A few weeks ago in these pages, Sebastopol Mayor Patrick Slayter expressed a desire for more fun events around town, and like a peripatetic post-holiday elf, Jann Eyrich is here to deliver.
This week Eyrich announced the creation of a new festival in Sebastopol — the Flatbed Music Festival, which is designed to honor the diverse musical heritage of west county.
Scheduled for June 4, 5 and 6, the festival will feature a mix of genres — Americana, singer-songwriters, blues and jazz — and a lineup of Sonoma-grown musicians on 10 intimate stages in Sebastopol, including one, yes, on the back of a flatbed truck. (“It’s a ’63 Chevy, I think,” Eyrich said.)
Eyrich, who will be announcing the festival line-up at the end of January, said the festival will “pair established recording artists with emerging artists.”
“It’s an intimate music festival, and it’s just … Sebastopol,” Eyrich said, meaning the festival is Sebastopudlian in spirit.
In December, Creative Sonoma, the arts arm of the county’s Economic Development Board, announced that Eyrich was one of three west county individuals to win a Cultural Arts grant for 2020. She’s close-mouthed about the size of the grant, demurely saying that it was “generous.”
HopMonk Sebastopol is also a major sponsor of the event, Eyrich said.
“I say that it’s fueled by HopMonk Sebastopol and Creative Sonoma. When I say fueled by it, it is just with HopMonk’s graciousness and commitment to this project, that it’s going to move forward. Same with the support of Creative Sonoma. It’s important that the county is supporting us,” Eyrich said.
Eyrich said she got the idea for the festival from the Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival.
“The idea is expanding on an identity that we already have, which is that Sebastopol is a destination for creatives. You can celebrate that in film. We celebrate that in the arts,” she said. “But west county is also just saturated with musicians — there is an incredible legacy here — and I wanted to demonstrate that in a festival.”
