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Lorde performing on day two of Hinterland, photo by Payton Butler<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Hinterland Music Festival just wrapped up its eleventh year in St. Charles, Iowa, bigger and better than ever before. Festival founder Sam Summers generously sat down with us for an interview to share how he built one of the Midwest\u2019s biggest summer music festivals.<\/p>\n When it started back in 2015, the independent festival was firmly rooted in its more country, Americana sound, but it\u2019s since exploded in variety, increasingly featuring genres like indie rock, and even electronic and hyperpop. Each lineup is filled with some seriously big names. Past highlights include Willie Nelson, Tyler Childers, Chappell Roan, Lana Del Rey, and Tyler, the Creator. This year was no exception. Headliners Katseye, Lorde, Mumford & Sons, and Kali Uchis drew in audiences, but newer sensations like Geese and Ninajirachi were undoubtedly eagerly anticipated as well.<\/p>\n Sam Summers is the man behind the music, an Iowa native who worked his way from booking DIY and local shows to founding First Fleet Concerts in 2005 while still a student at Iowa State University. He then began opening his own venues, purchasing Wooly\u2019s, the Val Air Ballroom, and the Up-Down Arcade Bars.<\/p>\n In its first year, Hinterland was meant to be held in the Des Moines Water Works Park, but that venue flooded the week of the festival. \u201cIn 500 years it hadn’t flooded there in August. And we chose the year that it did,\u201d said Summers. Three days before the bands were supposed to hit the stage, the whole event had to be picked up and moved to St. Charles, Iowa, where it’s been held ever since.<\/p>\n While this was a disaster for the festival at the time, it helped establish Hinterland\u2019s ability to adapt and pivot. \u201cThat’s where we kind of built this whole transparency with the fan, you know, let them know what’s going on. We set up a Reddit AMA, Facebook live, and then I just had my entire team sit in a room, just responding and answering questions and keeping people in the loop\u201d said Summers. They\u2019ve continued this guest-centric approach with policies like its 90 Degree Guarantee, which allows guests to return their tickets for a full refund if the weather gets above 90 degrees.<\/p>\n \u201cYou get what it is, rain or shine, you know? And it was important to build that kind of goodwill with the fan. I want people on site that want to be on site, so I want to give the opportunity to folks,\u201d said Summers.<\/p>\n The Hinterland festival experience continues to grow. The grounds have been expanded by about 130 acres this year, now including three miles of trail systems, a permanent stage, and expanded camping grounds. The festival was also back to being a full four days for the first time since 2022. Summers has kept evolving and innovating upon Hinterland each year, using other festivals to help hone the fan experience.<\/p>\n \u201cI have continued to visit festivals. Coachella [and] Austin City Limits [are] two of what the fan would say are some of the pinnacle festivals that do it really well. When we started doing the festival, we didn’t have a lot of outside influence. I was treating it as a concert. It’s a lot more than just a concert. Being able to go and kind of see their best practices and borrowing some of those things without completely emulating what they do \u2013 a company like C3 or Golden Voice has been doing this for so long. There’s certain things that work best, right? I took a lot of notes on how they cool their fans. ACL has these misters right in front of a stage that blow at the front people, [so we] borrowed that. With Coachella, the big takeaway was keeping a lot of the festival staff on the outside of the festival and allowing the inside to be the fan experience, so not driving vehicles through the festival grounds and instead using [a] ring road that’s behind the fence, the perimeter of the festival grounds to do all of that work. Some of those things have really paid dividends for us. They really improved the experience for the fan,\u201d said Summers.<\/p>\n Planning an event at this scale is a huge undertaking. From event organization and site planning to actually booking artists, every step of the process takes an immense amount of time and consideration. A lot has changed since the festival first started. Luckily, the incredible growth that Hinterland has been experiencing these past few years has really aided their ability to get great talent on their stage.<\/p>\n Summers expanded, \u201cWell, there’s always the artists that we missed this year, right? So we have this spreadsheet I just carry over year to year. The amount of submissions that we have for the festival outnumber the amount of slots we have, which is a good problem to have. That wasn’t the case at the beginning. We were chasing everything down. But now, as I look at the options for next year, I’ve pretty much decided on a lot of the things I’ll be doing, and we’ve made offers for headliners and some of the penultimate slots down lineup. I start pretty early on the booking. We started in February this year with our first headline offer for next year. But we do try to save some slots. I’ll give an example this year, Zara Larsson popped up in October as an opportunity to book. This is kind of before [she] really popped. And we just didn’t have a slot. That’s the kind of stuff I try to save slots for later. So I’ll continue booking throughout this fall, because there’s surely going to be cool things that pop up that we want to make sure we include [in] the festival.