We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Nick Ferrington. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Nick below.

Nick , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

Area 406 Music & Arts Festival in Kalispell has been my most meaningful project to date. As Covid restrictions opened up in spring 2021, I decided to throw a small festival in Kalispell. After telling my business partners in Los Angeles who owns a production company about the project, they jumped on board immediately and insisted that we make this one of the biggest shows to ever hit the Flathead Valley. Before we knew it, we had booked the Flathead County Fairgrounds and booked Nero to headliner our first year. The response we received after year 1 was amazing and we expanded the festival to a 2-day event in 2022.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I started off in the punk rock scene in high school, playing at whatever basement, banquet hall or makeshift venue we could find. This taught me a lot about the basics of managing an act and hosting our own events. I realized my passion for the industry and ended up working with my college production company to produce shows from The Rolling Stones, Elton John, Modest Mouse and many more.,

As college wound down, I went to Florida to work for Disney for 2 years. I would eventually discover my love of dance music in 2009 and moved to Boston for 10 years to pursue a full time career as a DJ.

After the EDM boom, DJs were at a surplus and I found myself having trouble getting bookings. I decided the best way to get my name out there was to start throwing my own raves and events.

I came back to Montana shortly before the pandemic and as soon as people were allowed to gather again, I started producing smaller festivals in Kalispell. The response was so great that eventually I decided to level up things by bringing Area 406 Festival to Montana, which is now in it’s 3rd year of operation.

Most recently, I joined the back of house operations team at Insomniac Events and will be part of the team that produces major festivals like Electric Daisy Carnival, Electric Forest and Hard Summer.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

Supporting your local acts and promoters is so important to the scene. Dance music is a very underserved market in Montana, so I encourage locals to embrace shows/artists that make other music besides country/folk so that we can see more diversity come through our amazing state.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

A lot of people think that concert promoters are just partying backstage and raking in money. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Area 406 is self-funded by 4 music lovers and we are constantly working/stressing to make sure the show goes off in a way that people love it and want to come back. Our team has always said that if we are able to break even and produce a show that blows people’s minds, then we can call the event a success.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.nickferrington.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/nickferrington
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/nickferringtonmusic
• Twitter: www.twitter..com/nickferrington
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT5BTq_uyaO152T9AfhhZPA