For Sean McVeigh, it was Depeche Mode. The Beastie Boys gave Steve Palmer a musical jolt.
Those were the first concerts the two locals attended nearly two decades ago. On Saturday, the guys will be unveiling their first Bothell Music Festival, featuring six blues bands, from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. at Country Village. On the docket are Chester Dennis Jones, Gin Creek, Background Noise Band, The Singles Band, Miles Tones and Crown Row.
Palmer, 37, manages Carolina Smoke BBQ in the village and often brings in bands to play there. He said that customers enjoy the musical atmosphere to go along with their eats, and he and McVeigh decided to take things a step further.
“It’s a little idea — we started messin’ with it and got it going,” said Palmer, noting that they came up with the idea more than a year ago and put the festival into motion about six months ago. “There’s a field back there, we talked to the Village about it and they really like the idea because it brings a lot of people in.”
Added McVeigh, 41, who is a neighbor of Carolina Smoke BBQ owner Dave Hayward and does some Web-site work for his business: “We started talking to people, (and thought) ‘Why doesn’t Bothell have more of these?’ The first one’s the hardest one to get off the ground and understand all the ins and outs.”
McVeigh said that advance-ticket sales through Brown Paper Bag Tickets are going well, and the duo hopes its festival can make some noise despite Bumbershoot and other events happening over Labor Day weekend.
“Day after day, it’s starting to grow and grow,” McVeigh said last week. “We’re hoping for 500-700… that would blow it out for the first try.”
Palmer and McVeigh started Sublime Productions to put on the event and have hired Medley Productions to supply the 16-foot-by-20-foot stage and all the sound equipment and two mixing guys for the event. There will also be food and a beer garden on site; one of the “ins and outs” in running the beer garden was that the guys had to secure a license through the nonprofit Northshore Schools Foundation.
“If the weather’s nice, nothing is better than blues, beer and barbecue … the three Bs,” said McVeigh, adding that the event is family friendly and will feature security and ID-checkers for the beer garden. “Bothell is growing so much and we really want to try to start encouraging Bothell-based things to happen — bring people to Bothell, kind of get them jazzed about it.”
Or “bluesed” about it, in this case.
Palmer noted that both blues and classic-rock bands were scheduled for the festival early on, but the former style will be on tap this Saturday. He’s a big Buddy Guy fan and has seen the bluesman play five times.
“He puts on a really good show and he’s like 72 or something like that… and he just rocks it. That really got me into the blues,” said Palmer, who’s also partial to the sounds of Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jimi Hendrix — “all that good stuff.”
• For ticket information, visit www.bothellmusicfestival.com.
