Hoodoo organizers create interactive opportunities for community leading up to festival

Local organizers behind the Hoodoo Mural Festival have announced a full schedule of free community events, which are slated to take place in the days leading up to the annual outdoor music and art festival.

The festival returns for the third year to downtown Amarillo on Saturday, Oct. 1. General admission and VIP tickets are available for sale online at www.HoodooMural.com, starting at $30.

In the days leading up to the 2022 festival, Hoodoo Week will help build excitement amongst local residents, as each event will offer the opportunity to not only meet the nonprofit team responsible for bringing this annual event to life, but also the muralists and musicians who will be onsite performing at the festival. With the exception of the final event on Saturday after the festival concludes, each event during Hoodoo Week is free to attend for fans of all ages.

"We have the festival date on Oct. 1. That is a paid event, but we think it's important to also have free events for the community, because that is really what the festival is for, for the community to have this free public art. So, we wanted to find ways for those who could not join us with the festival to enjoy themselves and spread our message," said Hoodoo Mural Festival Founder and Executive Director Andrew Hall.

Hoodoo Week kicked off on Friday, Sept. 23 at Pondaseta Brewing Co., a locally-owned, award-winning brewery. At the event, a custom batch of beer called the Hoodoo Hometown Pilsner was released to the public for the first time ever, although the beer will also be available for purchase onsite at the festival as well as at Crush Wine Bar & Restaurants this week.

On Monday evening, festival organizers will host a special Hoodoo-themed painting party at the iconic Cadillac Ranch. Hoodoo fans can visit the public art exhibit while watching festival muralists create new works of art upon the group of vintage Cadillac cars, which are well-known for being buried nose-down in the field along Route 66 just west of Amarillo. Cocina on the Go’s food truck and Hud’s will be on site, offering a selection of menu items for purchase.

"With it being an art and mural festival, we took one of the most historic places for artistic expression in Amarillo, the Cadillac Ranch, and were able to rent it out. We plan to paint all the cars white, leaving a few for the public to participate as well with the muralists, but each muralist is going to get their own Cadillac to paint and have fun with. They all have been painting so hard in preparation of the festival, so this is a way for them to be free and create and interact with the community," Hall said.

On Tuesday night, fans can stop by Crush for a special Pondaseta Pint Night in collaboration with Pondaseta Brewing Co. featuring the new Hoodoo Hometown Pilsner; a limited number of patrons who arrive early and order the new beer will also receive a complimentary pint glass.

Later in the week, festival partners at Visit Amarillo will be helping to host two other admission-free pop-up events, including an outdoor kick-off party on Wednesday, Sept. 28 at the Amarillo National Bank parking lot at 512 Polk St. This location will also be where Hoodoo headliner Tristan Eaton will be creating his new mural.

Fans of all ages can look forward to local music performances from DJ Element and violinist Bryan Gomez that Wednesday night, along with several kid-friendly activities, free cotton candy, and complimentary beer and wine for guests 21 and older. In addition, free weekend festival passes will be given away to attendees at random every 15 minutes during the pop-up event.

The following afternoon on Thursday will include a special lunch event from Visit Amarillo at Yolo's that includes music from local singer-songwriter Tia Marie, as well as live painting from Hoodoo muralist and longtime Amarillo native Malcolm Byers.

"We are really excited for everyone get together, cut loose a little bit and celebrate and see what we have been working so hard for this past year," Hall said.

Come Saturday afternoon, the festival will bring local residents and travelers together to commemorate the completion of a massive city-wide urban beautification project through the collaboration between local business owners and acclaimed mural artists.

The festival will center around six large-scale outdoor walls across downtown Amarillo, with the final masterpieces set to officially make their debut. Muralists Tristan Eaton, Ricardo Gonzalez (aka It’s A Living), Rabi, and Amarillo native Byers will headline this year’s art lineup. In addition, eight other muralists from across Amarillo have also been selected to paint a collage of locally-inspired murals in downtown Amarillo at 418 S. Tyler St., the former Edward S. Burgess Lumber Company Building.

Muralist and area native Drew Merritt spoke about the mural he created for the festival and the inspiration behind it.

"I wanted to paint a saddle this year, partly because I really appreciate the beauty of the craftsmanship and artsmanship that is already there and thought it would be nice visually to show leather work on a larger scale. ... The saddle inspiration is actually a historical saddle from Oliver's Saddle Shop in Amarillo, and they let me borrow their grandfather Bill Oliver's saddle that was created in the 1960s for reference on the piece," Merritt said.

"It's really cool to do something of the area, historic, and mix the worlds of something from former generations of Amarillo and showcase this craftmanship in a new-age style like spray-paint for the mural festival. It's a sort of full circle and different that hasn't been done before in Amarillo, and I get to be the first to do it," Merritt added.

To help showcase the majestic beauty of their hometown to out-of-town guests while also instilling a sense of pride among local residents, Hall and his Hoodoo team have, in total, tapped more than 30 local businesses, musicians, and artisans from the greater Amarillo area to participate in this year’s event.

Festival gates will open at 3 p.m. Oct. 1 with Silent Disco DJ's helping to kick off the afternoon festivities shortly thereafter. Main stage music performances will begin at 4:30 p.m., starting with the newly added band Vamping, followed by a curated selection of nationally acclaimed acts and up-and-coming regional talent including Flamingosis, Kaelin Ellis, and Little Jet. Los Angeles-based alternative pop band Neil Frances will close out the 2022 event with a headlining performance that kicks off at 10:30 p.m.

"We have a couple areas (in our foundation) that we like to focus on, in helping to revitalize our city and downtown and using the art as an economic driver, to make our city a destination to encourage travelers to stay and not just another town they pass through. We want them to see who we are as a community and a town, and we feel like public art helps bridge that gap," Hall said.

New additions to the overall fan experience this year include a vendor market featuring a wide assortment of Amarillo’s best artisans, makers, and designers; an expanded food lineup courtesy of partners at Brick & Elm Magazine who helped once again curate the festival’s onsite selection of eats and treats; and a special kids' activities area hosted by Little Bee’s Playhouse.

Once the festival concludes on Saturday evening, a special afterparty event at Crush will help serve as a late-night dance party and proper send-off for the 2022 event. Afterparty admission will be free for VIP festival attendees with proof of their festival wristband, as well as all female guests 21 and older, although a $10 cover charge will be taken for non-VIP male patrons.

The festival organizers would like to continue showing appreciation to those responsible for helping bring this year’s event to life, including corporate donors Amarillo National Bank, BOC Bank, and ASCO Equipment; in addition to community foundations such as Amarillo Area Foundation, Mays Foundation, and Texas Tech University’s Health Sciences Center.

The full slate of Hoodoo Week events, as well as the main stage performance schedule, is available online at www.HoodooMural.com . For more information and to purchase tickets, visit their website or follow along on social media including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hoodoomural.

This article originally appeared on Amarillo Globe-News: Interactive community events lead up to Hoodoo Mural Festival