LIVERMORE — If one of the Tri-Valley’s best-kept music secrets has been off your radar for the past couple of decades, you’re not alone. The organizers of Two-Day Town, an annual family and camping music festival, say it has grown largely through word-of-mouth since its inception 27 years ago. And that is by design.
“People would always say, ‘Why don’t you advertise?’ Well, obviously budget is one reason. The other reason is because we don’t want to invite people who may have other motives in being there,” said Michael Ferrucci, a Two-Day Town founding member.
“We invite everyone. There is a welcome mat. And it would be nice to advertise, nice to promote, but the drawback would be you might get people that are just looking for a good time.”
Though Ferrucci was quick to point out, “I can’t say we don’t party. It’s fun to have kids dancing and mandolins and banjos and foot stomping, and you know it’s why we are there. The music is why we’re there, and the families, and the sharing of different artistic talents.”
But opening the invite list too broadly has long-created concern that others might not share the same values in terms of the environment, “and that’s critical because we want to be invited back. Our motto is ‘leave no trace,’” said Ferrucci, who is a career biologist.
Until last year, the music festival that promotes original local music of all kinds had been held at Del Valle Regional Park.
“We left that park cleaner than we found it every single time,” Ferrucci said, but despite their best efforts, they reached an impasse with the East Bay Regional Park District.
“There were regulations that were quite frankly, appropriate, you know, fire preparations — having first aid and qualified EMTs to be there. And we tried to check all the boxes and be as compliant and cooperative in communicating with everyone that we needed to, but as time went on, it became increasingly more difficult to feel that everyone was on board.”
Visitors were eventually prohibited from having campfires at night.
“Understandable and appropriate, but it did take a lot of the magic out of playing music at night,” which is a core part of the Two-Day Town experience, Ferrucci explained. “And a lot of the really intimate stuff was happening at campsites,” where campers would wander freely from site to site with their instruments to jam with new and old friends alike.
“What brought us together was, of course, James Benney, our godfather here,” Ferrucci said.
Benney founded the Livermore event in 1998 and modeled it after the Strawberry Music Festival held in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains that began in 1982.
“Many of us that initially started going to Two-Day Town had kind of come out of the Strawberry music scene,” Ferrucci said. “That was really where a lot of us knew each other in terms of being friends socially and, of course, the music brought us together. And that’s the lifeblood of Two-Day Town.”
In the lead-up to this year’s festival, organizers said the event would “carry on” regardless of the weather, “rain and shine, freeze-ass cold (or) blistering heat.”
Last year provided the blistering heat in the first year in a new location since the event began. This year was the freeze-ass cold mixed with parts rain and shine for much of the weekend-long festival that was held May 2-4 at Rancho Los Mochos on Mines Road southwest of Livermore.
The nationally accredited former Boy Scouts of America camp feels like a fitting new home for this band of Two-Day Town founders. Ferrucci speaks of them as if they’re brothers. A lot of their kids grew up together attending Two-Day Town.
The whole organization is made up of volunteers, including the participating bands, who don’t get paid. The stage and sound crews don’t, either.
“It’s truly a community effort to do this,” Ferrucci said. “I have to bow to James Benney. This is a labor of love. He’s never made a penny doing it. And I mean, we’ve all contributed, you know, if it’s $100 or $500 or $1,000. We’ve had lots of people contribute money because they’re able to. And it’s for the family. It’s for us.”
The new location on Mines Road is about 40 minutes from downtown Livermore. And there is no cell-phone reception.
Ferrucci, who’s referred to as “The Mayor” around Two-Day Town and known for wearing a big floppy hat, said one of his self-imposed mayoral duties had been to drive to the Donut Wheel in Livermore every morning during the festival.
“I’d grab a couple dozen donuts, head back to the camp and do like the drive-by-donut around the campground. I’d be wearing the hat and go, ‘You wanna donut?’ And then the kids would come running after the car. It’s fun to do.”
Now, though, the drive is almost 40 minutes each way.
“But you know, these are my people,” he said.
