PUTNEY-Next Stage Arts Summer Bandwagon Series, an area arts offering that evolved during the pandemic, will return this year with some changes.
According to Next Stage Operations and Communications Director Heather Ahrenholz, “we’ve re-imagined this season based on community input and what we’ve observed about how audiences gather and engage.”
And so the nine programs in the 2026 series will feature four multi-bill events engaging audiences for full “afternoons and evenings of music, food, and community connection.”
Next Stage first offered a lineup of outdoor shows during the Covid lockdown in 2020 to bring the community together through outdoor performances while maintaining social distancing. The outdoor concerts returned in 2021 as the Bandwagon Summer Series, offering relief for many from the confines of that time.
The concerts took place in a variety of venues, from Brattleboro to Putney and, now, to Bellows Falls. The signature of the series was and still is a mobile tiny house — a bandwagon, if you will, designed by Putney architect Chip Greenberg — which provides a backdrop for the performers.
An ‘absolute necessity’
In recent years, leadership at Next Stage, which produces a full lineup of a wide range of arts events year round, has studied trends and community feedback.
Natalie Dreyer, who took over as Next Stage’s executive director last year, says “one of the first things that I got to do when I [took the] job was attend a Bandwagon show” and describes being “excited by that energy.”
“Having finally survived the Vermont winter, I now understand the joy of the Bandwagon on a whole new level,” Dreyer says. “It’s the absolute necessity of really gathering in fields and dancing together and enjoying music and being in community.”
Since then, Dreyer, with an inevitably fresh perspective, and the Next Stage staff and board, “have assessed how both the community and Next Stage have changed.”
“We’re trying to figure out what works really well for us,” says Dreyer, who came to Putney with a background in educational theater.
“When Next Stage first started Bandwagon, it was the only game in town. It was the only outdoor performance space during Covid, and it was such a special place,” she says.
Post-Covid, though, “it’s a different world.”
“We noticed that one of our highest attended performances last summer was the Celtic and Québécois Festival at Scott Farm, over Labor Day weekend,” Dreyer says, noting that more than 400 attended.
With what the team at Next Stage —Dreyer, Ahrenholz, and Programming and Production Director Barry Stockwell — call a winning combination of venue and performers, “it was a wonderful day. So we got to talking about what made that so special and how we could build off of that [event’s] energy,” Dreyer recalls.
Thus emerged the notion of mini-festivals — having three or more artists or groups on a bill — and a theme for each.
When a couple of community members suggested that it would “be really awesome if the middle schoolers got to play the opening act for a Bandwagon concert,” the first mini-fest, “Fun Fest for Kids and Kids at Heart,” took root, Dreyer says.
The event on Saturday, June 13, will feature Putney Central Middle School Modern and Jazz Bands and Brattleboro’s DiTrani Brothers playing original and traditional tunes drawing influence from Western- and Eastern-European folk music, Roma swing, and early American jazz and ragtime.
“And then I started thinking about what it means to really extend our community to even more people,” says Dreyer, who most recently was director of curriculum and collaborative learning with the New Jersey Performing Arts Center and manager of school partnerships and professional development at Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, Rhode Island.
And then, she thought: “If we’re throwing this big party where all these kids and families are going to be here,” why not invite the many organizations who work with children and families during the summer “to come out and talk about the programming they do, and do an activity with young people?”
Thus, more than 10 community organizations will be “tabling or bringing an activity to our fun fest for that first kickoff performance,” Dreyer says. New England Center for Circus Arts (NECCA) of Brattleboro will be on site with its rig so attendees can experience flying, and Sandglass Theater in Putney will offer a puppet program at intermission.
Memorable mini-festivals
What else could comprise a mini-festival?
After a few rounds of multi-bill shows at Scott Farm in Dummerston in 2021 and 2023, as well as last year, Stockwell says, “we started thinking, ‘Let’s do that more.’”
The benefits of bringing musicians together, he adds, are many: Often, common ground emerges and sometimes the musicians already know each other and may join in on each other’s tunes now and then during the course of the three-to-four-hour event.
“And it really makes the show memorable,” Stockwell says.
The other mini-festivals this year will include a Folk, Roots, and Americana Music Festival with The Mammals, Michael Veitch Band, and Doozy Jane at Robertson Paper Company Field in Bellows Falls (Saturday, July 18); a Homegrown Festival with The Gaslight Tinkers, NECCA, and Zara Bodé’s Little Big Band at West River Park in Brattleboro (Sunday, Aug. 30); and the Celtic and Québécois Music Festival with Poor Man’s Gambit, Cantrip, and Cécilia at Scott Farm (Monday, Sept. 7).
Food vendors will be on site and peripheral activities offered. Among them, area artist Amber Paris “will have a station at each of these mini-fests where community members can help create an art piece that will then be installed in our community room in the fall as a sort of celebration of Next Stage’s vision and values,” Dreyer says.
“It’s just a bigger party,” Stockwell adds. With five single-act two-hour concerts as well, he calls the series “a nice mix” of summer offerings.
Dreyer adds that the shift amounts to “reinvesting in really driving energy and audience to these bigger events. And, I think, we’re producing and presenting as many, if not more, artists” as in past Bandwagon seasons.
Arts in the community
For Stockwell, who has been at Next Stage Arts since its inception in 2011, the series reflects a commitment to bring the community into the arts and arts into the community.
“On a personal level, you know, this is my hometown,” he says. “I grew up here, and it’s so satisfying to bring the arts to Putney, Brattleboro, and the whole area.”
Having lived across the street from what was once Windham College and is now Landmark College, Stockwell, a musician in his own right, recalls hearing concerts there and even playing some.
“Actually, my band would open for national acts and plays and sports events,” he says.
In addition to the mini-festivals, the Bandwagon Summer 2026 lineup includes these single-act concerts:
• Friday, June 26: Reverend Vince Anderson & The Love Choir (dirty gospel) at Putney Inn Field (57 Putney Landing Rd., Putney).
• Sunday, July 5: Las Guaracheras (salsa and Latin jazz) at Next Stage Arts (15 Kimball Hill, Putney).
• Saturday, Aug. 1: Bread & Puppet (puppeteers and sourdough bakers from Glover) at Retreat Farm (45 Farmhouse Square off Route 30, Brattleboro).
• Friday, Aug. 14: Bywater Call (seven-piece Southern soul and roots rock band from Toronto) at Putney Inn Field.
• Saturday, Sept. 26: Kotoko Brass (called “propulsive, infectious party music” by The Boston Globe) at Putney Inn Field.
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For ticket information, visit nextstagearts.org/bandwagon-summer-series#/events. Kids under 12 can attend the outdoor concerts for free.
Ahrenholz, who grew up in the area, too, and has been with Next Stage Arts since 2021, adds that Next Stage donates Bandwagon passes to libraries across Windham County. Season passes are also available.
This Arts item by Annie Landenberger was written for The Commons.