WaterWheel: A Sound Foundation

GivingTuesday will take place this week. There are numerous organizations deserving of your support including the WaterWheel Foundation. Here’s a piece that focuses on WaterWheel, which first appeared in our Phish newspaper The Daily Greens, at this summer’s Mondegreen festival.

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Phish created the WaterWheel Foundation in1997 to oversee the band’s various charitable endeavors. The organization regularly takes to the road with the group, spreading awareness of its efforts and raising funds to keep it all in motion. If you stop by the Waterwheel booth you’ll find they’re kind, knowledgeable folks, who are keen to talk about the Foundation’s efforts, and muse on that band from Vermont along with other matters of state (they’ve also been known to assist an errant journalist when his pen explodes at Sphere).

WaterWheel executive director Beth Montouri Rowles is not only a Phish fan but she’s one of a select few who has worked at every one of the band’s festivals. Here she took a few minutes to answer some questions about the organization’s plans for Mondegreen and beyond.

What were the initial goals of the organization back in 1997 and how have they evolved?

We truly have evolved, purposefully—as the fanbase has evolved we have too.  WaterWheel is a truly unique organization.  We’re a partnership between the band and the fan community.  As all of our awareness of the world has changed, we have changed as well.  One of the most amazing things that has effected this change is how the fans have created their own nonprofits to concentrate on their own interests.  The Mockingbird Foundation did that first—also in 1997—and there have been a good number of groups that have organized more recently.  I like to think that WaterWheel has been a catalyst for this positive change in our community.

At Mondegreen we will be raising funds for all of these groups as well as a good number of local groups.

Who are some of the past (and present) beneficiaries and how is this decided?

There are honestly too many for me to start listing.  We’re not even able to keep our website updated with all of them. We’ve just about finished giving donations from the Flood Recovery Fund we created last year, we just did a big round of local Vermont donations and now we have all of our summer tour and Mondegreen beneficiaries.

Because of the outreach we’ve received from the fans, we also started organizing in-person volunteer opportunities at each tour stop along the way so the number of beneficiaries on tour has just increased.  It’s a way to get more fans involved and create even more of a positive impact on the communities we visit.

When you’re back home in Vermont post-tour, what sort of WaterWheel activities do you initiate?

We essentially do the same thing in Vermont that we do on tour to support our local community.  We host fundraisers, we organize in-person volunteer opportunities, we meet so many amazing fans, we spread positivity, we enjoy ourselves. Ha!

As someone who has attended all the festivals over the years, when you close your eyes, what is the first moment, musical or otherwise, that pops into your head?

There are several that pop up simultaneously but two really shine.  One is the moments that the band walked out on stage at the Clifford Ball and the other is the same from Big Cypress.  There’s a great photo of the band from that moment at Clifford Ball and I can tell you that all of us who worked on that event felt exactly the same at that moment, amazed, grateful, excitement, joy. When the band stepped on stage at Big Cypress and started playing “Water In the Sky,” I was way back in the field dealing with something, which I totally forget what that was, and I just started dancing around my golf cart.

You’ve mentioned that a select number of folks (beyond the band) have worked on every festival. How many people have done this? 

I had to text Marji Blea to ask her about this because I know we had a running list and of course, she had it.  Since the first “official” festival, the Clifford Ball, we have had so many amazing folks working these events but to my best knowledge at this point there are only a handful that have been involved in all of them to one extent or another.  Besides me (Dionysian Productions/Phish), Jason Colton (Dionysian Productions/Red Light Management), Kevin Shapiro (Phish), Richard Glasgow (Phish), Burt Goldstein and Danyael Brand (business management), and Marji Blea (Great Northeast Productions/Phish).

What does WaterWheel have in the works for Mondegreen?

We have a lot going on.  Besides the best team of hard-working staff and volunteers who will be behind the tables all weekend, we brought a number of autographed concert posters from our Burlington archives. And we’ll have Mondegreen band-signed posters, per the norm.  I’m guessing those will go fast. 

A very generous fan reached out several months ago who designed and donated a custom Phish-designed vintage Harley Davidson motorcycle that we will be raffling off to one very lucky fan.

Over at Farmhaus, our neighbors in Burlington, Skinny Pancake invited us to set up a table at their Farmer’s Market. We’ve organized a sort of “mini” Freezer there and brought down a bunch of goods from our warehouse from past events, Nalgene’s, tote bags, Pollock goods. All available for a donation.

Jim Pollock is donating a portion from the sale of some of his amazing artwork.  And there’s also, the Foundation which is a highlight for us thanks to our partnership with 100X, who do a terrific job every time.

We’ll also have Divided Sky Foundation, Phellowship, PHRE and GrooveSafe at the Bizzzar Bazaar. And, we’re just so excited about the inclusion of the Phish community groups that have stepped up to run the Pod Stations in the GA campgrounds.  All of them have worked so hard to bring their flavor to the festival and all are running benefits for different nonprofits through the weekend. I can’t wait to see this all unfold.

Do you have a favorite song, set or show from the summer tour?

 I could make something up here but honestly, I’ve been so busy this summer that I haven’t really been able to pay very close attention but the band is crushing it and I’m so grateful to be a part of this crazy ride.  Thank goodness for LivePhish!