photo credit: Real Neato Music Festival

Rio Nido will be rocking this Saturday for the latest edition of the Real Neato Music Festival.

If you spend some time on the Russian River, around Rio Nido, and at the Rio Nido Roadhouse, it won’t be long before you learn the same things Daniel Strickland has.

"Well, this will be our sixth year at the Roadhouse doing the Real Neato Music Festival," Strickland said. "It's funny, we did our first one in 2019, I had no idea that it, that the venue had this history that the Grateful Dead played back there in the sixties. I didn't find that out until much later."

Strickland is the man behind TruEcho Artists and Events, and one of the organizers of Real Neato Music Festival at the Rio Nido Roadhouse.

"[Real Neato] had really come out of some benefit shows we had done," Strickland said. "We did a benefit show for Mendocino wildfire victims and we were trying to do something that wasn't a benefit, just a fun festival at a cool place."

"A week after we decided on the Roadhouse, it got flooded," Strickland said. "So we went back into fundraising mode and we did some benefits to help raise money for the Roadhouse for them to rebuild, and we finally got that first festival kicked off in 2019. And then, you know what happened the next year."

Strickland said Real Neato joined in on the virtual music festival train in 2020, but now have found their feet for a few years running at the Roadhouse.

"We persisted through fires and floods and pandemics, and you know we're just trying to provide something that's an antidote to all the stress and hardships people have and just try to create a great space for people to have a fun, chill weekend with great music in a beautiful location," Strickland said. "I think we're doing a pretty good job. It just keeps getting better and better."

What about the name, you ask?

"One of my founders, Eli, his parents used to take him to the Rio Nido Roadhouse when he was a kid," Strickland said. "And it was funny, we had all these other terrible names for the event and he just happened to say, you know, my parents always said we were going to Rio Nido and I thought they said ‘real neato’ and that's where the name came about."

Strickland said part of the inspiration for Real Neato came after Hickey Fest in Mendocino County fizzled out after losing their permits.

"People love music in Sonoma County and...Guerneville has always got great stuff going on, but we did not see like San Francisco proper and Oakland bands getting up there very much," Strickland said. "It tended to be like North Bay bands. So we wanted to bring some of the bands we love who don't know the area and also introduce them to that audience up there."

What’s the day going to look like? Strickland said they’ve got Real Neato all mapped out.

"We've got two stages," Strickland said. "It's gonna be continuous music from 2:00 PM to 10:00 PM; and we've curated it kind of like a mixtape so the flow of the bands is gonna kind of track what we're trying to create in terms of vibe and energy."

"But we've got a lot of stuff going on," Strickland said. "It's kid friendly and we love having kids there. We've got some local makers, we've got [a] record store, we've got vintage clothing. The food at the Roadhouse is great and Johnson Beach is one of our key partners and we'll be doing a thing there Friday night."

So what's the line-up?

"We've got Agouti, they're a psych band," Strickland said. "We've got Analog Dog who's kind of a disco band that just played the Fox last week. We've got the Cumbia Assassins who, this is gonna be a one-off, but people are gonna be talking about this one for weeks."

"Fake Fruit, who played Outside Lands, [the Grease] Traps, who played the Stern Grove Festival, Mae Powell, Plovver, Skyway Man, I mean like, you're not gonna find, in my opinion, a better lineup and you get to see it in in the redwoods," Strickland said.

Now for this sixth edition of Real Neato Music Fest, Strickland just had to say, "you know, we couldn't do this without the Roadhouse. They've been such a great host to us. I can't imagine trying to pull this off without them," Strickland said.

"I hope [KRCB] listeners check out the website and if they don't have plans on Saturday, come out, they will not be disappointed," Strickland said.

The Real Neato Music Festival takes place Saturday, September 21 at the Rio Nido Roadhouse. Also on Saturday is the Global Roots Sonoma at the Green Music Center, a world music festival with four stages. And on Sunday, September 22, the music continues in Sonoma County at Railroad Square Music Festival in Santa Rosa - with over 25 artists across five stages - brought to you for free by sponsors like KRCB 104.9.