Make Music Madison director Meri Rose Ekberg stops by Max Ink Radio

you found Wisconsin's local music authority. This is MagSync Radio. We are local music.

Make Music Madison is a free citywide day of music every June 21st and is part of Make Music Day.

A celebration that occurs in more than 1,000 cities across the globe, which is totally amazing to

think about. Yeah, didn't it get started in Europe? I thought, yeah. France, I believe. Yeah,

Madison began participating in 2013 when Mayor Paul Slogland signed up the city to fund

the startup. And 13 years later, the man city boasts one of the largest make music days in the

United States. Here to talk about the event, how it works and how to sign up is Make Music Madison

director Mary Rose Eckbird. Mary Rose, welcome back to MagSync Radio. Thanks so much for having

me, Rocker. I always appreciate it. It's good to see you here. You know, Mary Rose, every year you come

in to talk about Make Music Madison, we ask you about your latest travel adventure.

I mean, there's been one like Egypt, Vietnam. This is going to be an interesting one. Okay.

What was your latest adventure? Okay, so this is interesting for not the reasons you probably would

expect. But I just actually got back from this is going to sound wildly exciting. West Virginia.

Wow. Okay. So I'm trying to cross off all 50 states. I've lived in 11 states and I've

lived all over the country. So I've been most places. So West Virginia was one of the last states

that I have to go to. I'm after this. I'm down to I'm down to four. So West Virginia was I needed

to go there. I went there for a weekend. What did you do? I went to Charleston, West Virginia. It's

a capital. And I went to the New River Gorge National Park, which has got this giant crazy bridge

and I wandered around. And I'll be honest, it was I decided that 24 hours would have been

enough in West Virginia. And I tried to leave early. I was I felt like I did everything. I went

to the art museum. I went to like the James Beard Award winning restaurant that was there. I

went to the best cocktail bar. I did all the things. And then in basically 24 hours and I was like,

there's nothing else to do. And I'm ready to get out of here. And so I went to the airport

five and a half hours early and sat at the airport for my fun. So it was a weird travel adventure

this time. There you go. So let's start with you before we get to the festival. Tell us a little

about yourself and how you started playing roles in the music scene. Yeah. So I actually started

right across the street from the studio here at Overcher. So I was there for a little over six

years. And I ran for three of that. I ran Kids in the Rotunda, which has like been happening

for over 30 years. I ran International Festival, which has been happening for over 40 years.

And on stage, which is their Student Matt Nays series. And then after I left Overcher, I ended up

starting as an assistant for Make Music Madison for the first year, shadowed the then director

Natasha. And then when she decided to take a step back, I moved into the director role. And

now this is this is a side gig for me. I also work for the City of Madison as a cultural planner.

And I primarily do public art planning. Wow. That's for do you play music? I don't. Yeah. So I'm

purely an arts administrator. Yeah. So I did I studied fine art in undergraduate. I studied

sculpture. So I have I'm more of an art history background and an arts background visual arts

background than music. But administration for me like is it's all about supporting the artist.

So that's what the experience that I love is I get to help people who are really good at their

crafter. Who want to get good at their craft. Get out and connect with the community. Wow.

Tell us about the festival. Make Music Madison takes place on June 21st. And there is live

music literally all around every corner in Madison. It could be anywhere. Tell us about the

festival. It could be anywhere. So so that's one of the wonderful things about this day is we

encourage people and invite people and help make possible people to play pretty much anywhere.

So we have performers who play who play on boats on rooftops, balconies, street corners,

coffee shops, restaurants, libraries. Tritive more traditional venues pretty much everywhere.

And I encourage people to really think outside the box and think about like where can you

bring music to where you couldn't normally because we love we love to try to find challenges and

help people make things happen in unusual places. Yeah, because I mean you know part of the appeal

of this is you just you know you're walking around a corner and there's somebody you discover.

I mean you discover so many different artists just right cruising around the city. I remember

when I was doing an internship at the Lucia Center in the radio stations, we had

make Music Madison. One of the venues we had was in the community room and there were so many

different things. We had an Indian dance troupe in the morning and then Christian rap and then

singer songwriter and then more rap later. He gives you so many different kinds of music even in

one venue I think. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, every genre and we we try to and most venues host

things across the board like that. Like Lucia is a great example of you know people a lot of

people even open their homes and they're looking for yeah because they're excited about

meeting musicians or their porches or etc. Yeah like they you know so it's all about kind of

celebrating every variety of music there is and every level of musicianship. You don't need to be

an expert musician you you know this could be your first time ever performing live and this

is a great opportunity to do that because it's a safe environment you know where people are

are supportive and excited to hear new music. And you like can't get a ticket right? Yeah exactly

no tickets. Yeah exactly. You can make noise because you guys take that permit. Yeah we take

care of as long as you follow our rules and you're within the hours that you need to be. It's

very simple. So if it's in the city of Madison. So 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. So those are our

suspects be if it's between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m. and as long as you report it in our our

matchmaking platform. So we know it's happening. Yeah. Then we get the street use permits we get

the park permits we get whatever permit needs to happen like if you want to host make music

day as a neighborhood block party and you want to close down the street we will

help you with that process. Wow. And we will help get that we will pay for the permit for that

and we will help you you know walk through the process of getting blockades and where are you

shutting it off and are you getting the you know petition sign from your neighbors to make sure it's

okay like we're happy to help support somebody to host you know anywhere that we can make it possible.

