(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (computer whooshing) (ambient music) - Hello and welcome to "Prairie Pulse."

Coming up a little bit later in the show, we'll meet some amazing indigenous artists from North Dakota.

But first, joining me now is Matt Mithun, the owner and CEO of WE Fest.

Matt, thanks for joining us today.

- Yeah, thanks John.

Good to be here.

- Well, we're here to talk about WE Fest.

But before we do that, tell the folks a little bit about yourself and your background.

- Sure.

So I grew up in Minnetonka, Minnesota and lived there until I was 18.

And then lived on the East Coast for a while and then the West Coast for a while.

And then moved back to Minnesota in 2010 with my family.

I have a wife and three children who are now teenagers growing up quickly.

And it's nice.

Good to be back in Minnesota.

- Yeah, great place to raise a family around here.

But let's talk now about WE Fest.

How and when and why did you get involved with WE Fest?

- Sure.

So when we moved back in 2010, I had been working in financial services, and I was starting to do some work in real estate.

And there was some land in Somerset, Wisconsin, which is now called Somerset Amphitheater, which had been a venue for years.

And a lot of the hard rock festivals there back in kind of the '90s, the aughts.

X-Fest, Ozzfest took place there.

And so, the land was just kind of left for dead.

It was, you know, coming out of 2009, 2008, 2009 when real estate really tumbled.

So I ended up purchasing that land, that venue, and then the campgrounds around it and brought it back as Somerset Amphitheater.

And so I'd been producing shows for 12 years when WE Fest had changed hands.

And we'd been involved with the land at, you know, WE Fest, Soo Pass Ranch for years.

So then that just kind of morphed into me producing.

It made sense to kind of take over and start producing WE Fest.

- Well, for the two people that may not know, what is WE Fest and when does it happen this year?

- Sure.

So this year, it's August 1, 2, and 3 with the kickoff Wednesday night.

And then the full days Thursday, Friday, Saturday.

And it's a big country music festival that's been going on for 41 years.

We had to take 2020 off 'cause of COVID.

But this is our 41st year.

It's on about 500, yeah, 500 acres of land called Soo Pass Ranch, seven different campgrounds, and just a big party and kind of an annual vacation for a lot of people.

They spend the week doing it.

- Well, we'll come back to that and we'll talk about some more things.

But let's talk about some of the big acts that you have performing this year.

- Sure.

So Thursday night, it's Jelly Roll, preceded by Koe Wetzel who's a big act too.

He's actually a headliner at a lot of festivals, more of a rock act.

And then Parker McCollum is on Friday and Eric Church on Saturday.

- Yeah.

And then tell us, you said one, but some of the other performers that might not be as famous yet but they may be down the road.

- Yeah, so this year...

So the booking process is very fun.

And this year, I'm really excited about some of our opening acts.

So starting the day, two opening acts.

One: So Thursday, Lauren Watkins is great.

She has this smoky voice.

Sounds a little bit like Megan Moroney if you know who she is.

She's at 2:45 on Thursday.

She's gonna be great.

Also, 2:45 on Friday, Stephen Wilson Jr. who is a food chemist.

Had a really interesting upbringing.

His dad was a big boxer.

He got into boxing.

But he was this food chemist, but he had been writing music for a long time.

Think of Chris Stapleton, you know, as this writer.

And people had been pushing him, pushing him.

"You gotta play, you gotta perform.

"You got a great voice."

His dad passed away.

Stephen Wilson Jr's dad passed away.

And that was finally the impetus for him to record his first album.

And it's incredible.

It's kind of this mix between country and Bruce Springsteen.

So those are a couple.

And then, you know, a few others.

Paul Cauthen is really, he's just out there, super fun performer.

Zeiders has really been making a run.

Some old favorites.

Trace Atkins, you know, he'll be fun.

So there's some good ones.

- Well, you know, I know people ask and I've heard: How do you decide?

How do you get these bookings?

- Yeah.

So it starts at least a year and a half ahead of time.

Sometimes it's even, you know, more like almost two years depending on the act, those headliners.

And you start with the headliners down and direct support.

The headliner does have some say in who that direct support act who plays directly before the headliner.

