Dennis DeYoung performing at Summerfest 2014.
Photo by Laurie Muffler.

Folks from Tennessee covet the Ryman Auditorium and Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival; similarly, in Wisconsin and even Illinois, music lovers live for Summerfest. It was the sparkling mirage in our not-too-distant horizon—after the snow melts, that is. And our summer would be marked as “before Summerfest” and “after Summerfest.” As a youth, I knew that all things were Summerfest. The radio rallied us to come on down to the world-class event and informed us by the minute how to get our Summerfest on. Guitars would scream on the radio and the announcer would tell us who was playing, and no matter how hard we had studied the schedule, there was always a nice surprise act catching us unaware, and it was usually one so fantastic and novel that we would drop everything and scramble to go see the show, and that still stands today.

I was one of many fortunate souls to have “Summerfest” as my personal summer playground while growing up in Milwaukee, Wis., and I often describe it today, to others who are not in the know, as Disneyland for musicians. “It’s The World’s Largest Music Festival, according to Guinness World Records,” I would declare, when I bumped into anyone unknowing.

It is legendary: according to Guinness World Records, there clearly are more bands playing on more stages for more days on more acres than anywhere else in the world. In 2014 it was reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that  attendance this year was up from 2013’s 840,000 to roughly 851,000 people. In the past the attendance has reached over a million. That is a story unto itself. By 2017, Summerfest, also known as The Big Gig, will have been around for 50 years. That’s one heckuva lot of rock ’n’ roll—but it’s not just rock ’n’ roll. There is a wide variety of music on the 18 stages that I counted this year. Styles from reggae to rock, Latin to pop and then some, can be heard at any given moment. The fest is carefully designed so that as you pass out of the range of one stage, another stage’s music can be heard. Sometimes the stages face one another, yet somehow you only hear one. It is completely and utterly miraculous, meticulously designed and state of the art. They go to great lengths to pull this coup off, and then do it just so right. All this is perched on one of the most largest freshwater lakes in the world: Lake Michigan. It is truly a great fest on a Great Lake, not to mention utterly gorgeous. In my mind, having grown up in West Allis, a suburb of Milwaukee, the greatest accomplishment in the world was to be involved in Summerfest, especially if you are a music lover.

Roxanne Jeske, guitarist from Szilenze.
Photo by DGRP Bay Sound Records Group.

The summer I turned 16, I remember, I plugged in my boombox and slathered coconut-smelling oil all over my pasty, suburban, sun-starved Midwestern body. I was determined to be browned by the sun’s loving rays as quickly as possible, and even stood on a silver foil blanket to increase my seasonal coloring. I may have been a Midwestern girl but I wanted to look every bit of Florida or California if I could, although places like those were several million light years away. I began to scrape the paint off the south side of the garage that the sun beat down upon most. My father agreed to pay me $80 to scrape and paint it. Suddenly the radio blasted, “Robin Trower at Summerfest, Briggs & Stratton Stage, today at 8 p.m.” I was ecstatic, as I loved the sultry, peculiar essence of that white man’s blues as he and his trio played and sang about a somber march of convicts headed toward incarceration in the churning “Bridge of Sighs.” I looked at the clock and did my calculations, if I scrape only so much, then I can still catch the show and have money to boot. Before the announcer on 93QFM could finish playing “Bridge of Sighs,” I had hurriedly wrapped things up. I approached my mom, and she agreed to give me $20 of my payment. I was elated. I called my 10 closest cohorts, including my blood brother Dave, and began to plan car rides, neglecting the Summerfest transit system though superbly efficient at running. At that time it was $6 or $8 to get in, and I had just enough for a couple of beverages and a bratwurst, and it is not much more than that cost today. The fest continues to act as if it is inflation-proof at a mere $16 to get in. I don’t know anywhere else in the world that you can pay $16 and see bands like Three Dog Night, Joan Jett, Zappa Does Zappa, moe. and Matisyahu, for example, and still have another 12 stages to enjoy for a price so low. The event runs from noon until midnight daily.

The Prince Experience. Photos by Laurel Swedowski.

I remember that I carefully applied the curling iron to my long, permed and feathered locks of hair that I had just used “Sun-In” product hair lightener on, and then put on my tube top, a tiny matching striped skirt, some sandals, and presto: I stood back and assessed. I added shell jewelry and some Love’s Baby Soft cologne. It was imperative to be as attractive as humanly possible, especially at Summerfest. One would think I was going to meet Trower, but I was all about facing the crowd, getting the reaction from the fellas my age living to stroll the fest as I was. I was hoping to meet that special cute guy, and exchange numbers (even though when a boy gave me and my girlfriends his number it would cause a huge reaction of giggles and conversation). We all had something to say, in our vast experience of nothing.

