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Levine: Dynamic Resonate Suwannee to serve various musical tastes from SOSMP woods

Photo: Courtney Scout via Resonate Suwannee

When is a music festival more than people coming to experience a collection of acts? When it’s thrown amid 800 acres of north Florida woods. That’s Resonate Suwannee. RoadtripMojo had a chat with Paul Levine of Purple Hat Productions to discuss the upcoming Resonate Suwannee Festival. Slated for March 30-April 1, 2023, at the Spirit of the Suwannee Music Park, the third installment of the fest will pair up Essential Productions with headliner STS9, and SOSMP and Levine’s Purple Hat Productions.

Listen to the interview here.

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Okeechobee Music Festival to Ignite Florida Night

Photo by Ivan Meneses for Insomniac Events

Central Florida is home to Kissimmee Prairie Preserve State Park, the state’s first “Dark Sky Park” designated by the International Dark Sky Association. Yet, about 30 miles to the south on the first weekend in March, the night skies will light up bright as day when the Okeechobee Music & Arts Festival returns for its annual romp.

From the art to the woods to a line-up that includes jam, electronic, hip-hop, rap, R&B, dance, dubstep, disco, funk, indie, house, and techno, this fest is an evolution in progress.

In this Sit-Down with the Producer, RoadtripMojo posed some questions to fest cofounder Rechulski. We asked what’s new at OkeeFest – and what will never change – and what festival goers and RVers will discover at the fest’s sixth run…   (GA and VIP ticket and camping packages are currently available for purchase at www.okeechobeefest.com)

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RV Retailer – Rolling Up the RV Business

RVers, roadtrippers and music festival campers know that thrill of owning an RV, travel trailer or sprinter begins before it’s driven off the lot and proven with every encounter they may have with the RV service department. If only RV dealers would step up that effort. One is trying to.

Enter Jon Ferrando. As a child, young Ferrando grew up RVing the UP of Michigan with his family. So he knows a bit about the spirit that drives the RV camping enthusiast. But the auto sector veteran also knows enough about customer service to have sensed an opportunity in what some would decry as the RV industry’s weakest link.

It helps that the exec cut his teeth at the nation’s largest car dealership – one which places high value on customer service and growth through acquisition.

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North Beach Music Festival Brings Jams to Miami Beach – Again

For jam band fans, brothers Gideon and Noah Plotnicki are good folk to follow. Their pedigree boasts a collection of stellar sets from Brooklyn to New Orleans. Drawing on success booking late-night shows at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and serving as talent buyer Brooklyn Comes Alive, in 2021 they brought the inaugural year North Beach Music Festival to a 1960s-era, Art Deco-styled amphitheater steps from the Atlantic, ensconced in palms – and for two nights of jam and funk last December – lit with a laser ceiling and awash in jams. Year two promises to amp it up.
In this recent Sit Down With the Producers, we caught up with the brothers to discuss their history, their philosophy and their plans for North Beach Year II  on December 9-11, 2022 in Miami Beach (listen to the discussion here).

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Faith, Grit Drive Music Festival Promoter Beyond Covid

When the lights went down and the bands hit the stage for a “podfest” in the overflow parking lot at Spirit of the Suwannee Music Park in spring 2021, festival goers felt the return of something all new, yet familiar.

Coming on the tail end of the pandemic panic that shut down concerts, festivals and the economy at large for a hard year, pulling off Suwannee Spring Fling that March took a dose of faith.

It also took something else, said headliner Keller Williams. 

“Let me be the first to say it,” Williams said. “Beth Judy’s got balls.”

He was speaking about the park’s festival director, who had staged another in a growing list of successful and safe socially-distanced music festivals. Someone had to be first back. At that point, the park had done it twice already. They’ve marketed it as “a tradition reborn.”

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