Today we’d like to introduce you to Anthony Prince.
Anthony, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
Seeds of Sound Music and Arts Festival was founded in 2017 by myself, Anthony Prince, and Jennifer ‘Uncle Jenny’ Edouard. On March 18th, 2017, ATL-based rock band, The Night Shift., had a show at Buffington’s in Milledgeville.
Too exhausted to drive back to Atlanta, we decided to stay at an Air-BnB in a town called Sparta. It was there that Jennifer and I began the journey with the Oasis Family Tribe, and that year on September 26-28th, the seed was planted. Through intangible collaborative experiences, the team has grown to able to produce a cathartic, musically diverse, grassroots camping festival at Oasis Family Farm.
I’m a long time musician, once a music educator, and an avid enthusiast of supporting local communities through art. Jennifer is an expert music festival goer who has amassed a regional amount of awesome friends of all walks of life. We met in 2016 at a free White Denim show at Variety Playhouse, and we kicked off a badass friendship.
Accumulatively, Jenny and I have amassed a ridiculous amount of experience attending music festivals all over the country and we felt the calling to pursue this passion to re-create everything we’ve ever loved. What better place to start the sprouting of a festival than in our own community we thought.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
What’s a good story without a good struggle to overcome. Fortunately, it was a good ratio of fun to stress haha.
People love music festivals, and it’s easy to say, “we’re gonna do this,” but there are so many angles to putting something like this on, even on a small scale initially catering to 100-200 people. We twiddled our thumbs a little nervously wondering the biggest question, “where do we start?” The process was serendipitous from top to bottom.
First and foremost, we needed a location. Martha Harris, owner of Mockingbird Hill Farm in Sparta, GA was the Air BnB host for Jennifer and my band, The Night Shift. after having gigged in Milledgeville the night before. We sat in rocking-chairs after playing a brunch set for her and her family as our way of saying thanks, in awe of how beautiful the land was and started talking about having a music festival.
She ended up introducing us to the beautiful family of the Oasis Family Farm, and they so wonderfully shared the same vision as Jennifer and I and graciously assisted us by offering up their land for the first year, and again for this year. We needed bands, and fortunately, I’ve been playing around GA’s music scene for plenty of years and was able to book 35 artists for our first year. All locally sourced from Atlanta, Athens, Savannah, Milledgeville, Macon, and more. It was epic.
We needed pro audio engineers and awesome production value. I extended a request for help from our good friends Tomas Uribe and Joshua Seckman, whom together, assembled THE team we needed to manage and operate every show and keep up a tight ship. I don’t think that most people understand how difficult it is to keep a festival running on time, and this crew kept it down pat, it was amazing.
Here’s a big struggle we overcame, we needed a stage. Fortunately enough, the Oasis Family had an old porch basically in 5 different pieces, and the right tools to move it into position. Pardon my french, that shit was heavy, and I’ve never sweat so much in my life than in the hours we spent assembling something we weren’t even sure was going to work. Lo and behold, it worked out great and that platform we created still stands on the farm today as a solid reminder of how much it took to get year 1 cleared.
We planned for a 2nd stage and were incredibly riddled as to how we were going to create a 2nd space for shows to happen. The man, the wonder, the legend, Ryan Brown, the founder of Friendship Music Festival, loaned us a good bit of gear to help create the magic. A tent massive enough to be a stage was included in that. Great volunteers are hard to come by, but a solid dozen of our dearest friends came in the most clutch.
There were so many bumps on this road that needed smoothing out, that we could not have done without our amazing network of friends. Together we paved the way for a smoother year 2.
Please tell us about Seeds of Sound Music and Arts Festival.
We bring the light, we enrich our community, in fact, we introduce the community to each other. Not very many people are doing what we’re doing on the ground level. When people hear that we operate a “music festival” they tend to think, “oh like Bonnaroo and Coachella?” and we say “yeah, close, but a lot more at home.”
Those festivals are awesome and fun, but our goal here is to show off what’s right around the corner and always accessible in GA’s arts scene. There’s so much to love in the local scene, but I find that it’s very easy to get lost, and difficult to find a group of people we individually can identify with.
We’ve gotta give a shout out to our sister festivals who inspire us all the way sharing the same vision of unity, Friendship, Sigh in July, and Alphapalooza festivals, check them out.
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
Got me here….. It was either when I got my first pet, a cat named Chubby, or when I was given my first music playing device, a Hit Clips. I didn’t have many clips, but I was proud to know all the lyrics of “Who Let the Dogs Out.”
Pricing:
- $50 gets you a 3-day all-inclusive ticket to the festival
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.seedsofsoundmusicfestival.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sosmafest/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sosmafest/
Image Credit:
Julie Hutchins @ Tipping Point Designs and Elena Best
Getting in touch: VoyageATL is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
