Wheatland’s Winter Wheat to heat things up with Michigan bands in one-day festival
As the seasonal counterpart to Wheatland Music Organization’s longstanding Wheatland Music Festival every September, Grand Rapids’ Winter Wheat festival provides both audiences and artists a chance to connect and channel the spirit of warmer, longer days.
By Enrique Olmos and John Sinkevics
LocalSpins.com
GRAND RAPIDS — As the seasonal counterpart to Wheatland Music Organization’s longstanding Wheatland Music Festival every September, Grand Rapids’ Winter Wheat festival provides both audiences and artists a chance to connect and channel the spirit of warmer, longer days.
“It’s a way to break up the winter and get back together with your friends and enjoy music, the Wheatland kind of music,” says event organizer Marilyn Hummel.
“For me, and people that I see regularly that talk about it, it restores our soul. Music is one of the things that’s universal. You can enjoy it with people you’ve never met before.”
The annual event takes place 2-11 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 10, at The Intersection in Grand Rapids. Doors open at 1:45 p.m. Tickets are $32 in advance and $40 at the door on the day of the show. Get tickets at sectionlive.com.
The festival will feature more than nine hours of musical performances across two stages, ranging from the stylings of Cajun, Americana, bluegrass, Latin and traditional music. This year’s lineup features a plethora of regional artists, including Ember & Ash, Sweet Dee & The Wild Honeys, Megan Dooley, The Schrock Bros. with The Wilson Bros., Josh Rose & The Founding Fathers, K. Jones & The Benzie Playboys and The Reverend Jesse Ray, among others.
On Friday, Jan. 9 — the day before — Local Spins will host a Winter Wheat Warm-Up show starring Brian Oberlin & Friends. Oberlin, mandolinist for Full Cord, has performed several times at Winter Wheat and his SpeakEZ band will include Dee Sutton and Sallie Bacon (of Sweet Dee & The Wild Honeys, who open Winter Wheat at 3:30 p.m. Saturday), Full Cord bassist Todd Kirchner and emerging guitarist Peter Cavanaugh.
Hailing from Detroit, Ember & Ash will pack up their smoldering batch of outlaw songs and head west for the winter festivities on Saturday. The relatively new duo performs at 8:20 p.m. Saturday on The Stache stage.
Featuring Erin Zindle of The Ragbirds and Alex Holycross of The Native Howl, Ember & Ash was formed as a songwriting collaboration in 2019 between the two prolific songwriters.
The pair tend to lean boldly into their differences, wielding the natural polarity between them as an artistic strength. But it’s the heaviness of their own respective journeys that draws them together in a cathartic, musical partnership.
“Both of us have been through a lot of trauma and tragedy in our lives, more than what seems like our fair share, and that has been both a bonding thing for us and also really freeing for us to be able to dig in and to express those darker feelings. We kind of create a louder and more edgy sound than you would expect from a folk duo,” said Erin Zindle.
Zindle and Holycross have spent the last six years writing songs together, utilizing “music as a secret medicine” during trying times. Themes explored within those songs include grappling with grief, navigating pain and holding onto hope. Instrumentally, Holycross holds down the guitar with ferocious tenacity, while Zindle entrances with dazzling melodies on the fiddle, their voices dancing together in harmony.
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“We have both been performing our entire lives and so we love getting on stage. We really come alive on stage and it’s this high-energy, dynamic show. We love to play with the audience and explore how fast, or how loud we can be. Or how quiet and gentle we can get. We like to pull at the edges of those extremes,” said Zindle.
“I’m hoping that there will be people there who have already heard the records from our respective bands, who are really excited and surprised to see how different this feels. We hope listeners embrace these different sides of both of us and help to celebrate this new project. We are coming in hot and bringing the fire.”
The one-day festival celebrates the American roots music traditions embraced by the Wheatland Music Organization with an emphasis on Michigan artists. The Wheatland Music Festival takes place in Remus on Sept. 11-13. Get more information at wheatlandmusic.org.
— Find more Michigan music news and concert listings at LocalSpins.com. Email John Sinkevics at john@localspins.com.