But the rest of it, you know, it's just kind of putting a puzzle together.

And you wanna see on each day who's gonna fit together really well, complement each other.

You're also trying to get artists on the upswing.

And that's a really fun part of it.

You know, that happened to us a little bit last year where we ended up with tons and tons of people all coming in on Thursday.

And so, it's just putting this puzzle together.

And it's a really fun part of the business.

- Well, you know, it's gotta be interesting.

But how are ticket sales going?

So can people still get tickets?

- Yep, yep, yep.

Yeah, it's great.

I think last year, we kind of hit a new benchmark as far as our talent.

And, you know, we continue to just put money back into the grounds.

And so, we're really trying to build off of that.

And so yeah, there are tickets still available this year.

You know, it's wefest.com.

But it's going well.

- Well, you just mentioned last year.

Let's go to that just a moment.

There were some complaints last year from campers, including long wait lines to get in, no electricity, maybe overselling a VIP.

Can you talk about what happened last year?

I know it was the Morgan Wallen effect that was part of it.

- Yep, yep, exactly.

So he happened to play on a Thursday.

That's just the way it worked for our routing.

And we had Bailey Zimmerman before him at four o'clock.

And, you know, so people have been coming years and years.

And you know, you've been there for years.

You know, they get there early.

Especially if you're camping, you get set up Wednesday.

You know, some people even will set up, you know, a few days before that and then come back.

But a lot of people were first timers.

And they came in on Thursday, you know, right before.

And so, you had this mix of day parkers and campers all coming in on Thursday.

And so it was just a lot.

It was a lot to get people on the grounds.

We made our way through it, but it was a little bit of a perfect storm.

And we learned a lot from it.

And, you know, from this point on, you know, we've put in a lot of different measures that... - Well with that being said, what is or what has been done to try to adjust that for this year and the future obviously?

- Yeah, so we have seven campgrounds on site.

And as you work your way around from VIP, Lake Sallie which is on Lake Sallie, that's the name, and you work your way around, it kind of goes from the most cush, you know, VIP with the electric and water hookups and big RVs, Lake Sallie with this beautiful serene setting on the water.

And then it becomes kind of younger and younger and younger as you go around the clock.

We've now changed a lot of our ingress procedure to get people off the streets into the campsites.

We also had a much more thorough...

Unfortunately, the reality of festivals now is you gotta do very thorough searches for guns really in this case.

And that was a new process for us last year.

We've now done it a year, and so we know what we're really looking for and so it'll be a lot smoother.

And just getting people off the roads.

Yeah.

- Okay.

Well, and you're right.

It was a perfect storm.

I think you said that.

But let's go back.

Take a step back now.

Talk about the history of WE Fest and how it got started.

- Yeah, sure.

So in 1983, a fellow by the name of Jeff Krueger wanted to start a festival.

He'd been promoting music for years, some in the Twin Cities, from Milwaukee area originally.

And he was looking for a piece of land.

He actually started in River Falls, Wisconsin.

Tried to do it there.

They turned him down.

The council I think turned him down.

Found this land, Soo Pass Ranch in Detroit Lakes.

And that was it.

And started it in 1983.

And they'd been doing some stuff at Soo Pass before that, some concerts.

And then, you know, from there, that's kind of the history.

And, you know, the land got bigger and bigger, Soo Pass did.

And we've just, you know, kept kind of building onto it and putting in more infrastructure.

- Yeah, but a lot of things happened over the years.

It sold, it talked about moving, it shut down a year, evaluated, and now you have it.

And the future sounds like it's gonna stay there for a while.

- Yeah, a really nice thing is that we own the property and the festival.

So we can do some very long-term planning.

So, you know, before that, when we were landlord and there was another producer, it was a little different, the dynamic.

But now, we can look, you know, decades out and say, "Hey, we're here to stay."

And so, we just keep reinvesting and, you know, did the permanent stage, did a whole new backstage area this year, so new dressing rooms.

The Prancing Pony if you're familiar with that, we built a new two-story building back there.

And that's a big thing of getting artists.

'Cause there's a lot of festivals.

You know, one way to attract kind of the headliners and all the way down that you want is that hospitality.

