Cheeseburger in Caseville
Caseville, Michigan
What happens when you combine Jimmy Buffett, hula skirts and cheeseburgers on the coast of Lake Huron to celebrate the last week of summer? The answer is, one of the biggest and fastest-growing music festivals in the world.
In 1999, Caseville resident Lyn Bezemek started the festival as a three-day event with 5,000 people to celebrate the end of summer. Today, nearly 300,000 people descend on the town of Caseville, population 777, and the surrounding towns in Michigan’s “thumb” peninsula, near Port Crescent State Beach.
A mobile app helps navigate the events that take place during the festival. Over the course of 10 days, concerts with everything from island music mixes by DJs to Jimmy Buffett cover bands to original songs from singer-songwriters provide the backdrop for activities such as softball tournaments, face painting, tie-dyeing contests and a parade of tropical foods, which routinely draws in more than 50,000 spectators.
Many visitors camp at one of the seven campgrounds within 20 miles of the event; others arrive by boat to one of the 13 local marinas, in keeping with the tropical vibe. Approximately 20 hotels, motels, bed-and-breakfasts and cottage rental companies serve the immediate area, so the chamber recommends booking well in advance if your group would prefer to avoid camping or busing in from off the Thumb.
www.cheeseburgerincasevillefest.com
Big Muddy Blues Festival
St. Louis
Each Labor Day weekend, Laclede’s Landing, a historic brick and cobblestone district dating to St. Louis’ original settlement and adjacent to the city’s convention center, explodes with crowds and music as more than 60,000 attendees and more than 30 bands descend for the city’s annual blues fest, now in its 20th year.
As the festival takes over the historic landing area, music spills not only from the main stage, home to Grammy Award-winning artists and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees, but also from satellite venues showcasing smaller and up-and-coming artists. Though centering on the blues form, the festival also showcases artists from related genres, including soul, jazz and R & B.
The festival has also postponed a major celebration for its 20th anniversary this year until more of the work is completed and will coordinate in 2016 with the opening of the National Blues Museum for a blockbuster event next year. The museum is set to open in early 2016, giving groups the opportunity to create a fuller blues-focused itinerary around the event and offerings in St. Louis.
Heartland Film Festival
Indianapolis
From Sundance to Cannes, top film festivals tend to have more of a vibe as the place for industry people to see, be seen, have their designer clothes seen and enjoy the best champagne and clubs of the local scene. For 10 days in late October, the Heartland Film Festival, which focuses on films that are not only well made and entertaining but also convey greater messages, manages to turn the traditional format on its head.
“There’s no red tape or velvet rope,” said Greg Sorvig, director of marketing and public relations for the festival. “It’s all about interaction and hospitality, the actual content of the film and the connection between the filmmaker and the moviegoer. All filmmakers wear orange lanyards so attendees can see and interact with them throughout the weekend.”
With more than 140 industry attendees and 280 screenings, attendees have ample opportunities to not only see filmmakers in intimate talks but also interact with them between films.
The festival features three categories of films — narrative feature, documentary feature and short film — that have been chosen in a three-tiered process from more than 1,500 submissions and serves as a qualifying festival for the Academy Awards in the short film category. In 2013, three short films at the festival went on to be nominated for Oscars, and in 2014, five films screened at the festival were nominated.
Sorvig advises that the festival keep some time slots open to rerun films that perform well and can also use those open slots to do a special screening of a film for a group that is able to do a buyout.
