Vox to bring three-day music festival to Marshfield

By Adam Hocking

Editor

MARSHFIELD—The Vox Concert Series has brought nationally-touring musical artists to Marshfield for nearly 10 years but has never before staged an event like the upcoming Una Sessions Music Festival. The festival will take place over three days, from Nov. 13-15, and concerts each evening will be held at Wildwood Station Pavilion, 1800 S. Roddis Ave., in Marshfield. Doors will open at 7 p.m., and shows begin at 8 p.m. and run through midnight.

Funding for Una comes in part from an $18,000 grant that the Vox Concert Series received from the Wisconsin Department of Tourism. According to the Marshfield Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB), Una is expected to generate a local economic impact of $76,000 via travelers spending at hotels, restaurants, and stores while in town for the festival.

Matt McLean, Director of the CVB, said Vox is a unique attraction for Marshfield.

“Vox is a draw for all of Wisconsin and due to its intimate small-scale shows, fans are able to view artists front and center and be able to meet them on a personal level with shows ranging from 50 - 150 fans typically. These same artists routinely play in front of 500 or thousands of fans in larger markets,” McLean Said.

The festival will be unique for Vox as traditionally the concert series has put on single night shows rather than prolonged events. Over the three nights, 20 musicians will play at the festival, including Anna Nalick, Matthew Santos, Katie Cole, and others.

A main goal in hosting the festival is to raise funds for acquiring a venue exclusively for Vox concerts. Currently, Vox concerts are held at either Wildwood Station Pavilion or Columbia Park. Vox’s founder and president, Brian Sauer, hopes that Una will give the community an example of what it would be like if the concert series possessed a full-time venue.

“We’ve laid the groundwork over the last nearly a decade for building a music scene here for both emerging and nationally-touring artists, and at some point in time we have to take the next step, and so the next step is ‘OK, let’s start getting the notion out there for establishing a venue,’” Sauer said.

Having a venue where Vox could run its own bar, avoid the constant setup and teardown of equipment required when using Wildwood or Columbia Park, and create its own atmosphere would give the concert series better access to bigger name artists. Sauer said that he has had to occasionally pass on big name acts coming to Marshfield because Vox does not have a large enough venue.

He added that it is his passion for music and his community that drives him to continue to build Vox.

“I’m doing this because I love my community. I love music, and I really want to bring something here that people can be proud of,” Sauer said. “The long-term goal and the vision for what I’m trying to do is (to) do something cool for Marshfield that it can be proud of, give it something it doesn’t have, bring a little bit more culture/art to the area that it doesn’t have access to. … Outside of the internet, people in this area really don’t have access to emerging artists.”

Tickets for the Una Sessions Music Festival will be $50 for reserved table seating and $40 for general admission per person per day. Starting Nov. 10, remaining reserved table seating will cost $60 per person per day, and general admission will be $50. For more information on the Una Sessions Music Festival and to purchase tickets for the event, visit http://voxconcertseries.com/.