Festival attracts Diverse Local Volunteers

Kimberly Holzer-Lane has been coming back to the Carrboro Music Festival for six years — half as long as the festival’s been around.

As the emcee of the children’s stage, Holzer-Lane spent the day introducing acts and entertaining audiences.

It’s one of her many volunteer jobs, but it’s the one that sticks out in her mind.

“The restaurants are packed. The kids are out, the families are out. I think it brings the community together again, which you don’t see very much,” Holzer-Lane said.

She was one of dozens of volunteers at the 12th annual festival — from stage hands and supply runners to stand vendors and train attendants. The festival brought more than 100 bands and thousands of attendees.

Duke University sophomores Addie Weingarden and Linsday Thompson were train attendants.

“We were called train attendants on the e-mail, so our preconceived notion was pretty much, what? We thought we’d get to drive the train,” Thompson said.

Instead, they found themselves monitoring people getting on and off a biodiesel tram and guarding strollers.

Even so, the two said they enjoyed being at the crossroads of renaissance music and rock.

Meg McGurk, assistant director of the Downtown Partnership and a festival committee member, noted the many ways in which the town benefits from the festival.

“I know for businesses it brings a lot of people downtown who may see a show in a venue they’ve never been in before,” she said. “It exposes people to music they may never have heard otherwise.”

But for a volunteer, the festival means something else entirely.

Laurie Janzen is an East Chapel Hill High School junior and longtime fan of the festival.

She said she and her friends’ reasons for volunteering were two-fold.

“We’ve all been coming here since we were in high school,” Janzen said.

“We need service hours, so we figured we might as well combine two interests.”

As stagehands, Janzen and her friends assisted bands as they unloaded instruments and arranged stage equipment.

The UNC chapter of Alpha Phi Omega, a service-learning fraternity on campus, sent a group of stagehands to the festival as well.

For chapter member Nancy Torres, a first-time “roadie,” volunteering is second-nature.

“Well, I guess it’s just a chance to also hear some of the local music,” she said. “I haven’t really checked out Carrboro yet, and it sounded really cool with its variety of different music.”

Despite long hours of draining work because the festival runs well into the evening, the volunteers stay positive about their roles and about the festival as a whole.

Holzer-Lane said it’s because it’s a visible volunteer opportunity, for which she is thanked and her face is seen.

Self-proclaimed stage-czar emcee Joel Kraeuter described himself as charmed by this year’s festival.

“I think the character of the festival, which changes undramatically from year to year, always sort of lends to the town,” he said.

But there is always room for improvement.

“I’d try to book Led Zeppelin, baby.”


Contact the City Editor  at citydesk@unc.edu.