About halfway through Mon Rovîa's set on September 19th, he stepped back from the mic and asked the crowd to sing his song back to him. They did, loudly, from all the way across the field at Knox Farm State Park. For a few minutes, the line between the stage and the lawn disappeared, and it felt like everyone out there was part of the same song.
That sense of togetherness carried through all three days of Borderland Music & Arts Festival, held September 18-20 in East Aurora, New York. This year's lineup was the biggest the festival has booked yet, with Alabama Shakes, Jack White, the Pixies, Lord Huron, and Jesse Welles at the top of the bill. Even with names that size, the weekend never lost its local, personal feel, and that's what made it special.
Borderland started as a grassroots idea from founder Jennifer Brazill, an East Aurora native who spent years working in the music business before launching the festival. She wanted to bring something to Western New York that was built by people from Western New York, celebrating the region's music, makers, and food right alongside national acts. Eight years in, it has grown into a full three-day event and still hasn't lost that hometown center. The bill leaned into the jam, Americana, folk, and rock sounds Borderland is known for, and local and regional bands shared the grounds with artists who usually play arenas.
The setting does a lot of the work.
Knox Farm is wide open and green, and the weekend's pace matched it. Between the main stage and the smaller, more intimate Homespun stage, people wandered the grounds at their own speed instead of sprinting from set to set. Food was a big part of the experience too, and the options went on and on. Dopest Dough, out of East Aurora, kept things simple with a single menu item, grilled cheese and tomato soup, and honestly didn't need anything else. Pretzalo had lines all weekend for pretzels twisted into the shape of a buffalo itself, easily the most on-theme food of the festival.
What stood out to me most, though, was who was there. Kids were everywhere, perched on their parents' shoulders or running laps around the edge of the crowd. Borderland is one of the few festivals I've been to that feels just as built for families as it does for music obsessives, and nobody seemed to be missing out. Parents could catch their headliners while their kids explored a whole farm, and everyone still got the music.