Hear from attendees about last year’s event and learn about the 2025 conference coming up in October.

FARM Gathering attendees. Photo credit: Tom Smouse, 2024.

As one of several regional chapters of the larger Folk Alliance International organization, Folk Alliance Region Midwest (FARM) was formed to help folk and acoustic music artists, industry professionals and enthusiasts connect, collaborate and celebrate folk music through events, resources and advocacy efforts. The organization’s biggest event is their annual FARM Gathering, a weekend of performances, workshops, networking opportunities and community building. Attendees have the chance to showcase their talent, learn from industry experts and connect with others in the folk music scene.

I experienced the FARM Gathering myself for the first time in late October 2024 at the DoubleTree by Hilton Lisle Naperville in Lisle, Illinois. Together with Anitra Budd (whose main AiA role is emceeing and organizing events), I hosted an Adventures in Americana late-night showcase, featuring micro-sets and songwriter rounds from dozens of incredible artists over two nights.

One of our featured acts was The Shandies, a married folk duo based in Springfield, Missouri. Shannon Stine and Natalie Wlodarczyk formed The Shandies in 2016, but they too were first timers at FARM. In fact, they told me, they’d never been to any Folk Alliance conference before. “We thought starting with our own region’s event would be a good way to ease in,” Stine explained when I connected with them later to ask about their conference experience.

The pair are of course avid music fans as well as artists, so the biggest highlight for them was attending the Official Showcase performances in the evenings. “We discovered several new artists we now listen to regularly!” Wlodarczyk said.

They also found it easy to connect with other attendees, thanks in part to the ad they bought in the program. “We’ll definitely buy an ad with our showcase times again—that was well worth it,” Stine said. “As unknowns at the conference, it helped folks put faces to the name of our band. That helped build connections quicker as first-timers.”

I also participated in a panel on PR. It was an honor to have it moderated by Susan Werner, who was also the 2024 keynote speaker. Although she’s a longtime, widely lauded fixture in the folk scene as a singer-songwriter, she’s a relatively recent participant at FARM, having become active in the organization when she moved back to Chicago from Philadelphia in 2021. (Before that she was involved with NERFA, the Northeast chapter of FAI.)

Susan Werner, Melissa McKinney (The Ark), Carol Roth, & Adam Dawson (Broken Jukebox Media). Photo credit: Tom Smouse.

Werner describes these conferences as “a cross between a family reunion and a state fair—sit down for a meal, enjoy the sprawling spectacle of it, and you’re sure to come home with more than a few prizes.” One of her 2024 prizes was “a late night song swap with Ellen Stanley and Anne Heaton that I enjoyed so much. Good things definitely DO happen after midnight!”

For Werner, these conferences are “all about connections—in person as opposed to online/virtual/social. Once you get to know someone and learn why they do what they do—whether it’s for their family, their kids, the joy of discovery, their talent, their home community—you can tell if you and they might be headed in the same direction for a short or a long stretch of time. And things can get done three times as fast as by email/social or any other route—have dinner with someone and you'll have mapped out an entire album, a tour, written a song, boom!”

I also connected with Dudley Smith (better known as “Smitty”), current vice president of FARM who’s been on the board almost continuously since first coming to FARM in about 2009 and has also served as president and conference director in the past. Although it was over 15 years ago, he still remembers his first Gathering: “So much music! And such friendly people. I made a bunch of new friends as well as learning about the ‘industry’ (I was a novice music venue host at the time) and finding musicians to play my series. It was all a whirlwind!” As for his favorite memory from the most recent conference, he says without hesitation: “Susan Werner’s keynote. Awesome!”

As someone who’s attended so many iterations of the Gathering, Smitty can speak to how it’s grown and changed over the years. “I think the biggest shift, started by the amazing Annie Capps 15ish years ago, has been the evolution of our conference from a bunch of friends gathering to jam and sing for a weekend, to a professional event offering career support and booking opportunities, while maintaining the ‘gathering of friends’ community atmosphere.”

