“I don’t know if it’s going to work, but I know that there’s a need,” says founder Ben Anderson of his new music event, Park City Song Summit.
Returning September 7th-9th for its second year in the serene mountain town of Park City, Utah (also home to the Sundance Film Festival), the Song Summit is filling a massive hole in the festival landscape. (Enter to win tickets here, or get 20% off all ticketed events by using the code SUMMIT here.) The event isn’t just about the unique lineup featuring Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros, Grandmaster Flash, Brittney Spencer, Matisyahu, Anders Osborne, Devon Gilfillian, and more, but the artists themselves: Anyone with an eye on or hand in the music industry is more aware than ever of how the constant motion can impact the well-being of these professionals. Being on the road for a living requires leaving family and home for weeks on end, rarely taking breaks between taking stages, often putting the show ahead of all else.
And that goes beyond the performers; lighting techs, roadies, tour managers are all people — real, human people — who come to their jobs carrying all the baggage of a person in 2023. Park City Song Summit acknowledges this oft neglected reality by giving professionals a space to not just do their jobs, but take a beat to recenter, engage in valuable conversations, and cross the barrier between stage and audience with wellness activities and intimate panel discussions. The idea is that by taking care of these hardworking humans, we actually take care of the very music we love.
“If we as promoters and producers don’t start to do something that sees [artists] as whole humans, and that the entire ecosystem of live music touring from the bus driver to the guitar tech to the families that are back at home that are left when these artists go on the road [are whole humans], if we don’t start taking better care of them, more and more of them are either going to end up in the ground, not playing music, or certainly at a bare minimum, not bringing their best and most beautiful art form forward,” says Anderson.
Despite his humble caution, if last year’s inaugural incarnation is any indication, PCSS is indeed working.
“What struck me about last year at Park City was the intention to center on community,” says blues musician and poet Adia Victoria, one of a handful of 2022 attendees returning this year for more panels — called labs at PCSS — and performances. “It was more collaborative, it was more inclusive. It was an opportunity over the few days that we were there to share ideas, to have feedback, to be in communication with listeners.”
The Song Summit is not an arrive-play-leave event; artists and their teams are invited to spend the entire time on site, taking part in labs one day, performing the next, and hiking the mountains or taking sound baths in between it all. Victoria recalls how speaking about her music is informed by the history of blues in front of people she would later see walking through the lodge in her PJs or in the crowd at her set gave a sense of “accountability… an ease… a sense of humor” to her performance.
