LEE PYE
Staff Writer
Last year, a student-run, all-day music festival celebrated folk with folks, and the Reverberation Music Festival is coming back a lot bigger, and a lot louder.
Jacob Kantner is a fourth-year English Adolescent Education BA/MA student at SUNY Fredonia, balancing his major, being a singer/songwriter and being co-president of Sigma Tau Delta.
In May of 2023, Kantner decided to put on a mini music festival for the end of the year to celebrate the completion of the semester and school year.
At the time, the event was in the backyard of the apartment he lived in, where most of the area was a concrete parking lot. Entering the backyard, people parked their cars on the left side, and the music was on the right. At the very end of the fenced backyard was a pop-up tent and a mini do-it-yourself stage with a tapestry hung behind the tent spelling REVERBERATION.
The bands performed in front of the tapestry out to the crowd of college students, all either sitting on picnic blankets, chatting at picnic tables or dancing in front of the stage. People were ordering drinks from “Tony’s Rocktail Bar”, where student Ryan Terry sells his non-alcoholic mocktail-mixing concoctions.
Another student, Sarah Burke, sold her hand-crafted earrings, necklaces, rings, prints and more, using the art tag name “Oopsie Art”. Even the Fred-favorite thrift shop “Recollected” made an appearance, showing off and selling some of their finest vintage and secondhand clothing.
The bands that played last year were Hal & Pals, T.T.T.T. and Jacob King, Violent Graffiti, Jacob Kantner with Livitria, Dylan Rohr & Jackson Rotella, Isabella Mowers and Dylan Murawski. Most of the bands were either a type of folk music genre, or if they weren’t, they dialed it down with acoustic guitars to fit the Reverb setting.
Now, this year, Kantner is pulling all the strings to set up for the new and improved Reverberation, now working with the school and the town to make this festival happen.
“I was going to do it on campus but I wanted to be somewhat different [with the location], so I sent the mayor an email, and then had a meeting with him, and he basically granted me the space at Barker Commons.”
In order to hold an event at Barker Commons, there needs to be insurance attached to the event for liability reasons. The insurance money was too much for Kantner to afford, so he turned to the school to see if any clubs were interested in co-sponsoring the event. “Basically by their names being attached to it, the campus covered the insurance.” The clubs sponsoring the event this year are Sigma Tau Delta (English Honors Society), Writers’ Ring, Fredonia Radio Systems, FREDGrows and the campus literary magazine, The Trident.
He is not only sponsored by the clubs but is also working with some of them. The radio show The Local Lo-Down will have a table for the event, as well as The Trident.
The Trident is releasing its latest issue on Thursday, May 9, at 7 p.m. in the Blue Lounge. Two days later, at Reverberation, they will be doing live readings of the literature, as well as announcements during the event and in-between band sets.
To improve something for this year, Kantner said he wants to “sell [snacks and] water …We had Tony’s last year — Ryan Terry’s little thing — and we’re going to have Tony back. I have to post it, but Tony is back! But this year he is going to also have snacks and water.”
Ryan Terry, also known as Tony when he bartends, said,“I’m very excited. Reverb was super fun, people seemed to really enjoy it. It’s nice to see something different at an event like this. Seeing craft mocktails at a DIY music event is really something else.”
As for the sound, Kantner is doing the setup by himself, just like last year. “It’s just going to be me and my friends running the sound, and I wanted to keep it as simple as possible last year, and I think this year I hope it goes the same. The first four acts are acoustic, and then the acts keep building on top of each other.”
None of the bands are paying to play, and none of the clubs or vendors are paying for a table. He is attempting to keep it as free as possible for participants in order for everyone to be able to relax and enjoy the music.
“FredFest kind of gives Fredonia a bad wrap in the news because of how it ended last year, but I wanted Reverberation to be a good ending to a good arts school,” Kantner said.
“I just want it to be a celebration of everything coming together, everyone relaxing for one last time before the semester ends. It’s kind of a reverberation of the sounds of the year, and everyone meets back together in the end.”
This year, Reverberation performances will be from Michael Hogan (12:00 p.m.), Ryan Buechel (12:30 p.m.), Jacob King (1:00 p.m.), Cornflake Car (1:30 p.m.), Galactic Waste (2:00 p.m.), HitGRL (2:45 p.m.), Jasmine Comet (3:30 p.m.), The Ryan Terry Family Band (4:20 p.m.), Chatterbox (5:40 p.m.) and finally, Jacob Kantner and Friends will be rockin’ until the festival ends at 8:30 p.m.
Burke will be there once again selling her art though her tag @oopsi3doop.
This year’s Reverberation Music Festival will be held in Barker Commons on May 11, starting at 12 p.m.
They can be found at @reverberationmusicfestival on Instagram for more information about the festival.