The following essay is from Tom Kerns of the Maplewoodstock Committee, reflecting on his years helping to organize one of Maplewood’s premier annual events. This year’s festival took place July 13 and 14 in Maplewood Memorial Park:
After being involved in the Maplewoodstock Music & Arts Festival for the past 16 years, the last six as its Chair, it was time for me to step aside and let others continue the legacy.
The Maplewoodstock Volunteer Committee mostly works behind the scenes, and other than the few members who MC the event, many in the community do not know the amount of work that these unsung volunteers accomplish, or for that matter who they are. That has always been the case. We simply have said that this is a festival that is produced “by and for the community”. However, since I am stepping aside, I want to take this opportunity to give you, the community, a sense of how this amazing free outdoor festival, which began in 2004, comes together.
MWS Crowd from 2015
Being involved in this festival has been such a fulfilling experience. It’s been a social experiment that shows how a community can come together. The Maplewoodstock Committee is made up of eight very unique individuals with different skill sets, different preferences, different perspectives, and with different backgrounds. Maybe that’s why it works (albeit, not without its challenges and “debates”). There are many people to thank, which I will get to, but for now I hope you enjoy some reminiscing.
Back in 2009, when my wife and I started the HK Community Fund, we introduced our mission of community building by quoting George Bernard Shaw, “I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.” The core mission of HKCF was to enhance the sense of belonging in our community, so of course we were compelled to become involved in Maplewoodstock, the biggest and most popular community event of each year.
In the years prior to MWS having the budget to hire Maplewood’s Department of Public Works [DPW] to manage the trash and recycling for the event, that task was accomplished by volunteers. In 2009, HKCF rounded up a couple dozen middle school and high school aged volunteers (for which they dubbed themselves the “Wood Crew”), and for 3 years the task of keeping the park clean was handled by these volunteers. As a result, in 2010 I became an official member of the Maplewoodstock Volunteer Committee.
HK Community Fund volunteers – 2009
As HKCF grew we hired Amy Jo Curran in 2010 to be our Executive Director, but in that first year the task of organizing and managing this team of teenagers and preteens fell to me. Here is a fun story from 2009:
Love blooms at Maplewoodstock
In these early years there were not enough trash receptacles in Memorial Park to accommodate the Maplewoodstock crowd size, so the MWS Committee members brought some from home and we would drive around borrowing the receptacles from the other parks in town. This was still, truly, a grassroots effort. Maplewood DPW put a large dumpster on the east (baseball) field, and it was the Wood Crew’s task of emptying all the trash cans into the dumpster using only one wheelbarrow to collect the bags from each receptacle. The volunteers were organized by age, the younger ones taking the early daytime shifts and the older high school volunteers would take the evening shifts. What I loved about these volunteers is that many of the kids didn’t know each other. Some were from Maplewood Middle, some were from South Orange Middle, some were from Columbia High School, and some were from private schools. It was fun watching them get to know each other and find ways to work together while they were hauling smelly trash in the July heat. It was hard work, but they made it work and I think they even had a little fun doing it.
The last shift in 2009 was made up of just two high school volunteers, a boy and girl, who did not know each other before that night. I gave them the wheelbarrow and a flashlight and sent them on their mission. About 30 minutes later, John Williams who was a member of the MWS Committee in 2009, yelled to me, “Kerns! What’s going on with the garbage?” I looked up the hill and all the receptacles were overflowing with trash. The two high schoolers, the wheelbarrow, and the flashlight were nowhere to be found. I gathered up a few younger volunteers (mostly my daughter Erin and her friends), and we began carrying the trash bags from the hill, without the use of the missing wheelbarrow, to the dumpster by the baseball field. By the end of the night, let’s just say we needed showers, and we got an unexpected one. As soon as the headliner, Jonathan Edwards, completed his set the skies opened up.
As we were carrying the last bags of trash to the dumpster, in the rain, our two missing high schoolers showed up with the wheelbarrow. When I asked them what happened they simply shrugged and walked away hand-in-hand. I remember turning to someone and saying, “I hope they name their kid after me.”
Fortunately, in 2012, the Committee was able to raise enough funds to allow us to pay the Township for DPW personnel.
Some milestones:
- The first Maplewoodstock took place in 2004. It was a one-day event and included about 20 bands. There was a borrowed stage, the lights and sound were provided by the bands themselves, and the first MWS t-shirt was designed and sold. Gary Shippy reached out to the then Director of Community Affairs, the late Jim Buchanan, to get approval to have a “concert in the park”. Along with Jamie Ross, who had produced other music events in town, John Williams and Tarquin Learned (among other volunteers) they proceeded to “put on a show.”
- The first lawn sign appeared in 2005 (or was it 2006), which was possibly inspired by Chris Dickson, according to Chris Dickson.
- The first paid headliner was Aztec Two-Step in 2008. Each year since then, the question “Who is this year’s headliner going to be?” is asked often.
- Sometime around 2012 or 2013 (I believe) the official MWS logo was unveiled.
- In 2015 Saturday’s headliners were The Wailers (of Bob Marley and the Wailers fame), which was easily the largest crowd of any year (although 2024’s crowd for Daniel Donato came close), and prompted the committee, with direction from the Township, to make some changes to add safety features never before thought needed.
- The pandemic forced the committee to make tough choices which resulted in the cancellation of the festival in 2020 and 2021.
- In 2024 we received the largest number of band applications. 121 applicants for just 18 time slots, some from as far as Philadelphia and Boston.
