After a summer deluge of pricey music fests in both the Bay Area and beyond, the ever amazing Railroad Square Music Festival returns to Santa Rosa from 12:30 to 7:30pm, Sunday, Sept. 20—and, as always, it’s free to attend and open to all ages.
As the festival date marches ever closer to showtime, festival director Josh Windmiller, who co-founded the festival in 2015 with Susy Dugan, is excited to get year 10 up and running. This is not only cause for celebration, it’s also solidified the festival as the unofficial end-of-summer party for Sonoma County.
To this, Windmiller says, “RSMF isn’t a flash-in-the-pan party; it is the strongest representation of the North Bay’s rising status as a hub for arts and culture.”
This year’s lineup shows once again that RSMF is doing an incredible job highlighting local artists, bringing in new ones and also embracing collaboration which leads to community. The lineup features 35 artists across every genre, including headliner The Sam Chase & The Untraditional as well as performances from Toast Machine, Kalei Yamanoha, Nick Otis Orchestra, sicksentz, Pazifico, xo_chips_co, Kemist, ulyssescfm, and The Pulse & The Poet.
Windmiller is also excited about many new things for this year’s fest. He notes, “Some new elements include Second Hand Funk’s big North Bay Get Down jam, Grapevine Dance’s line dancing lessons, Dark Matter Lives! and their hip-hop hour featuring established MCs and improvisation, three rounds of songwriter sessions courtesy of Secret Song Club and the return of The Sam Chase & The Untraditional, who played the inaugural festival in 2015.”
He continues, “I’m also excited to be working with the Prince Memorial Greenway to encourage people to walk to the festival from City Hall and for our new ‘North by North Bay’ initiative, where we promote a full week of music in the area before the festival.”
Highlights also include Dark Matter Lives! with a showcase of original songs and freestyles, while Second Hand Funk leads a high-energy showcase of funk musicians, vocalists and MCs. Grapevine Dance gets the crowd moving with line dancing lessons, and The Princess Boutique Fashion Show makes its return, featuring a dazzling display of quinceañera dresses paired with live music.
The festival also presents three songwriter-in-the-round showcases, hosted by Secret Song Club, with performances from Azere Wilson, TeYo, Addie Finch, Brie Paige, Ismay, BrightDarkDawn, Diana Dreams, 90/93 featuring Derek Phelps and Faux Co.
Closing out the night will be “Electric Railroad Station,” hosted by DI Tecni.
Taking a moment from his busy schedule as both event chief, working musician and development director at the newly reborn Santa Rosa music venue The Lost Church, Windmiller says, “Ten years of events is huge, especially when you consider how this is a free festival that only happens through grassroots community support.” He adds, “For a decade, local businesses, the City of Santa Rosa and the general public have made this thing possible by showing up, raising funds and spreading the word.”
Longtime Sonoma County music fans likely had their ears perk up when they saw storied duo Toast Machine on the bill. From 1998 to around 2010, the band, which included Gio Benedetti on bass and Paige Warner on drums, was one of the most well respected and popular bands in the area before calling it quits. Bassist Benedetti says they merely took an extended break.
Notes Benedetti, “I was hoping to tour and play more, and Paige was busy being a super star in her dream field of special effects over at Industrial Light & Magic. She has since won a Scientific and Technical Oscar in 2017 for her ingenuity and badassery in her field. We stopped; I started up other bands, joined Brothers Comatose, and then that band got real real busy.”
While Benedetti got his wish to play and tour more with Brothers Comatose, that ultimately became less important as he started a family as well as started more actively drawing, cartooning and teaching art classes.
He also gave the Bohemian a bit of a scoop, noting, “We’ve popped back into existence a few times to play the Phoenix Theatre birthday party shows. We did that two years ago, and once I’m playing, I start writing. I don’t ever want things to be old and stale. So with the new material from that show, we went into the studio. We made a record. We actually have a new record coming out this year. I haven’t told anyone yet. Twenty years apart, and here we are with a new record.”
The aforementioned local highlight Dark Matter Lives! is the name of a project featuring local hip-hop artists King Lung and Crystal Mathmatics (Mathmatics is spelled that way intentionally, by the way). When speaking to Lung and Mathmatics, it had to be noted that the project title Dark Matter Lives! is pretty great. Mathmatics says it “was literally the first and only thing I said to Lung about a band name. He said, ‘perfect.’ It’s like a declaration. That’s why we use the exclamation point. Like when Dr. Frankenstein screams, ‘It’s alive!’”
Lung notes, “For RSMF, we’re bringing in Kayatta, Laid-Back Zach and Erica Ambrin as featured collaborators. We’ve worked with all three of them before, and they were also recently part of our freestyle game show, ‘Whose Rhyme?’ They’re all incredible artists, and we’ve developed a really natural chemistry with them.”
Speaking of onstage collabs, Second Hand Funk and Friends is put together by Ethan Schiff, who runs the monthly North Bay Get Down funk jam night in Petaluma. He says the group “is a collective of top funk musicians from around the Bay Area, and for our shows people can expect a giant, inclusive, community dance party and authentic, greasy, ’70s funk music.” The lineup for the fest includes LaiddBackZach, King Lung and the Black Sheep Brass Band horns, with other guests to be announced.
While Windmiller is often the public face of RSMF, he has a solid team around him, including Bryce Dow Williamson, who helps with booking the acts while also serving as director of the Railroad Square Historic Association. When asked about selecting acts, Williamson says, “We try to make our booking decisions based on representing the sides of the Sonoma County music and Bay Area scene that often do not have other opportunities at local festivals.”
Windmiller and his collaborators aim to represent a broad range of ages, genres and styles at the festival by prioritizing artists who are active throughout the county and create opportunities for others.
“This helps with our mission to show the world that the North Bay is a vibrant arts hub,” he observes.
Come show day, parking at Railroad Square may be challenging, but the SMART Train Depot is a short walk from the event. Also, there’s a nearby bus stop and ample space for bikes.
There will be myriad food and drink vendors serving both beer, wine and NA selections as well as local vendors pedaling their wares. The event is primarily run by volunteers, and, as always, they can use some more.
For more information, including volunteer opportunities, visit railroadsquaremusicfestival.com.
