When people think of music festivals, they probably don’t imagine an event surrounded by cornfields in a town with a population of 600. But since 2015, a small town about 30 minutes outside of Des Moines has been the home of the Hinterland Music Festival.
The event normally brings in around 25,000 people a day to the town of Saint Charles, a number that is greater than the population of its home county as a whole.
This year’s festival will be held from August 1-3, with headlining acts including Tyler, The Creator, Kacey Musgraves and Lana Del Rey.
“We definitely stepped up… some of our headliner stuff this year with Lana and Tyler,” Sam Summers, Hinterland founder and Iowa State alumnus, said. “[We’ll] also be at a new site… on the festival grounds that, you know, we’ve had it on, but the main stage is moving slightly.”
Summers has a background in the music industry, having started his first music production company while still a student at Iowa State. In 2012, he opened Wooly’s, a Des Moines bar and music venue known for its “genre-diverse acts,” according to its website.
Around that time, Summers also began to envision what a large-scale music festival in Iowa could look like.
“I think it was like 2012 where it felt like we could maybe start putting some of these bands together and make, like a bigger event, like… a two-day festival,” Summers said. “We had landed on a site location which was downtown Des Moines at Waterworks Park… That’s how we kind of landed on our name of the festival. It basically describes … a rural setting … within an urban area … And so that was our first location.”
However, Hinterland was never actually hosted at this location in Des Moines, due to a nearby river flooding the week of the festival. Because of this, Summers moved the festival to a secondary location in Saint Charles.
“Obviously, it went really well for us down there,” Summers said. “Where [we were like] let’s keep it there for the next 10 years.”
In addition to this year being Hinterland’s tenth year, the festival organizers are also making changes and improvements following complaints regarding last year’s festival.
“It was super hot and… we had started rolling out some new [organization] structure,” Summers said. “You know, you have a year where you don’t deliver things in the best way. And I think last year was one of them.”
According to the Des Moines Register, some of the attendees’ complaints included water shortages, overcrowding and slow-moving lines to get in and out of the festival.
“[For this year], we thought a lot about how, like, people move around a festival in areas that needed more space,” Summers said. “I think one of the areas that we felt was lacking was [the] concourse area… where people could kind of escape from the concert and go chill and relax and so, you know, [we] added a lot [to] that … Our footprint is over doubled what it’s been in previous years. [I’m] excited to kind of see how people react when they see this space this year.”
In addition to moving the festival to a larger space, some other improvements for this year include more water bottle refill stations, misting fans at the entry gates, more tents for shade and an improved shuttle program for attendees to get to and from the festival grounds and the Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines.
“I hope you can at least see that we are making changes to, you know, acknowledge where maybe… we fell short last year,” Summers said. “And while you know, we may not win you back this year, I hope you can kind of pay close attention to see how things went and know that… we’re absolutely committed to making it a better festival every year.”
Tickets to Hinterland can be purchased on their website, with a three-day admission pass starting at $330.
