APPLETON, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) — Preparations are taking place for the ninth Mile of Music, which begins Thursday.
The festival will host 700 live music sets across 40 different venues.
Musicians from nearly 30 states will be in Appleton for Mile Nine. Some artists are coming all the way from the United Kingdom and Canada, and they’ll all be staying right here in the Fox Cities.
The Mile of Music team is expecting more than 100,000 attendees to be in Appleton enjoying free music over the four days.
“You don’t have to put any dollars in your pocket to pay for a ticket, but you want to have dollars in your pocket to pay for food and beverage and all those types of things and to frequent our downtown businesses,” says Mile of Music Team Member Dave Willems.
There will be many different genres of music represented this year.
“It’s indie and roots music, folk, folk-rock ,a little bit of country, a little bit of country rock , a little bit of hip hop, soul and R&B.” says Willems.
This year, the team is introducing more listening lounges.
“There’s eight or nine of them that we really are making sure people know when they are going to those venues that they are expected to listen to the music and not have a lot of chatter going on,” says Willems.
The newly renovated and rebranded Paper Valley hotel is looking forward to the musicians coming to town.
“This year we have the great honor of housing all the musicians attending Mile Nine for our Mile of Music festival. There will be several hundred musicians staying in the hotel,” says Hilton Appleton Paper Valley General Manager Linda Garvey.
The Hilton Appleton Paper Valley will also have live music.
“We also have a listening lounge in the clubhouse sports bar and grill, and then the ballroom is utilized for another mainstage,” says Garvey.
Not only can festival goers listen to music at the hotel, but they can also become a musician themselves by singing in the shower.
“Tundraland has done this since year one where they offer singing in the shower, and then there’s is a drawing and they give away a scholarship for music school,” explained Garvey.
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