We arrived at the turnstile and we were searched, and then we were off to a great start once past security. We strolled past any number of stages: The Piggly Wiggly, The Miller Lite Oasis, The Harley-Davidson Roadhouse and so on. We loved everything about the fest, and finally located an almost empty bleacher in the first 8 or 10 rows and climbed up. When the music launched so did the bleacher bounce. Back then, the bleachers were wooden, whereas today they are metal. It was not uncommon for the bleachers to bust mid-show, and the crowd to do something dangerous to themselves and others with that back then; it was very rowdy. Today it is far more tame and comfortable. In the ’70s we heard stories on the news of beer trucks tipping over and wild hippies and teenagers going mentally nuts over bands like Band of Gypsies and lore that Bob Marley first set foot in North America at Milwaukee’s General Mitchell Airport. Nightly we would sit in front of the 10 p.m. news to hear how many patrons visited Henry Meier Park, where Summerfest was and still is located, daily.

The park holds over 100,000 people daily, times 11 days: you do the math. Back then the ground was dusty dirt, whereas today, the ground is now cleanly paved. I watched in utter awe as Trower shook his long, dark mane, and he just tore it up on that guitar, and the young men danced without their shirts on and the girls kept close to their guys. The music pulsated, the people gyrated, smoke filled the air, and the Security in Red Shirts stood vigil.

No Quarter, a Led Zeppelin tribute

Since then, I have been a stage manager at a midsize stage and an entertainment buyer and performer for the great event over and over again. Back then I did not know where life was leading me. After marriage and divorce, children, music school and laboring hard in the music industry, I found myself living back in Milwaukee, returning from the Bay Area. My friend Coventry Jones invited me and my band to play on a small side stage back in ’99, and by 2002 I had fast become a part of the Summerfest family, thanks to Associate Entertainment Director Vic Thomas seeing something special in me. After relatively diverse experience in music, music production and performance, I earned a stage to run—and promptly booked the event’s first rock opera theater show, a version of Pink Floyd’s The Wall, by Midwest Rock Opera Theatre Co. That was very memorable for many people because of its uniqueness.

I later spent time chronicling the event on video when my poor spine derailed and loudly objected to any more of the grueling labor involved in preparing the stage. One year I was in a wheelchair being thrust into the crowd by my daughter up onto a wheelchair ramp to see Elvis Costello. Another memory, not as good as the others, yet at that one time, aside from the fact I could not walk; I could shop. During another, I enjoyed the fireworks that I had ignored so many times because of something more important to do while working there. A few years later I went on to name a small, emerging artist stage in 2013, and named it The Renegade Stage, and along with Coventry Jones booked it again, going on several years now. The stage is meant to add character to the Lake Walk and appease the artists that are halfway there, almost good enough to play on the big stages, and die-hard musicians, Milwaukee-style, will busk outside the park until they are let in as artists, and Summerfest becomes a gracious entity.

Harvey Scales on the Summerfest stage.
Photo by DGRP Bay Sound Records Group.

This year I experienced the newest highlight: I got to perform on the largest stage at the event, on the new BMO Harris stage with Stax Records soul legend Harvey Scales and the Seven Sounds, whose group I joined in 2009, and we performed at 8 p.m. as special guest of Kool and the Gang on July 4. I sang and danced, played some percussion, and acted as the production coordinator (and booked the show, being in the capacity of the band’s management). Thus far we have opened for George Clinton, P-Funk and Cameo as well.

It seems as though Summerfest being in my backyard, so to speak, has been a long, hard-driving force that has been pushing me forward my whole life and music career. The relationships with those who got me involved are precious and the people there are like family. I live in Malibu, Calif., now, and have lived in Murfreesboro prior to that, yet I return to Milwaukee annually for the grand event and often spend several weeks planning 11 days’ worth of activity on a small stage; now, to see emerging artists in the position I was personally in 15 years ago, is both fun and rewarding. I now work for a Bay Area record label and do entertainment consulting and strategize with up-and-coming artists, as well as continue to perform and work as a recording artist.

The author, Bibi (left), on stage, as a giant Charlie Parker puppet jams along at Summerfest 2014