And so we keep, you know, reinvesting there too.

So yeah, it's nice.

- Well, and you talk about changes and improvements that you've made since you've taken over.

Because you've changed the stage.

You mentioned Prancing Pony.

Changes are difficult for some people.

But also you're looking at it from attracting performers as part of your goal there, I believe.

- Yeah; no, that's exactly right.

And so, you know, obviously money talks.

But they wanna know that the place they're going is gonna be comfortable for them, you know, that they're gonna have a really nice setting to hang out.

'Cause it's a long day, you know, being an artist.

And sometimes, they stay for a couple of days.

And so they wanna go to a place that's really comfortable, people are gonna treat 'em well.

And then maybe also, I mean, it's kind of nice.

There's a golf course right there.

There's, you know, all the lakes.

It's kind of a nice setting.

So yeah, it's a big part of why they come.

- Well, I remember Luke Bryan saying he went fishing with somebody when he was there for an afternoon.

So as you say, the performers sometimes stick around a little bit.

You know, what makes WE Fest so special?

- Well, for a lot of people, it's their family vacation, right?

It's on their calendar every year.

And it's a full week long for them.

And so, I think it's this place that, you know, whether you've been coming for five years, 10 years, 40 years, you've met this group that you see every year.

And you're planning the rest of the year.

You know, there's a group called the Blue Sky Cowboys that comes to mind that years ago, 2009 and '10, we filmed a documentary out at WE Fest which a lot was in the venue and with the artists, but a lot of it was out in the campgrounds.

And these guys, you know, they just set up this huge thing with all these bars in the woods and these big huge tents.

And so for a lot of people, it is like this just annual vacation where they come back and see these friends.

- Yeah.

You know, what's your advice for people wanting campsites or tickets or both right now?

I mean, there are different ways to get...

I mean, people are selling 'em online, but you have some limited availability on the website.

- Yeah, yeah.

So we still have...

So, you know, some of the ticket types do sell out.

And some of the campsites do sell out kind of quickly.

But there are some, so for instance our glamping, you know, we still have a few glamping sites left on Lake Sallie.

And wefest.com is the easiest.

But we do have a number on the website that you can always call.

And we have a box office.

- Well, let's stay with glamping just a minute.

For somebody who may not know, what is glamping?

- Yeah, glamorous camping.

So you just show up and you've got this beautiful yurt-like tent all set up for you with a couple of beds.

So depending on how many accommodations that you're looking for, the beds are all set up, a real nice, you know, tent slash yurt on Lake Sallie.

It's just a nice way that you don't have to do all the work yourself.

- Well, speaking of work, what size staff do you have?

Well, let's talk with that first.

How much full-time or part-time staff do you have?

- Sure, so last year, we got up to about 1,400 people working the festival.

And that's a combination of, you know, our core staff, but then all of our bartenders, all the food vendors, security, all the people working out in the campgrounds.

And so, you know, we're bringing in people... We try to go as local as possible, but really bring in people from the region.

- Yeah.

Well you said 1,400.

Does that include volunteers?

'Cause then, you also have volunteers?

- We do.

Yeah, yeah, that does include the volunteers.

So the Boys and Girls Club for instance, so they work the hospitality area, VIP area.

And we work with a number of different volunteer non-profit groups that they raised last year over a couple hundred thousand dollars actually for... - So how important are staff and volunteers for something like this to happen?

- Oh, it's critical.

I mean, it's so important.

You know, it's hard work, but it's fun work.

And so, you know, it's people that love music typically, but are, you know, ready to work long days, be social.

Yeah, it's very important.

- You know, is it still mostly a country music festival?

Or do you have other performers who sometimes perform that might not fit in country music genre?

- Sure, there is some crossover.

Koe Wetzel is kind of our crossover act this year.

Country rock.

But you go back through history and, you know, there's been some: you know, Steven Tyler we were talking about earlier, Ray Charles years ago, Ringo Starr.

And, you know, this festival, people really want their country.

Like, it is country.

But I try to when I'm doing the booking, you know, I try to bring in at least one kind of crossover act each year.

- Yeah.

And, you know, you've already talked about this.