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI think about bands less about what they sound like and more about the folks that are going to see them. When I’m curating, I try to keep a good balance of the type of fan we have on site. You know, obviously, we are younger this year, but we’ve made connections on different days that those folks will like. My North Star is booking bands that I like, that I think would sound good outdoors. But secondary, I look at what the line is for the fan. Is a fan that likes Lorde also going to like Geese? And I think the answer is yes most of the time. It\u2019s fun to see different types of people come and really take it back to that human element where we’re all there to have a good time to listen to music \u2013 and that people that are different than us also like music. The one thing I don’t do is put artists on there that are going to bring a crowd that is not going to be kind to other people,\u201d said Summers.<\/p>\n \u201cMy music taste has changed a bit. I also have an eight-year-old daughter who has guided some of the bookings, [specifically] Katseye and Audrey Nuna. But it was a fun thing to do this year \u2013 and we got a lot of the hype. Like, Oklou, Frost Children, you know, Ninajirachi.\u201d<\/p>\n Summers even managed to book one of his all time most aspirational artists to the line up in 2025. \u201cEvery single year, it was like, how do I get Lana [Del Rey]? And that’s a really tough one, because she doesn’t play a lot of festivals. There’s no kind of rhyme or reason to what she plays. Last year, we checked that one off with an insane, amazing performance from her,\u201d said Summers. \u201cNow big artists are more than willing to reach out first.\u201d<\/p>\n Summers would\u2019ve loved to book the Grateful Dead, but other dream artists are looking increasingly more possible for future shows.<\/p>\n \u201cWe do have access to these artists now, and nothing seems out of reach,\u201d said Summers. \u201cIt’s interesting, I never thought we would get to the point where someone like the Foo Fighters\u2026or Ed Sheeran, [are] seeking to play our festival. These aren’t ones that maybe make the most sense for our festival, but it’s still wild that we’ve built something that is getting the attention of these major, major stars.\u201d<\/p>\n As Summers sets his sights on artists for upcoming years, fan favorites like Hayley Williams, Slayyyter, Underscores, and Addison Rae are acts he\u2019d love to bring to Hinterland.<\/p>\n \u201cYou know, I think Hayley Williams is one that I’d like to book eventually. [I] really like her songwriting, especially with her solo work that’s come out. And I was always a fan of Paramore growing up,\u201d said Summers.<\/p>\n \u201cI love Addison Ray. I love the campiness of what she’s doing. I’ve seen the show twice. I went to Coachella this year. [She\u2019s] one I would love to get, I don’t know that we ever will. So let’s put that on the list of things I really want to get, on the Lana level. But the issue is she’s not quite headline here yet. [Her act,] it’s so smart. It’s a bit Britney, but it does feel like you’re watching early Britney\u2026So to me, it’s one of my favorite things right now. And then the record is insane. So yeah, that one\u2019s on my list for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n Getting these big artists takes work. Hinterland has carefully curated its good reputation with musicians, leaning into excellent Midwest Hospitality to ensure that they have as great a time playing the show as any fan does attending.<\/p>\n \u201cWe focus a lot on the band’s experience and how they engage backstage. When I’m building a lineup, I’m thinking about which bands are going to be friends with each other, because they’re all on tour, right? They don’t get to see their homies a ton. And then we provide a lot of services backstage from mental health stuff, too, this year\u2026it’s a wellness area back there for the bands. To me, that helps with getting the bands in a good space, they’re always excited by the time they take the stage. And it’s not uncommon for bands to talk about just what they’re feeling at the festival and how much they like it. It definitely feels genuine. When we do this, we try to make sure they have a good time. It’s not just a paycheck \u2013 [that] they’re like, damn, this is the festival, you know?\u201d said Summers.<\/p>\n When it comes down to it, the Hinterland philosophy hinges on quality, creating an experience that is highly considered for everyone involved. Its single stage, natural focus, and the sheer levels of consideration put into every moment of the experience is how it differentiates itself against other festivals. It’s a stark difference from the rush and heavy crowding of Lollapalooza, which shares the same weekend as Hinterland each year.