[birds chirping] – Angela Fitzgerald: For most any traveler, reaching the Driftless Music Gardens will come at the end of a long trip.
– Crickett Lochner: C’mon down!
You made it!
– Man: I made it!
Where are you driving in from?
You are literally being taken to the middle of nowhere, and then beyond.
[chuckles] – He drove, like, eight hours.
– After that long journey, chances are Crickett Lochner will be there with a warm welcome.
– Crickett Lochner: Hello!
We love sharing this space with people that appreciate it.
You made it!
Yeah!
– Thousands make it each year to set up tents and camp out, stroll the grounds, and listen to live music at one of the summer festivals held at the gardens.
– Crickett: Peace, love, music, community.
Why not enjoy music in the middle of nowhere and good weather?
– Crickett’s greetings are meant to make guests feel at home.
– JLA, hurry up, hurry up!
– Man: Sorry!
– What’s up, buddy?
Whoo!
– Because it’s Crickett’s home that she’s welcoming people to.
The music gardens occupy the farm where she grew up, land that’s been in her family since the 1850s.
She lives in her childhood home where her father also grew up.
“This will take it on to the sixth generation now, with Crickett.”
Crickett’s not alone on the farm.
Husband Tim might like it there even more than his wife.
– Tim Lochner: I couldn’t be prouder to have married into this family.
I tell people all the time that I married into the hippie dream out here.
I’m growing vegetables, I’m throwing music, I’m hanging out with my father-in-law who looks just like Willie Nelson.
[Crickett’s dad chuckles] – Just got out of the field.
Crickett: My husband, he’s in a band.
[singing] – Tim’s group, the People Brothers Band, had played and put on music festivals.
That experience opened the couple’s eyes to the family farm’s potential.
– Tim: When we moved out here, we kind of started dreaming of having music over in this nook or music over in that nook, hence the Driftless Music Gardens.
– Driftless for the region’s topography.
– Crickett: The glaciers never came through to readjust the landscape.
– And Driftless for the vibe the land inspires.
– Crickett: And that’s the same with here.
It just flows.
The Driftless.
It just… you flow.
[cheers and applause] – Angela: The number of music lovers flowing to the gardens has grown steadily since 2016.
But this season marks a new stage for the venture.
Literally, a new stage to keep the shows going on.
– Crickett: Every ounce of energy that we had went into building that stage.
Love, sweat, and tears.
– Angela: But they didn’t do it alone.
The community they’d built, built it with them.
– Tim: Once we got the project rolling, we had to start making a lot of phone calls and calling in a lot of favors and have friends over.
It’s kind of like an old-fashioned barn raising.
– Crickett: I think at one time we had 50 people out here just, like, hammering away.
– Angela: Even the farmland offered up its own contribution.
The inside of the stage that you see is the pine from the land.
And so, it is a huge proud moment and love that we share with the land.
All my team members that shared a hand in building the stage, the first show that we all saw, it just brought tears of joy.
– Angela: It’s a new landmark on a landscape that’s been home to six generations of Crickett’s family.
But for all that’s changed, the life they live today may not be so different.
– Tim: We’re out here farming music now instead of growing corn or raising cows.
There’s some striking similarities to what we do: is everything’s dependent on the weather, and if it’s a great weekend, we could have a good crop.
If it’s going to rain all weekend, we’re in trouble.
So, no different than a lot of my neighbors.
– But… what they grow here now feeds the soul.
– Crickett: “Why did I come back here?”
Because it’s where my bliss is, where I feel whole.
It calms me, balances me, gets me rooted.
To be able to offer that to so many others is a huge gift.
[live music]