more like we’re just kind of offering a big hug,” she said.
Leona Wild Collective puts women at center of music industry
Leona Wild began after Helene as what Rose calls a “porch idea” — conversations among artists and musicians about friends struggling in the storm’s aftermath.
The organization has since become a 501(c)(3) nonprofit with a female-led board and a broader goal of helping independent musicians navigate an industry that can be difficult for artists without labels, managers or substantial financial backing.
Muldoon, a concert photographer who has worked in the music scene for more than a decade, said women in particular can be overlooked, taken advantage of or not taken seriously within the industry. Changing that, she said, means doing more than talking about it.
“The only way to make this different is to start, boots on the ground, and earn money, promote female artists, help them go on tour,” Muldoon said.
Leona Wild’s work includes helping artists with management, touring, merchandise, design and other logistics that can consume time and money for independent musicians. Rose summed up the group’s role more simply.
“We’re happy to do all the behind-the-scenes things so that other people can shine,” she said. “That’s like the ultimate thing, is when you can help people just do what they’re really good at.”
The organization hopes eventually to establish a community reserve for musicians in need while expanding its staff and programming. Rose said Foundy Fest proceeds, after expenses, can help build toward those goals.
A River Arts District festival built by hand
That behind-the-scenes work has also meant physically building Foundy Fest.
Rose said organizers have been at the site creating signage, décor and other festival infrastructure themselves, while making use of materials already around the property — including pallets, scrap wood and leftovers from construction.
“We’re not trying to put anything new here,” Rose said. “We’re trying to use what was here and make it beautiful.”
For Muldoon, that approach fits a River Arts District where evidence of Helene’s destruction remains visible even as artists and businesses continue rebuilding.
“It did get hit so badly by Helene, and it’s coming back, and things are growing,” she said. “There’s rubble off to the side. You can see that things are different from what they may have looked like before Helene.”
The festival lineup begins with The Local Honeys at 6 p.m., followed by Holler Choir at 7:30 p.m. and Asheville Bluegrass Band at 9 p.m. The latter is a special collaboration featuring musicians including Mike Bont and Anders Beck of Greensky Bluegrass, Jon Stickley, Jason Carter, Thomas Cassell and Christian Ferri. VIP ticket holders will also get an acoustic jam set after the main performances.
Foundy Fest follows New Belgium Brewing’s Tour de Fat earlier in the day, with plans for a procession from New Belgium through the River Arts District to the Foundy site, weather permitting.
Organizers said the festival will continue rain or shine. With rain in the forecast, they shifted the layout to put attendees beneath a large tent while retaining the music, food trucks, vendors and drinks.
And after months of planning, building, calling in favors and preparing a festival in a place that not long ago sat devastated by floodwaters, Muldoon hopes people leave remembering something less tangible.
“There’s just a lot of magic,” she said. “There’s music magic that’s going to happen.”
That magic, she said, has already been happening behind the scenes through months of collaboration by an organizing team composed almost entirely of women.
“I hope that people sort of just take away the feeling of, ‘That was special,’ and carry it with them,” Muldoon said, “just a recognition of how special it is to be in this part of the world, even after there have been some devastating occurrences, that we can still come together and create magic.”
Foundy Fest begins at 6 p.m. Oct. 3 — rain or shine — at 47 Foundy St. General admission tickets are $30 and VIP tickets are $60.
Reporting by Cory Vaillancourt, Asheville Citizen Times / Asheville Citizen Times
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