It’s also grown to bridge traditional and modern folk influences, he says, bringing all types of folk music and musicians together; “banjos to barefoot-bluegrass-adjacent to hip-hop-influenced sample-based to old time to Americana to blues and alt-country. When we’re all together in a hotel conference space, sharing meals and jams and performances, we’re all one big happy folk family no matter our individual ‘style’ or age.”

Besides the Gathering, Smitty also finds immense value in FARM’s ongoing Virtual Connections online presence, which includes open mics, peer gatherings, and workshops and panels. “Virtual Connections allows us to contribute year-round with performance opportunities, educational offerings, and safe spaces to gather and catch up with friends and talk about anything on our collective minds.”

Both the in-person and virtual FARM programming, he says, are “all about professionally and personally supporting, and bringing together into a community, all the many people who make up the world of folk. This means a lot to me because when I’ve experienced personal tragedies, other than my family and a few close friends, it’s been the folk community that most supported me and helped me heal and grieve.”

Dudley “Smitty” Smith. Photo credit: Tom Smouse.

Advice for First-Timers

All four people I spoke with enthusiastically endorsed the conference. I asked what they’d tell prospective newcomers to help prepare for the best possible Gathering experience.

Werner advises people planning to attend for the first time to “brace yourself—it's always a bit overwhelming, soooo many people there, with soooo many different reasons for being there, doing soooo many different things. Meet everybody, and know that there’ll be some time, some setting, where you’ll cross paths again with someone at a moment when you’ll have mutual interests. Whether it's finding a manager or making a new fan or booking a house concert or publicizing a new record, just be open to everybody, absolutely everybody.”

She adds: “It’s frantic, and people are scrambling for opportunities, but after you’ve done it for a year or two, you realize, ‘Oh, these are my people. This is my crew.’ And you start to treasure it.”

The Shandies agree that it could take more than one time attending to fully start to reap the benefits of FARM. “Don’t be discouraged if you don't come away from the conference with performance offers or significant connections made—it takes time to gain recognition, and folks probably need more than one conference to connect with you. We definitely think it’s worth going back a second time to build on those relationships.”

Everyone also agrees that the rewards of getting together at FARM extend far beyond professional connections and opportunities. “As a farm kid from Iowa, it brings me a lot of joy to see good things happen for my fellow Iowans and Chicagoans, and basically anybody who routinely drives Interstates 80 and 90 and 94,” Werner says. “Someone said folk music is music that can survive a power outage—and I believe that ability is so good for us humans, so deeply tremendously wonderfully good, that it’s worth encouraging, fostering and supporting in any way I can.”

When asked why people should consider attending, Smitty says, “Because you’ll have a BLAST and make new friends! Because you’ll learn a lot and perform a lot. Because you’ll find talent for your radio show or venue (for my festival this summer, four of the five main stage acts I met through FARM). Because you’ll get gigs. Did I mention you’ll have a lot of fun?”

Info for Attending

The next in-person Gathering will take place October 23-26, 2025, once again at the DoubleTree by Hilton Lisle Naperville in Lisle, IL. (The three years after that are slated to take place in Minneapolis.) Registration is open now, with an early-bird rate of $225 through May 31. After that, it’s $250 until August 31, and then goes up to $350 September 1. (There are also single-day rates if you can only attend part of it.) Advance registration ends October 17.

After that there’s also on-site registration, but if you want to apply for showcases (whether the official ones or one of the late-night ones like we hosted) you must already be registered.

There are several showcase opportunities with different application windows: The Official Showcase deadline is June 2, while the Folk DJ Showcases accept submissions through July 29. You can start reaching out to Private Showcase hosts as soon as you know who they are; they’re announced July 15. (Each host has their own selection process and showcase rules; for example they might reach out to artists first, and/or they might charge acts a nominal fee to appear in their showcase.) There’s a three-showcase limit for all artists.

No matter what your reasons are for attending, the sooner you start preparing the better. “Put some effort into things ahead of the conference,” Smitty says. “Take advantage of the resources FARM offers, set your goals and make a plan to meet them ahead of the conference. We have workshops for first timers. We explain how to arrange performance opportunities. It’s never too early to start! And then when you show up, relax and have fun.”