Riverside, WY is far from a typical location for a music festival.
If you make a summertime trip through the Snowy Range Mountains in Southeastern Wyoming, you might find your way onto Highway 230 and travel through the sleepy town of Riverside, nestled between the Sierra Madres and Medicine Bow ranges.
With a meager population of 52, Riverside is hardly the beaten path.
But this tiny Wyoming town changes for one weekend a year. The 12th annual WHAT Festival will take over Riverside tomorrow and Saturday. The Wyoming-based music festival brings in dozens of bands and hundreds of fans each year.
“Our motto is that WHAT Fest is ‘what you make if it,’” Adam Bender, WHAT Festival’s Team Leader, said.
The festival started in 2003 near Cody and has grown considerably over the years. In previous years the festival attracted 1,500 to 2,000 people. More bands join the event each year, and this year’s lineup boasts over 35 acts, including The Jalan Crossland Band, The Patti Fiasco, Redbush, J Shogren and the Shanghai’d, The Lonesome Heroes, Screen Door Porch, Bondurant and more.
J.D. Korpitz of the band Redbush, who are four-year veterans of WHAT Fest, said the size of the festival is what sets it apart from most shows in Wyoming.
“We usually don’t play in front of that many people,” Korpitz said. “It’s by far and away one of the main shows that we look forward to every year.”
The size of the festival allows for a variety of styles and genres, including hip-hop, folk, punk and country. This year’s festival will feature bands from Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Texas. While there will be vendors that serve alcohol, the event is for all ages.
“[We try] providing bands in Wyoming that always don’t get a big platform, in a family friendly environment,” Bender said.
Bender said the goal of the event is to provide a really fun and unique Wyoming music festival.
“It’s a destination for people to go camp and see good music,” he said. “It’s for people to basically just have a fun time.”
Check out the WHAT Festival this weekend July 24-25 at the Bear Tap Café & Bar and Riverside Garage and Cabins in Riverside, WY. For more information, check out whatfest.com
