The Norman Music Festival has a long history of growth, evolving from a house party with friends to an annual Main Street event thousands travel to Norman for.
The festival began when Quentin Bomgardner hosted a party, the “Blue Fish Companion,” where he and about 50 of his friends socialized and listened to music.
The party recurred a few months later and again a few months after the second. As word spread about the social event, Bomgardner realized that too many people requested to attend for everyone to comfortably fit in his home.
Bomgardner, along with others, began hosting “Blue Fish Companion” annually in different venues across Norman and invited bands and hundreds of people for a night of socializing and live music.
When the Norman Arts Council began brainstorming an annual music festival, they contacted Bomgardner to help kick off the show.
The first Norman Music Festival took place April 26, 2008, after months of preparation that included asking the city and businesses for permission to rope off Main Street, finding artists willing to perform, preparing security measures, and asking for donations to ensure the festival was free of charge. The one-day festival occupied one block with two stages and featured 17 artists.
“The first (festival) exceeded all our expectations,” Bomgardner said. “We had about 13,000 people show up, and Norman hadn’t had anything like this before.”
From that moment on, the Norman Music Festival had a name — one that was known by thousands.
Shari Jackson was an attendee at the first Norman Music Festival, and through annually watching it grow, she rose to her current position of executive director. Jackson said Norman’s annual event is different from others.
“The Norman Music Festival is unique because it’s an all genres festival and that’s the thing I love about it,” Jackson said. “This is not a heavy metal festival, a punk rock festival or a hip-hop festival. This is a festival for all people who enjoy music, and it attracts everybody.”
Word spread fast about the Norman Music Festival, and the following year, approximately 10,000 more attendees packed the Main Street block.
The second stage expanded in 2009, and the board began considering a large-scale change due to the number of festivalgoers.
In 2010 the festival expanded to a two-day event that included arts and crafts and featured stages in various Main Street businesses. Bands were organized by popularity, with more well-known acts performing on outdoor stages and local bands performing in businesses indoors, creating different environments for attendees.
Over the two days, nearly 40,000 guests were in attendance.
The Norman Music Festival’s growth was steady, catching not only the attention of music lovers and families, but also artists who were looking to perform.
“Having a great first start (was responsible for the growth),” Bomgardner said. “Word of mouth would get bigger each year. Somewhere around year three, more people were interested in performing, so I created the open call for bands.”
The festival’s open call provided a free online application for artists to apply to play in the festival. The main requirement for the application is to have online streamable music.
“Once we started the applications, it really took off,” Bomgardner said. “I think the first year we must have had 250 or 300 people apply, and at that point, we were trying to get up to about 60 bands. By about year six, we had probably 600 of 700 bands applying for the open call.”
Bomgardner said that the board experiments with ways to select the artists who will perform, reaching out to local studio and venue owners to hear differing opinions.
The Norman Music Festival has featured notable rising artists, such as Wet in 2022, Omar Apollo in 2019, Japanese Breakfast in 2018, Portugal. The Man in 2012 and The Walkmen in 2011.
In 2011, a third day was added, and the Norman Music Alliance was founded to organize the festival. The nonprofit group was established with the same vision as the Norman Music Festival — to keep live music free and accessible.
“Most festivals that we know about with lineups this big and events over three days, you’re paying a few hundred dollars to attend,” Jackson said. “With the lineups that we’ve got, we’re super proud of what we’ve been able to put together for free for our community.”
Jackson said that the Norman Music Festival requires $250,000 of funding annually and is, and always has been, free for attendees.
“People look at big things and assume they’ve got big money, when really, you’ve got big dreamers with small pockets,” Jackson said. “We have really generous partners that are the bedrock of our funding, and we know we can start with that.”
The Norman Music Festival fiscal year begins July 1 — a change that was made recently. Between the first workday and the festival, volunteers run the planning process.
From designing placements of fencing, portable toilets, stages and more to sound directors preparing performances to communicating with City of Norman departments, Norman Music Festival volunteers juggle the festival’s responsibilities alongside their full-time jobs.
“Ryan LaCroix at KOSU coined the term ‘the little festival that could,’ and now I think after last year, we officially get to call ourselves ‘the big festival that will,’” Jackson said. “We just think we can, so we just do it. We just start making plans and figure it out.”
This year’s Norman Music Festival will occupy four blocks, feature four outdoor stages, 11 indoor stages and will host over 100 artists. The Norman Music Alliance estimates that 100,000 guests will attend this year’s festival over its three days, believing that at least 25,000 people will be in attendance at any given time.
Bomgardner’s house party developed into a three-day gathering of thousands that generates nearly $4 million into the Norman community.
The Norman Music Festival will kick off this Thursday at 6 p.m. and finish Saturday night. With headliners like Black Belt Eagle Scout, billy woods, Wine Lips, illuminati hotties, Cola and music of every genre, Jackson said the festival “is really a part of Norman now.”
This story was edited by Emma Blakley and Silas Bales. Alexandra Powell-Lorentzatos and Nikkie Aisha copy edited this story.