But, you know, Soo Pass Ranch, it really just seems to be a perfect place for it with the grounds and everything.

- [Matt] Yeah, yeah.

- Do other things go on out there year round?

- We do, yeah.

So we do have other events, smaller events up at the ranch house.

So that big red building, well there's a couple of big red buildings in the back, but one is called the Ranch House.

And it's this saloon on the first level and then offices upstairs.

But we have a secondary stage outside of there called the Barn Stage.

And so we'll do smaller events up there on that stage and then kind of throughout the year.

And, you know, we open it.

In the winter, we kind of open it up, the grounds, to people cross-country skiing.

You know, it's just such pretty land, so we let people use it.

We also do have a race, so a motor vehicle race through the trails of the campgrounds.

Yeah.

- Okay, so you do have things.

You talked about people coming and going, making friends.

So what are some of the other comments you hear from long-time festival goers as they keep coming back?

'Cause it's not all about the music.

I mean, it's three days but, as you said, they can be there for almost a week.

- Yeah, yeah.

So the first campground that we open is VIP.

And so people can set up their RV about a week in advance and then come back and start camping on Tuesday back there.

And so yeah, it's, again, people that have met each other over the years.

And they kind of have their little pre-party going on.

But during the actual festival, you know, if you're camping, there's quite a bit to do outside of the venue itself.

So for instance, this year we have the East Village, which is at the east gate of the venue but outside of it.

It's kind of this, you know, glorified sports bar.

And we're gonna have all sorts of different games going on, kind of carnival-style games, some paintball, but then kind of this sports bar setup that people just hang out before they're ready to go in for the concert.

And then, you know, Detroit Lakes itself, all the lakes and plenty to do in town.

- Well, there is a lot to do, but we're out of time for today.

So if people want more information, where's the best place for 'em to go?

- It's wefest.com.

And if you'd like to talk to a person over the phone, there's a number there that you can talk and talk to one of our wonderful employees.

- All right.

Matt, thanks for joining us today.

And we wish you the best of luck.

- [Matt] Yeah, thanks John.

- Stay tuned for more.

(ambient music) Five indigenous artists from North Dakota have been awarded fellowship grants from the Sacred Pipe Resource Center in Bismarck and the North Dakota Council on the Arts.

The artists represent a diverse cross section of Native talent across the state.

And they will use the grant money to expand their artistic operations.

Two of the artists, Maria Cree from Minot and Melanie Schwab from Mandan are particularly unique.

(scraping of animal hide) (peaceful music) - [Melanie] Being labeled an artist was definitely a shock.

I think there's a wide variety of us.

And learning more about each of them individually has also helped open my eyes to the entire realm of artists.

- [Maria] There's thousands of us within North Dakota and Minnesota.

I think that focus of having all of our own stories and how we strive to kind of continue to do the things that we're doing is very important.

- We entered into a partnership with the North Dakota Council on the Arts to provide five indigenous artist fellowships: William Brien, Bill Brien, a Dakota digital artist; Stuart Lohnes, who is professionally known as Stuart James, a hip hop artist; Frankie Morin, a comic book artist; Maria Cree, a musician, works with the Red Willow Collective; Melanie Schwab, who's doing traditional arts.

As the artists have talked about, we have our culture and traditions.

We want to remain who we are, but we live in a modern world and a contemporary world where culture is constantly changing and evolving.

And so, their representation of how that culture changes and evolves is so important.

(ambient music) - I'm Melanie Sioux Schwab.

And I am Hunkpapa Sioux from Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.

I'm a traditional Native American artist.

I focus on beadwork, quillwork and traditional tanned hides.

(scraping of animal hide) So I am fleshing off, scraping off the flesh from this side.

So I'm scraping down.

This would be the internal side of the animal.

This is a deer that I shot this fall.

So I'm just scraping down all of this membrane to start softening it.

Then I'll flip it over, do the other side, scrape off the hair.

And then after I've scraped it once or twice, then I will put on a brain mixture.

So I take pork brain, blend it up, put it on there.

That'll, again, soften that membrane.

And then I'll scrape it off again.

And I'll do that process a few times.

So it started back in 2015 when I was getting married.

I wanted to incorporate something traditional into my wedding aspect.