<\/p>\n In regards to Lollapalooza, Summers said, \u201cIt’s definitely a balance, right? Like, it helps us in the ways that the bands are in the areas. So this year, I think we have 16 overlapping artists, which is probably the most we’ve ever had. And so it helps with booking them. I talk to Huston Powell over there who does all of Lollapalooza. Sometimes I’ll take the first swing at something, and then it’ll create an opportunity for him to book, and then vice versa. I’m usually booking a little bit earlier, but it’s important to me to have some different artists. This year, three of our headliners are unique to Hinterland. So the only overlap we have is Lorde for headliners. I don’t want to create the same festival here on the same weekend because we do draw a lot of people from the Chicagoland area.\u201d<\/p>\n The entire Hinterland team is really putting in the work to help evolve the festival. Miniland, Hinterland\u2019s dedicated kids area, is another place where the festival really stands out. Artist and organizer Ramona Muse has been a long time collaborator, illustrating massive coloring sheets of all the bands that are given out for the past seven years. This year also saw a brand new addition to Miniland in the form of the new Slow Rise Bakery, a food-themed squishy shop that was devised by Summers\u2019s daughter. Items were prepared and sold to guests, similar to the Jellycat store experience, and she even came up with the idea for a squishy combo meal that came with free water. Another fan favorite addition was the new blind packs of artist trading cards, a unique merch item attendees were eager to collect.<\/p>\n For Summers, it’s all about finding those little additive details that really serve the overall feel of the show. First Fleet Concerts also booked the Chappell Roan show last October, with Summers going out of his way to ensure all nearby buildings were lit to match the pink pony club theme of the Kansas City shows.<\/p>\n Additionally, as an independent festival that owns the land it operates off of, there\u2019s a lot of room for expansion. Summers noted his plans to use the now-permanent stage to host concerts more frequently throughout the year. Life as a concert promoter isn\u2019t all glamorous, you also have to deal with a lot of\u2026 excrement. He mentioned that the festival is currently exploring a five year plan to get onsite plumbing installed, ending the need for porta potties.<\/p>\n \u201cI think about ways that we can use the land year round. Outside of Hinterland, we’ll probably do some standalone concerts. We just built a new stage this year and so that’ll give us some opportunities to book concerts, [in] other parts of the year\u2026We’re an independent festival, so I have a five-year plan of things we want to do that will be really exciting. Some of that is more fan-facing type ideas, like different camping types. Some of them are things like our own sewer processing here [so we don\u2019t] have to truck all of our sewage offsite to Des Moines. I try to find ways to be more efficient. So exploring a closed sewer system here where we can process and release the water in a clean way into the field. Those are some of the big things behind the curtain that we’re working on,\u201d said Summers.<\/p>\n \u201cMy ultimate goal is to produce Hinterland in another country as a secondary festival, at a different time of the year\u2026There’s no rush for me to do that, but probably my next phase is finding a good location that I can do something similar in that’s across the globe somewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n As someone who has created a career dedicated to music, Summers had some advice for students looking to break into the live entertainment industry.<\/p>\n \u201cJust hanging around, whether that be scanning tickets at the door, go[ing] up to your local club \u2013 they probably got something that you could do. Go to the Bottleneck or the Granada or one of the bigger venues [that] will definitely have jobs available, but just being around it and taking notes\u2026A lot of the people that work for me are people that [are] curious. I could tell that they had an interest in the business and we like to share with folks and help the next generation get going.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI think just sending cold emails to people and just say, \u2018Hey, can I get you coffee\u2019 or that kind of stuff is really the best way because just applying for something doesn’t get a lot of looks. I think, saying, \u2018Hey, can I pick your brain\u2019 is probably the best method.<\/p>\n \u201cThroughout my career, there’s been a lot of folks that want to swing for the fences on their first concert and that never ends well. You want to start small, so DIY shows are really the best way to do that. And it’s so easy. All you need to do is find a band you want to book, message that band, find a DIY space. I’m sure there’s plenty in Lawrence and then a ticketing provider or make your own tickets and sell them and then and just do it that way. That’s how I got in.\u201d<\/p>\n