WHITEHALL — Walk the Beat White Lake organizers were thrilled with the turnout at Saturday’s festival, and director Kevin Goff is hopeful the festival can continue in coming years.
That won’t happen, though, unless someone is willing to replace Goff as director. After two years, he said, of the festival “consuming my life,” Goff is stepping down as director. The festival will need someone to take up the mantle if it is to continue in 2025.
“I announced to the city council (Tuesday) night in Whitehall that in September, I’ll hold a meeting and invite various groups, citizens, business owners, including the Chamber (and Visitor’s Bureau) and the Arts Council (of White Lake), the two mayors, to see if anybody is going to take this over,” Goff said. “If nobody steps forward to be director, then this was our last year or not. It’s a shame, because it’s really got a lot of momentum.
“It’s getting to be a huge festival and very successful. The community, I think, has the mindset that this is going to happen every year now, but you have to have a director. I’m trying to get the word out that Walk the Beat 2025 will not happen unless somebody steps forward.”
Though exact numbers are impossible to tabulate because of the breadth of the area the festival covered, Walk the Beat is estimating about 4,000 attended based on raffle ticket sales and door prize tickets, an increase of about 500. Positive feedback was plentiful on the “beat,” in part because Walk the Beat added a souvenir stand this year where guests could purchase t-shirts.
“Because they were there, they were voicing their pleasure with the festival and how much they enjoy it when it happens every year,” Goff said. “And then, the next day, there was way more activity on Facebook than the previous two years. A lot of people posted how much they enjoyed it.”
In all, the festival raised about $42,000, which will support local nonprofits and continue Walk the Beat’s mission of supporting local music education and providing musical instruments to interested area youth. Goff said regardless of whether there is a Walk the Beat White Lake next summer, next spring’s distribution of awards from the money raised this weekend will go on.
The winning band was Ryan Lynch and the Mixed Notions, who performed the second of the two two-hour shifts at Big John’s Pizza. Goff said Big John’s was added to the rotation because it is in its last year of operation. Second and third place, respectively, went to two crowd favorites from last year, Lauryn Allen and Asamu Johnson and the Associates of the Blues.
Due to the win, Lynch’s band is receiving a prize package that includes 40 hours recording time at Third Coast in Grand Haven, a spot in next summer’s Arts Council of White Lake free summer concert series at the Montague band shell, and an invitation to perform at Grand Haven’s Coast Guard festival Aug. 3. The band was also supposed to receive an invitation to perform at the Starlight Room in Muskegon, but the venue reportedly closed its doors last month due to lease issues.
Goff said Allen and the Asamu Johnson band were specifically planned to perform at their sites - Allen was at Fetch Brewing and Johnson and his band were at the Lewis House - due to their reception from a year ago. Most of the acts’ sites were chosen by the executive committee. Goff specifically asked that The Illustrated, last year’s winning band, be assigned to Jimmy’s Pub, because he wanted that area to be “livelier.”
If Walk the Beat is able to find a director, Goff - who said he will stay involved with the festival as an advisor if a director is found - has ideas on future tweaks to the festival. He said he’d like to see it scaled back, in part because the 19 sites proved to be a daunting walk for interested residents. The sites ranged from Big Shotz in Montague all the way to Pekadill’s in Whitehall, a full four miles.
“My recommendation is to bring (performers in) Whitehall into the social district area, (performers in) Montague into their social district, and maybe have 10 groups, and hire them to play for maybe three hours, and have two bands in each location,” Goff said. “It would be a six-hour event instead of a four-hour event, and it would be fewer bands.”
Goff added that one donor suggested the event end a little later in the day to bring out dinner and evening crowds to downtown.
A 10-member executive committee helped Goff run the event the past two years, but he said no one among that committee feels they are equipped to take on the role of director, which he said has eaten up “thousands of hours” over the past two years. Goff, who’s retired from General Motors, was equipped to take on the overseer role. He noted that the groundwork necessary to make the festival what it is has already been completed. For the first time this year, the festival did not receive a financial contribution from the group who formed the original Walk the Beat, which takes place in Grand Haven.
“This year we didn’t get any money from them at all,” Goff said. “It was a little tougher to pull off a $42,000 music festival in the White Lake community. There’s a lot more money down there. It’s easier to pull off.”
The Walk the Beat mission to promote musical education is probably the biggest reason Goff would like to see it continue; he said that after eight local children were awarded musical instruments in the spring, the group came up with a ninth and is scheduled to give it away to another local child this weekend. He enjoys that part of the festival maybe most of all.
“It’s so nice to see the looks on the students’ faces when we give stuff away at the Playhouse in the spring,” Goff said. “It makes it worth it.”
Goff added that if no one can be found to continue Walk the Beat, he is interested in potentially launching a small blues festival in the White Lake area in 2026. It would be much smaller than Walk the Beat, consisting of only a few acts, and would likely take place in downtown Whitehall.