My husband's a cowboy, so we always joke that I'm the Indian, he's the cowboy.

So I wanted some moccasins for my wedding that I hadn't created myself.

So that was the first thing that I learned how to do was bead moccasins.

From there, I began hunting more with my husband and family and thought that there was so much more of the animal that could be utilized.

So I started learning how to traditionally tan the hides.

So after the hunt, I go through and I break down the animal, get all the flesh off, scraping, stretching, tanning.

From there, I use that hide to create moccasins.

I'm currently working on a Sioux traditional women's dress, which is going to be very interesting and a long process.

Well, I have a lot of dreams, but the funds are gonna be used to kind of develop the business that I've started.

I call myself The Modern Sioux, and I am going to be buying some equipment to document the process of everything that I'm doing.

So when I'm tanning traditional hides, I'll be able to record everything from start to finish, put it online so that people that don't necessarily live in the area can learn online as well.

Then I'm gonna build a website that kind of tells a little bit more about me and the things that I am doing, and events that I might be holding to show my work.

And then eventually, I would like to purchase some kind of area to do everything at that's not inside my home.

I think people are always stunned to hear that everything that I'm using, the material that I'm using, the hides specifically, come from deer that I've hunted myself.

I think that's always, you know, very much a shock that it's not something that's bought overseas and imported.

(upbeat music) - My name is Maria Cree.

My Native given name is Yellow Bird Woman.

I'm an enrolled member of Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa.

I am a community organizer within Minot, North Dakota for the last decade.

Essentially, what I do is I book DIY all-ages events for the last 12 years.

And so what I usually do is I collaborate with local artists, print makers, art makers.

We're trying to utilize a lot of this grant to get more video art within shows, trying to just collaborate as much as we can with that.

(upbeat rock music) So essentially, for The Music Collective, the hope with the grant is to acquire more equipment just to utilize more at our events.

Because we don't have a solid space currently.

We utilize a lot of local venues.

(upbeat hip hop music) My grandparents are Francis and Rose Cree.

They were really well known Ojibwe people within North Dakota.

They're mostly well known for their basket weaving, which essentially was red, brown, and scraped brown willow.

And it's something that's been handed down for multiple generations.

I was very fortunate enough to learn how to do that.

Currently right now, our button making is just a way for us to promote.

Everybody loves buttons, trinkets, any little chunky thing.

I am obviously a sucker for those things.

(laughs) Button making is something that I feel like is very integral within punk community and the way that we merchandise.

The goal with Red Willow Collective is creating more spaces for BIPOC youth.

And by BIPOC youth, I essentially mean Black, indigenous, and people of color.

And a lot of queer youth, I am queer myself.

We hope within the state by utilizing our two-spiritedness is to kind of normalize what is normal within our community.

I also think being like a modern res kid on top of it, I feel like punk has taught me a lot about that and how to be vulnerable and how to be open about that.

And so me doing things like this, or even applying for a grant defeats the humbleness part.

But it's also something that I think is very important.

Because I want multiple generations under me to eventually have space to feel like they're allowed to talk about these things, to feel like they have access to be able to show their art.

- At the end of the fellowship, they will be participating in a capstone presentation.

And I'm really excited to hear what they come up with and what their journeys are like, because each one is so different and sort of needing different things.

It'll be really interesting at the end of the fellowship to hear how they've grown and what they've done to grow.

- Sacred Pipe Resources has been such a great aspect to our community to add for Native American youth to just find outlets for things to learn and do.

They've actually brought in a lot of educators to help teach some of these classes.

And I do teach myself.

So I am so thankful that they put together this fellowship with the North Dakota Council on the Arts just to give everybody an opportunity.

Because these grants aren't easy to come by.

- I think the biggest thing about understanding Native art is that for us as a people, as indigenous people, art is not something separate from ourselves.

I really like the artists that were selected because they do represent that diversity of art forms and how the work that they're doing is changing lives.

(scraping of animal hide) - Well, that's all we have for "Prairie Post" this week.

And as always, thanks for watching.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) - [Announcer] Funded by the North Dakota Council on the Arts and by the members of "Prairie Public."

(upbeat music fades)