Media students produce Sycamore Sessions at Nelsonville Music Festival, gain valuable experience learning from Bobcat alumni

Applying to a first job can be stressful, especially for recent graduates entering an industry like media production where experience holds a lot of value. Daunting as it can be, securing a job after graduation will certainly be easier for the 25 Ohio University students who participated in this year’s Nelsonville Music Festival Production program. These dedicated students produced a live event, gained resume-ready experience and will receive engineering and production credit for their work, all before collecting their diplomas.

Every year Nelsonville Music Festival brings both well-known and up-and-coming artists to the rolling hills of southeast Ohio. The three-day event provides concertgoers with a unique live music experience featuring a variety of genres on multiple stages. Nelsonville Music Festival (NMF) is a community-based, independent music festival with all proceeds going toward operation of the event itself and year-round programming at Stuart’s Opera House.

Although NMF isn’t the largest festival, the event’s scaled-down size provides audiences with a more intimate experience while still bringing some of music’s biggest names. Billboard has even called NMF “one of the best-kept secrets of the U.S. music festival circuit.”

Perhaps the most intimate performances at this year’s Nelsonville Music Festival took place at the cozy Creekside Stage tucked away in the woods of Nelsonville’s Snow Fork Event Center. The shaded venue was a natural refuge from the heat and sun of the weekend of July 26-28. At the Creekside Stage, Ohio University students from the School of Media Arts and Studies recorded and produced artists’ performances to be released as the Sycamore Sessions this fall.

School of Media Arts and Studies Director Josh Antonuccio has been running a version of this experience and bringing Ohio University students to NMF since 2014. In the process he has helped both the festival and OHIO program grow. Students originally produced a shorter, more stripped-down set known as the Gladden House Sessions which was separate from official NMF programming. After the pandemic, Antonuccio and Festival Director Tim Peacock created the Sycamore Sessions—a new phase of the series that would capture full performances and highlight what makes NMF so special.

“The Sycamore sessions now take place on the Creekside stage, which is a part of the official festival schedule,” said Antonuccio. “It's been a great way to showcase artists, but also with the change in venue, we've expanded the scope of production and increased the number of students who join the program.”

Andie Walla is an associate professor in the School of Media Arts and Studies who first became involved with a virtual iteration of NMF during the pandemic. Walla believes the Creekside Stage is a great environment for students interested in music or video production to first experience working at a live event.

“It's kind of nice because I feel like we have our own stage and everything that's happening there is students,” Walla said. “There were a few professionals who were there doing live sound for the stage, but besides that, everyone you saw back there running around on stage and operating cameras were all students, which is super cool.”

Three teams of students made up this year’s NMF Production program. A video team captured and will be editing performance footage, an audio team captured audio and oversaw the recording of music and an artist and publicity team worked with artists on site and behind the scenes—producing promotional material, confirming setlists and taking photographs. A few students rotated in on both audio and video crews to experience different aspects of production. The students who worked at the Creekside Stage were instrumental in its production and will essentially make or break the resulting Sycamore Sessions.

“It's consequential, meaning that it's beyond the classroom experience,” said Antonuccio. “It’s not just, ‘I make a mistake, I get it. Bad grade.’ We rely on these students to make this series run, capture it well and create a great product.”

Producing the Creekside Stage performances quickly introduced students to the chaos and pressure of working at a live event, but collaboration allowed them to rise to the occasion. The three teams worked together to overcome equipment malfunctions and the scorching July weather.

“It is a great partnership because the students learn the vocabulary of another team and how to communicate with them, and that’s hard to get in the classroom sometimes,” said Walla. “The audio and video teams specifically have to make each other aware that we both have needs in the same space and figure out what we can do to make the best product possible.”

Students will continue to work on Creekside Stage post-production well into the fall semester. The footage and audio recordings will be edited, rough drafts will be made and feedback will be given. With some performances being 45 minutes to an hour long, this is no small task. The Sycamore Sessions episodes will then be distributed to the public through WOUB Public Media this fall. This is now the ninth season for the series, which has garnered millions of views across more than 120 episodes. Past episodes have included major artists such as Tyler Childers, Sierra Ferrell, and Adrienne Lenker of Big Thief.

Antonuccio says being involved with NMF and the Sycamore Sessions not only gave students valuable professional experience, but it also provided a good atmosphere for them to do so.

“Music festivals are a really fun and exciting environment,” he said. “I think it’s cool to be a part of that—recording and working with great artists. And, with the Sycamore Sessions, the students are also a part of something that’s getting a global audience, and it’s great for them to see their names on it and be proud of what they worked on.”

This year’s NMF Production program and Sycamore Sessions added Gahanna-based OHD Studios to the partnership along with Ohio University and WOUB. OHD Studios rents gear and provides personnel for small-scale and large-scale shoots, as well as live events like NMF. OHD Studios Rental Manager Alex Nowak graduated from OHIO in 2012 and was happy to mentor current Bobcats and supplement the Creekside Stage’s student production with additional equipment.

“I wish I had this kind of experience when I was in school,” said Nowak. “It's great working with students like this because they're just so sharp and they're all so eager. To have the broadcast experience of how to listen to a technical director in your earphones and how to react is invaluable.”

OHD Studios supplied advanced camera equipment and worked at the Creekside Stage pro bono. Students got to experience working with new equipment beyond their usual equipment room and made local connections in their industry. Nowak and his team enjoyed the experience and he said the partnership fit well with OHD’s culture of teaching and imparting knowledge, but his OHIO experience is what cemented the connection.

“You'll find Bobcats everywhere,” said Nowak. “For me, that’s what my degree got me. I got plenty of experience—like I said I wish I had more like this—but there’s just a camaraderie with Ohio University.”

Walla was grateful for OHD Studios’ involvement, and as an OHIO alumna herself, feels a similar responsibility of paying it forward to the next generation of Bobcats. She echoed Nowak’s words about wishing she had the NMF production experience available to her as a student and added that it also informs students whether they are passionate about working at live events before seeking employment.

“It's a good way for me to give back to the next generation of students and prepare them for the workforce,” said Walla. “Some students just really love it and are searching for more opportunities to do live things—it’s a very big job market—or they figure out ‘maybe this isn't for me,’ but either way, it’s a positive learning experience.”

Faith Caplinger an analyst for Warner Music Group and a recent Ohio University alumna is a testament to OHIO’s experiential learning opportunities translating to value in the job market. Caplinger was a Music Production and Recording Industry student who graduated from OHIO in December 2023. She credits her participation in the NMF Sycamore Sessions to helping her thrive as a professional in the music industry.

“I definitely gained a better sense of what it feels like to work with a team on a project that has so many moving parts, and how to communicate and serve the team better, all the while prioritizing different needs,” Caplinger said of her 2023 experience at NMF. “It really helped me to learn the kind of patience, ambition, and open-mindedness that is needed to be successful and to contribute to meaningful work within the music industry.”

Firsthand accounts from students who worked on the 2024 Sycamore Sessions will be published in the coming weeks. The Sycamore Sessions are slated to return this fall and are available on WOUB. For more information or to view the work last year’s Nelsonville Music Festival Production students created, visit: https://woub.org/tag/2023-sycamore-sessions/