You just can't free land. Yeah you yeah I mean yeah the thing is is we the only the only other

requirements we have is like you can't block pedestrian traffic. So if somebody's trying to move

through sidewalk let them go and and it has to be free. It has to be free and open to the public.

So you can't decide who gets to come and go like if you're going to host anybody can come and

check out your show. Now it's free but you do have buckets. Yes. So people can leave tips true.

Yep we we provide tip buckets and encourage everybody to tip in fact we even have a busking

sheet that teaches hosts like how to ask for money on behalf of the musicians. You know we have

curtain speeches we encourage them to MC. We also encourage venues who can pay their performers to

pay their performers. So you know if you're if you have a budget please do that or if you're a

restaurant or a bar and you're hosting like how can you give back to those musicians for sharing

their talent with you you know. Wow that is pretty cool and now any band any musician they can go

and sign up registration is open till June 1st. Yes. So just open and we keep it open for about

two months so that we have a lot of time to promote but also a lot of time for the matchmaking

process because if you are a if you're a musician you might want to play in multiple places and

we have some folks who play six eight places in a day and they're running all over town and so

that process can take a little while to connect with venues and make sure it's a good match get

the schedules sorted out so you're not conflicting make sure you have enough time to drive across

town etc. Tell you a little bit about this matchmaking process I mean it's like tender for bands and

gigs for one day. Yeah exactly yeah so it's so it's a platform that the the national

lion so we're a chapter of a national lion said has a little like I think around 200 chapters in

the US and they provide this platform and musicians register and host register and then you can

find each other so hosts can search by genre or by availability like if they know okay where I

only want to host from five to 10 they can search for musicians that are available in that window

and vice versa you can you can talk on the platform and connect and musicians can provide you know

links to their soundcloud their Spotify their you know images websites etc they can put a

description in there and then all of that as soon as the show is confirmed by us in the system so

once both parties agree and we sign off it automatically goes onto our website wow that's incredible

and then you can really you can look and find where all these people are playing all over the city

yeah and it's a helpful tool we keep it up yeah exactly we keep it up after the event so when

people reach out and say hey I'm looking for a band for this conference or this event we have

basically a database of local musicians wow that's actually incredible a couple of years back

I think you're like breaking records with how many venues you have oh yeah so we're one of the we

are the largest uh chapter in the United States and one of the largest in the world so we host

um between 600 to 700 events each year wow what do you what do you like attribute that to what do

you attribute I mean I mean I know Madison is you know we're always at the top four music scene

in the country you know but but what do you think gets all these people and have the venue

yeah and and and I'll and play it all these places yeah yeah I mean I get that question a lot like

why why isn't it Nashville or Austin or something you know well so I think I think it's a bunch of

things number one we don't necessarily have a robust ecosystem here um and to that normally

provides access for musicians we have a ton of local musicians yeah but not a lot of venues for

them to play at um and there's a lot of competition in the scene to get into the local venue so I

think this provides an opportunity um you know that that also also for entry level performers I also

think that Madison naturally has this very much like grassroots like organizing like backbone

that I think is really important and um that a lot like that's why we have so many hosts and so

many like residential hosts and neighborhoods because people take this on and they're excited about

it and they're the ones that run with it you know we're just here to facilitate yeah I mean I

always tell people that Madison and Madison people walk around completely drunk on local original

music they don't even realize how much is really here yeah um you know give the organizer some who

else works with you on on make music that's a great question so uh uh in previous years it was

just me um so it's yeah so it's been there the only staff person historically has been just the

director position and then occasionally we'll have like a part-time intern who handles social media

for the first time ever this year I have another staff person a managing director

a marketing director um who is a musician uh and and has participated make music day and has run

a bunch of stuff for us and is now helping out so I have another staff person my name is Emily

Volland yeah and she's great she's she's in a part of a group called Emily and Alex now uh

where do we go to sign up for all this and find out match make find out as a fan where bands are

the whole the whole ball away make music Madison dot org make music Madison dot org well that's

that's pretty simple that's pretty incredible uh Mary Rose thank you so much for coming in to chat

with us tonight about uh make music Madison June 21st to happens all around the city of Madison

and uh let's make sure to schedule you back in and get some updates um before June 21st so we can

find out you know closer how any venues are happening and what exciting things might be going on

yeah i'd love to be back thanks so much shop local eat local listen local this is maxing radio

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