GREENVILLE — A phone-free music festival is set to arrive in Greenville this summer after the Greenville Planning Board approved the Over Yondr Festival to take place June 24-26 in the town.
At a special planning board meeting on April 20, the council gave the go-ahead to the festival, which will be located on private farmland at 5143 NY-Route 81 in Greenville.
To keep festivalgoers engrossed in the music, cell phone use will not be allowed at the three-day camping festival. The Yondr company, which is throwing the music festival, produces Yondr pouches — soft bags that lock up concert attendees’ cell phones during events. Fans hold onto the pouches during the concert but cannot get it unlocked until after the event or unless they leave the stage area and head to a designated phone unlocking space.
Musicians and comedians including Jack White and Dave Chappelle have mandated the use of Yondr pouches on recent tours and the company has extrapolated the concert to an entire three-day music festival.
Attendance at the Over Yondr Festival will be capped at 400 people, with festival gates set to open at 2:00 p.m. on June 24 and close at 10:00 a.m. on June 27.
The festival will feature 13 bands, with music running from 5 p.m. to 10:45 p.m. all three days.
The disco-rock group !!!, New Jersey rapper Topaz Jones, Brooklyn act Super Yamba Band and Pennsylvania punk band Sheer Mag will be among the performers at the festival.
Greenville Planning Board Chairman Don Teator said the board was impressed with the festival organizer’s pitch.
“Most of our concerns were addressed and they were very thorough,” Teator said Wednesday. “We were particularly interested in noise, safety of the clientele, electrical, water, any environmental extremities or hazards. All of the things that a planning board should be looking at to make sure that any community members or anybody coming in should be safe there. It’s a good plan, we think. After listening to (festival Director of Operations) Arianna (Katechis) discuss that and then respond to some of our other minor concerns, we were satisfied.”
Teator said the members of the Greenville community who showed up to the special meeting to weigh in on the festivals were supportive of the proposal.
“We also had feedback from the public because it was a public hearing,” he said. “The two people who spoke were either neighbors or relatives and they both spoke warmly in support. We were glad to hear that. The company Over Yondr had made such a thorough presentation with the proper documentation about connecting to rescue squads. At this point we can only wish them Godspeed and good luck and hope it’s a successful affair.”
Promoted by the festival as taking place “only miles away from the original location of the iconic Woodstock Music & Art Fair,” the site of the festival in Greenville is actually located about 100 miles from the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, the home of the original Woodstock festival in 1969.
Tickets for the three-day festival are on sale now for $160, which includes camping at the site for the weekend.
“There is no better phone-free experience than an intimate music festival,” Yondr’s founder and CEO Graham Dugoni said in a statement. “We are excited to bring people together for a weekend of great music in a beautiful setting.”
Teator said there are no additional proposed music events the scale of the Over Yondr Festival in the pipeline in Greenville.
“We do have the Music in the Park summer concert series, but that’s around the town pond and that’s very much a different affair,” he said. “That would not come before the planning board.”
The festival site plan includes room for 200 parking spaces and three food trucks. The site’s campgrounds include accommodations for 256 campsites. To prepare the festival site for the start of the event in June, staff will arrive at the Greenville farmland the first week of May to turn on all utilities in advance of the festival and to make needed repairs to the facilities.