While cannabis is legal for recreational use in Michigan, music venues have been slow to officially embrace it due to regulations on liquor licenses.
But organizers of Michigan’s Cannabash music festival say they have devised a workaround, and plan to open what they believe will be the first music venue in the U.S. to offer both alcohol and cannabis sales and consumption.
Grams & Jams Productions is gearing up to open the Field of Greens, an outdoor concert venue in Baldwin, this spring.
“Concert goers have been either smoking weed or drinking alcohol at concerts for a very, very long time,” Grams & Jams Productions co-founder Connie Maxim-Sparrow tells Metro Times. “And that’s what people want.”
She adds, “I mean, that’s the part that’s funny, right? You go to Pine Knob and you listen to a concert, people are already smoking weed.”
The Cannabash festival launched in 2022 at Muskegon’s Softball World grounds with a focus on hip-hop. The 2023 festival featured performances from rappers Ludacris and Sada Baby and drew 12,000 people, Maxim-Sparrow says.
While Michigan has had music festivals that have served cannabis and alcohol, including the Hoxeyville Music Festival and Smoke on the Water, the plan for Field of Greens is to have one venue with multiple events throughout the year. Grams & Jams Productions decided to develop its own venue due to restrictions from the municipality and the Softball World space.
“We want to make sure that we have a venue that has adequate power, adequate water, and adequate parking,” she says. “Last year at Cannabash, we spent upwards of $25,000 on shuttles for an offsite parking lot, because there wasn’t enough parking.”
For Field of Greens, Grams & Jams Productions partnered with Baldwin Provisions, a cannabis dispensary that happens to be located on 30 acres. Maxim-Sparrow says she also liked the space because of its proximity to Idlewild, a historic African American vacation destination, but also because it was already ideal for large events.
“It was an old gun range and driving range at one point,” Maxim-Sparrow says. “It’s wide open, with power, lights, and everything because it was being operated as a driving range and a shooting range many years ago. It’s already all fenced in.”
Maxim-Sparrow says that the Baldwin government was also easy to work with. “Baldwin was very much open to those ideas when we presented to them in November, and they were really excited because it’s a pretty small town. I mean, it’s one of the smallest towns in the state,” she says. “They’re happy to have us.”
“The music industry doesn’t know how to penetrate this cannabis event space. But this is going to happen eventually.”
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Though Baldin is located more than an hour north of Grand Rapids, Maxim-Sparrow believes the venue has the potential to become a destination for tourists, pointing out that more than half of Cannabash attendees came from beyond the Great Lakes region.
And while liquor license regulations prevent cannabis and alcohol from being sold and consumed in the same space, Maxim-Sparrow says they will solve this problem by dividing the venue in half with a fence, with alcohol on one side and pot on the other, and acquiring a temporary 24-hour liquor license through its nonprofit arm. The venue will be ages 21 and up only.
Maxim-Sparrow sees this as a temporary solution until more common-sense regulations are drafted — but hopes that Field of Greens can be a pioneer.
“The music industry doesn’t know how to penetrate this cannabis event space,” she says. “But this is going to happen eventually, when cannabis becomes federally legal… The music industry will get into this, but they’re just really afraid of all of the regulatory. But that’s where we excel, is in compliance and regulatory.”
Maxim-Sparrow says while the venue plans have yet to be finalized, the space has the potential to hold 15,000 people.
She looks to the Meijer Gardens Amphitheater in Grand Rapids for inspiration, with its permanent structures and hill.
“That’s my vision, is a lot of the summer concert series stuff that they’re doing,” she says. “That amphitheater is beautiful. We’re obviously going to have to work our way there.”
She adds, “We’re going to get a feel for it this season, with the hopes that we’ll be able to go out and get investment and be able to build out a formal venue … We’re bootstrapping it for now.”
Grams & Jams Productions is plotting a spring and summer season of festivals to activate the space and appeal to a range of demographics and music tastes.
Bikes, Buds, and Brews is planned for May 18 to coincide with Baldwin’s Blessing of the Bikes, in which a Catholic priest blesses motorcycles ahead of the summer season, with a focus on rock and blues music.
Grams & Jams Country Night planned for June 14 will feature mainstream country acts.
Cannabash is set to return July 13 and will continue its focus on hip-hop and rock.
Bluegrass Night on August 23 will feature jam bands and bluegrass music.
And Croptoberfest is planned for September 21 to celebrate the cannabis harvest with wide-ranging acts that can appeal across generations, Maxim-Sparrow says.
While no lineups have yet been announced, Grams & Jams Productions is already selling tickets at gramsandjams.com. The company is also seeking potential sponsors.
“Cannabis is tired of being thrown in corner,” Maxim-Sparrow says. “Cannabis deserves its own space.”
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