Great music, like great beer, is a dance between science and art. Technical precision meets creative expression to create something that celebrates life, comforts hardship, and brings people together. Most often, it’s the product of multiple skilled individuals working together, achieving more than they could on their own. And at its best, that collaboration continues in the presence of the audience it was created for.
Part of the Plan
Live music was always part of the plan for Burial Beer founders Doug and Jess Reiser and Tim Gormley when they were conceptualizing their brewery, which opened in Asheville, N.C. in 2013. They built an outdoor stage at their main location in the South Slope area of downtown, and over the years have set about adding venues for enjoying both live music and their excellent beverages. Their Forestry Camp location across town opened in 2019, providing space for large outdoor concerts, and their 400-seat concert venue Eulogy came online in 2023, right next to the original brewery.
While Burial hosts a constant stream of popular underground and regional acts such as Deep Sea Diver and This Will Destroy You at Eulogy, this summer they’re hosting a series of concerts featuring larger indie acts at Forestry Camp, where they have capacity for 2,200 music fans. Future Islands played in May, followed by The Black Angels in late June and Washed Out in July. The live music continues in October with the annual Burnpile beer and music festival.
“We wanted different genres to actually stop in Asheville rather than going all the way to Charlotte or Nashville,” says Doug Reiser, who said they’ve hosted everything from rock & roll and bluegrass to jazz, hip-hop, and heavy metal. While he and Gormley are big fans of psychedelic rock, they recognize the need to host the range of styles their fans want to listen to, just as they need to brew what those fans want to drink. “You don’t just say, ‘Keep following my vision, my interests matter more.’”
Burial is one of many breweries that now operate as concert venues as much as they do traditional taprooms. While a solo musician playing covers on an acoustic guitar in the corner for tips is a common enough sight at brewery taprooms across the country, many breweries are going deeper, investing in staff, infrastructure, and scheduling to make live music a major part of their business model.
“We share our craft with other artists who have their own craft,” says Reiser. “I think that’s a crucial piece of stewardship that more brewers, winemakers, and anybody who’s part of the hospitality experience should understand and want to connect with.”
Collaborations Set the Tone
Three Magnets Brewing in Olympia, Wash.—a hotbed for music movements from riot grrrl to grunge over the years—got started hosting shows through a connection with a local record shop. Rainy Day Records reached out to them in 2021 to host a lawn concert for Michael Hurley, a Greenwich Village folk icon (who recently passed away), and an ongoing series was born.
Three Magnets has built its following around Self Care, their non-alcoholic beer line, and they named the series after their Scherler NA lager. Scherler Sundays now feature free live shows every Sunday afternoon in July and August, attracting cult acts such as Lavender Country and Swamp Dogg, and this summer they’re putting out a Scherler Beer vinyl release with live recordings from past events.
Three Magnets co-founder Nathan Reilly says they themed their series around their NA offerings both to show concerts can be fun even with non-alcoholic beer, and because they wanted to buck the trends for how non-alcoholic craft beer is marketed.
“The last thing I wanted to do was be a lifestyle brand,” he says. “We do have a genuine interest in music and a rich history collaborating with music. Our goal is just to do cool shit and hope other people think it’s cool, too.”
Beyond live shows, Self Care’s music collaborations have included a 24-pack of beer in which each can features a different image from legendary rock music photographer Charles Peterson (one of his shots of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain was featured in the latest season of The Last of Us), and one-off beers with Doug Marsh of Built to Spill and solo artist Rae Isla. The Paramount Theatre in Olympia connected them with musician healthcare non-profit SMASH Seattle to brew NA beers for live shows.
“We were able to get [former Death Cab for Cutie and The Postal Service frontman] Ben Gibbard on the hook for a collab for that, which was just the awesomest thing ever,” Reilly recalls. Three Magnets has also released some standard-strength collaboration beers as well, including the recent Free Things Are Cool, an 8.3% stock ale brewed to commemorate riot grrrl producer, DJ, and promoter Diana Arens, who recently passed away.
At Burial, Reiser says collaborations with musicians are his favorites, because they’re more experiential than technical.
“Beer doesn’t mean 300 years of brewing traditions and sourcing materials to [musicians],” he says. “It means their favorite thing to do 30 minutes before they go play, or once they get back to the tour bus, or their celebration after they record. You get completely out of the realm of everything we know about brewing and it’s about the final drinking experience.”
A Rural Destination
Stone Cow Brewery in rural Barre, Mass., has been hosting live music since it opened in 2016. Until a couple years ago, these were intimate shows held on their two small stages at the taproom. Stone Cow also happens to be one of the largest dairy farms in the state, with more than 1,300 acres of land. One corner of that includes a natural amphitheater on a hill. In 2023, they built a large stage there for hosting concerts and music festivals.
“The back section of our property is a special place—it’s beautiful,” says co-owner Sean DuBois. “You have a view of Mount Wachusett from there. It’s the best place on earth to drink beer and watch music.”
In July, Stone Cow will host the Party on the Back Forty music festival featuring Shadowgrass, one of the most popular bluegrass bands in the country. This will be followed by the Fields and Forest Forever music festival in August, and a show with U2 and Fleetwood Mac cover bands in September. Stone Cow will set up its beer trailer onsite.
“We have almost unlimited capacity back there,” says DuBois. “We’ve been getting about 1,000 attendees per show, and we hope to break 2,000 for these.”
While Stone Cow is in a rural area—DuBois says there isn’t a single stoplight in the six closest towns—the brewery has become a weekend destination for folks from Boston, about an hour east. There’s even a playground onsite for kids while their parents enjoy music and beer.
Hitting the Right Note
While musical festivals are a great way to get folks onto a brewery property for a day, some carry more significance than others. On September 27, 2024, the remnants of Hurricane Helene hit western North Carolina, devastating the Asheville area. Many homes and businesses were completely destroyed, more than 100 people in the state lost their lives, and thousands were without basic services—including potable water—for months. It hit just two weeks before Burial’s 12th annual Burnpile festival, which had to be canceled. Burial owners and employees spent weeks giving out free meals and drinks at the brewery.
On October 4, Burnpile will return, and Reiser says it will have extra significance for everyone involved.
“I don’t think we would have started Burial if we weren’t going to talk about the difficult, the darkness and the light,” he reflects. “This year’s Burnpile is literally days after the anniversary. What does additional programming in between the bands look like in order to make sure we celebrate the people who joined arms and put this community back up and running?”
It’s not a question Reiser and his fellow co-founders have answered just yet. Whatever they decide on, it will center the human connections the brewery was built on, which Reiser says have often been catalyzed by great music.
“I think people sometimes underestimate how important the ambiance of a proper third place is,” he says. “I got into beer because of the taprooms. I love that experience that draws us together and helps us find our best moments and sometimes helps us connect with people who will change our lives forever. Without the right tunes, it kills it.”
David Nilsen is an Advanced Cicerone and a member of the North American Guild of Beer Writers. He is the host of the Bean to Barstool podcast, and an editor of Final Gravity, a quarterly print beer zine. He lives near Dayton, Ohio, with his wife, daughter, and very irritable cat.
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