We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Nick Novotny a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Nick, thanks for joining us today. What was it like going from idea to execution? Can you share some of the backstory and some of the major steps or milestones?

Back when I was in college in Winona, MN, I had my first local music festival experience attending and performing at Mid West Music Festival, and I was blown away. Seeing an entire community come together, all in the name of music, was something that I fell in love with, and planted the seed of what would eventually become The Rochester Thaw. After I graduated, and moved up to Rochester, I remained active in the music scene in southeast Minnesota and abroad. There was just something missing in the area of a big community music festival in town, and so that seed planted back in Winona began to grow. Over the course of a few years, there was a lot of research, site visits, and talking with industry professionals in the area about what it would take to create a music festival in Rochester, and finally in 2019, everything fell into place and the first year of The Rochester Thaw happened. It was a scrappy event, 1 stage and 7 bands, but it was the start of something. After the first year being successful, it was time to start scaling things up, and we started planning for a larger second year. Unfortunately – the COVID-19 pandemic had other plans, and out festival in 2020 was cancelled eight days before it happened by a government shutdown order. From that point the festival went dormant, until we could safely throw a big gathering again. In that time, I had joined the established Rochester music promotions group My Town My Music, and in 2023, we were geared up and ready to bring the festival back, in its current six venue, 30 performer format. It was a huge risk to take, seeing as Rochester has never had a multi venue music festival like this before, but people were hungry to get back out, and we sold the fest out in its return year.

Now here we are in 2024, back with the third iteration of The Rochester Thaw and we could not be more excited!

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 have always had music in my life. Since picking up the violin in 2nd grade, through playing in bands throughout high school and college and continuing that to this day as an active gigging music, it has always been there. Breaking into more of the “behind the scenes” side of the industry began in college, working for music festivals, as a professional sound tech and stage hand, I started to experience other side of what it takes to put on a show. When it came to jumping in head first and staring my own music festival, and then joining the team at My Town My Music, there was a distinct advantage to seeing all sides of the music industry first hand. What we strive to do as a company, is to support and foster the growth of the Rochester, MN music scene. How we do that is through promotion of our own shows, as well as providing a platform for other venues, promoters, and bands, to share their music and events via My Town My Music. I think one of the things that I am most proud of, is that as the company has grown, and including our flagship festival, there is always representation of Rochester’s music scene as a part of the event. Providing platforms for well established, and up and coming local bands to play in front of crowds, is a staple of any My Town My Music production. We also have a very high standard of professionalism, and organization when it comes to our shows. We want our bands, productions teams, venues, partners, and attendees, to all have a good experience working with us, and represent our growing music scene in a positive way, to continue its growth into the future.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

I think there are a couple big aspects that have helped build our reputation here in Rochester. One of the biggest aspects is being active members in our community here. No music, food, beverage, art, or any other scene can fully stand on the backs of one organization or business. It takes so many players doing a lot of hard work to help things grow, and we feel that was about Rochester. There are so many incredible small businesses and organizations, from our local breweries, bars and restaurants, art studios, coffee shops, and countless others that we rely on to make our shows happen, directly and indirectly. Realistically, our shows play a small role in the big picture of the arts and culture scene here and what makes Rochester a fun city to live. Because of that, being an active member out in your community, supporting those that support you, is such a huge part of doing something like this.

Another aspect that I think has played a role in our reputation is approaching everything we do in a professional and organized manner. Doing large scale music events is not easy, and there are a ton of moving parts that you have to keep track of to make these things happen. By staying organized, and holding yourself to a high standard of professionalism, that can take you a long way. It will lead to smoother run events, less confusion and headaches for the people you work with, and take a lot of stress out of things day of show. By doing that, our bands, partners, and attendees all have a better one at shows, and keeps them coming back for things in the future.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

I met the team at My Town My Music, out at shows they were promoting in Rochester when I moved here. As an active gigging musician, I slowly began to learn about my new town and its music. Where were people playing, who was booking them, what other local bands are there here. My Town My Music was always there. In the years leading up to the first Thaw year that I was running independently, I had gotten to know the team from being at shows around town. Then when the pandemic hit, our 2nd year fest got cancelled, I had a realization that I needed more help if the event was going to grow at all. Conveniently for me, the MTMM team was having a similar thought of, we need more help if we are going to grow this company. So we met up, chatted a bit about me joining their team, and bringing the festival with me. The rest is history.

Had it not been for Thaw joining forces with MTMM I can gaurentee you this festival would not be as big as it is today.

Contact Info:

• Website: Www.mytownmymusic.com
• Instagram: @MyTownMyMusic // @TheRochThaw
• Facebook: MTMM: https://www.facebook.com/mytownmymusic // The Rochester Thaw: https://www.facebook.com/TheRochThaw

Image Credits
Corrie Strommen Adam Nantz Kate Klaus