- In 2025, Maplewoodstock will celebrate its 20th festival!
To answer some questions that I have been asked over the years…
- Is the event funded by the Township of Maplewood?
The Township of Maplewood, including and especially the Township Committee, are big supporters of the event, but this is not a Township funded event. Maplewoodstock is a private event that is planned, funded and managed by a group of dedicated volunteers who simply love SOMA (or MapSo for us old-timers). Every year the festival receives invoices from the Township to pay for the police and public works personnel who work the event.The MWS Committee works very closely with the Township to ensure there are minimal disruptions to traffic flow and businesses. There has always been an excellent working relationship between the MWS Committee and the Township. - If that’s true, then how is the event funded?
The simple answer is that it is funded by you, the community. 100% of the funds come from you purchasing merchandise, local businesses buying ads or being a sponsor, local (mostly) artists and food vendors buying space and, finally, donations from you. Every year you all step up big time. This event does not happen without the support from the community. - How are the bands selected?
In February/March of each year we put out the call that Maplewoodstock is accepting music applications. Over the years, as word about the festival began to spread in the surrounding communities, the number of bands applying significantly increased. Each band uploads their application, which includes an MP3 of one of their songs, to maplewoodstock.com. There is a subcommittee of 3 or 4 (depending on the year) who listen to each of the submissions and each member of that subcommittee try to come up with their top 25 performers. For 2024 it was about 7-8 hours of music. The subcommittee then meets and hashes it out and researches the proposed bands (YouTube, websites, etc.) to come up with that year’s line-up. It does get heated at times. Many criteria (the secret sauce) are used to make the final selections. - Are the committee members compensated?
No! No staff member receives any compensation. It is a committee of volunteers. Hence the name; “Maplewoodstock Volunteer”
Thank you!
I am grateful and humbled to have been a part of this annual event and work alongside the wonderful human beings that are, and have been, the Maplewoodstock Volunteer Committee. I love this community and was thrilled to have been able to have a part in bringing this festival to life each year.
Thank you to the Township Committee and employees for being such a huge supporter of this event over the years. I have never experienced anything but cooperation from everyone, and there are a few for whom I am especially grateful. Our current liaisons, Mayor Nancy Adams and Vice Mayor Jamaine Cripe, are not only great partners they are great fans of the event. I would also like to thank the past Township Liaisons, Greg Lembrich, Frank McGehee, our long-time liaison Vic DeLuca and of course, my good friend, the late Gerry Ryan.
In my role as Chair, I worked very closely with the Department of Public Works, MPD, MFD (now SEFD), and have nothing by high praise for their attitude and cooperation. I wish I could name and thank them all, but since most of the time they were simply behind the scenes doing their jobs, we did not always know who was assigned. In the past few years, I have personally worked with Lt. Gearren and Sgt. Reeves from the MPD, Paul Kittner and Frank Monaco from DPW (and a shout out to retired DPW director Eric Burbank for his years of support), and Fire Inspector Bob Conklin. Thank you all for being supportive, a vital resource, and quite frankly making MWS a safer environment. Your work does not go unnoticed.
There are many other volunteers who are not part of the Committee that deserve to be mentioned. Again it’s impossible to name each and every one of them. Thank you all for your hard work and dedication to our little show. Thank you…
- To this year’s vendor subcommittee which was managed by Steve Casella, Brian McNamara and Alison Oxman.
- To our perennial volunteer photographer, Danny Goldstein.
- To Laurellie Jacobs Martinez who manages the ASL interpreters.
- To the members of the Canopy Lottery subcommittee, especially Rachel Goldman.
- To our perennial merchandise volunteer Simone Rudow.
- To the perennial super volunteers, Gayle Shand, Alyssa Aronson, Debbie Bearg, Adam Grzelewski, Amy Biasucci, Tom Carlson and Marcia Leonard, and so many others.
I would also be remiss if I did not thank you, the community. You continue to support this beautiful event. You turn out every year in the heat and sometimes rain. You buy our merchandise and support our vendors. Some of you have not missed one year going all the way back to 2004. You are why we do this. Thank you!!
Finally…drum roll please…I need to thank my colleagues, the current and past members of the Maplewoodstock Volunteer Committee, who I affectionally refer to as “the knuckleheads”. Who but a knucklehead would take on such a huge task of producing (with no pay) a 2-day Music and Arts Festival that includes up to 20 local bands, three to four headline acts, over 60 art vendors, over 20 food vendors, a kids zone with numerous activities, a beer and wine garden (thank you SO Elks), managing an intricate canopy lottery system, negotiating with a national production/sound/lighting company, coordinating with police, EMS and DPW, making sure the festival is as accessible to as many people as possible, coordinating the delivery and cleaning of 40 port-o-johns, negotiating with headliners’ tour managers (no green M&Ms), selling merchandise, selling ads, making it all look seamless, and..oh yeah…have full-time jobs and families. You are all insane, and I love you all.
So, to my colleagues, my friends, I say thank you, I will miss working with you and, of course, rock on. Good luck with the 20th festival!
With peace, love and admiration,
Tom
Current Committee Members:
- Gary Shippy
- Tarquin Learned
- Kevin Chandler
- Susan Rogers
- Jim Robertson
- Jamie Ross
- Brad Goldman
Past Committee Members (that I worked with in some capacity):
- Katie Clayton
- Kerry Miller
- John Williams
- Drew Dix
- The late Jim Buchanan
Find more Maplewoodstock photos and news at facebook.com/maplewoodstock.
