The man behind the MidPoint and Bunbury music festivals aims to bring an event he calls the Funbury Music Festival to Anderson Township next year.
Bill Donabedian last month asked the Anderson Park Board for a permit to stage Funbury at the township’s Clear Creek Park June 17-20, 2027. The event would attract 20,000 people a day with music, food and camping, his presentation to the park board said.
Reached via email, Donabedian said he is not able to say much yet.
“I am in the very early stages of looking for a place to do my next festival,” he said. “Clear Creek Park is just one of the potential spaces.”
He’s told the township a bit more in documents obtained by The Enquirer through a public records request.
Their reaction? The Enquirer left messages for park administrators and the head of the park board, but did not immediately hear back.
‘Sparks Will Fly’ at Funbury, organizer promises
Funbury Music Festival – with a tagline of “Sparks Will Fly” – would be “the next chapter after Bunbury,” with “national alternative pop/rock/country acts on multiple stages,” Donabedian’s presentation said.
He also proposed:
A new music festival would create jobs, bring tourists and their dollars, and deliver “positive PR that elevates Greater Cincinnati’s reputation,” the presentation said.
The region lacks a signature music festival event, he said, at a time when millennials and young Gen Xers (who he defines as 25 to 44 years old) crave live music.
Donabedian tied to MidPoint, Bunbury, 3CDC
The MidPoint and Bunbury festivals, both now defunct, brought dozens of hot bands to Cincinnati over the years. MidPoint attracted Booker T. Jones in 2011, Caspian in 2015, Afghan Whigs and St. Paul and the Broken Bones in 2014, and Wussy in 2009 and 2013. Bunbury acts included Jane’s Addiction in 2012, The National in 2013, The Black Keys in 2015, Jack White in 2018 and the Fall Out Boys in 2014 and 2019.
Donabedian, 59, created MidPoint Music Festival in 2002, helming it for the next six years, according to his LinkedIn page. During those years, the festival hosted about 150 bands over three days, he said. MidPoint, staged at Downtown and Over-the-Rhine venues, ended its run in 2017.
From 2006 to 2011 Donabedian worked for Cincinnati Center City Development Corp., the nonprofit known as 3CDC. As the first managing director of Fountain Square, he brought new programming to Downtown’s center, producing some 200 events a year.
Donabedian created Bunbury Musical Festival in 2012 to ran it until 2014. It was last produced, in full, in 2019. In 2022, its then-organizer said the festival would not return.
Donabedian, a drummer who lives in Milford, also launched music festivals called Buckle Up (2014) and Bellwether (2018), while producing shows for Six Flags Parks, including Cincinnati’s Kings Island, since 2019, according to his presentation.
He is working through Whisper Twins Entertainment, which he created in early 2024 as a concert promotion and production company, according to LinkedIn.
Clear Creek ranks as a larger township park
If Donabedian goes forward at Clear Creek, he’d be staging an event at one of the township’s largest parks.
It covers 127 acres at 6200 Batavia Road (also known as State Road 32), just west of Newtown’s border.
The property includes 23 fields for soccer, lacrosse and rugby, six pickleball courts and a paved trail of about three-quarters of a mile, according to the park district web site.
The park serves as the trailhead to the Little Miami Scenic Trail, with the Little Miami River running north and west of park borders. The township bought the first parcel of land for Clear Creek in 1992, adding additional acres over the years.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Organizer of Bunbury music festival wants another go – in Anderson Twp
Reporting by Patricia Gallagher Newberry, Cincinnati Enquirer / Cincinnati Enquirer
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
