ST. CHARLES, Iowa — In less than a week and a half, the St. Charles farmland will be filled with 25,000 music fans a day for Hinterland Musical Festival weekend.

Music fans are excited to see the headliners Tyler The Creator, Kacey Musgraves and Lana Del Rey August 1-3, but they’re also excited about the changes to the festival coming to Central Iowa.

Last year, the temperatures were into the 90s, and there were complaints of overcrowding, lack of shade, and lack of water. Now, they’re expanding. The stage is moving about a half mile over from Madison County to Warren County. They also bought some more land going from 300,000 square feet to over a million square feet.

“The plan was always to move over to this location. Last year when we felt we were bursting at the seams. The space that we had was not giving people enough space to move around,” Hinterland Musical Festival Producer Sam Summers said. “And so, we set it up. We got people in here doing dirt work right after the festival ended, expanding our infrastructure. So, like we added water resources and more shade structures, water misting stations. We’ve gotten a lot of great data from people reaching out, but also we’ve reached out to our customers and checked in.”

Safety is a priority for Summers and the Hinterland planners, especially making sure people are hydrated and staying cool.

“This year we’ve got two dedicated two-inch lines that run out through the entire concourse. So there’s hydrants throughout the concourse and the camping area, direct feeds. In previous years, we’d rely on tanks and water stations that we would have to mobilize to the different areas. We have more shade structures; we have these massive 120-foot tents that are going up in the middle. Then we have different water misting stations and activations as people are coming through our lines to get in,” he said. “We always hand out water on the barricades to folks. This year we’re expanding that and taking it through all the different lines as people are coming in and just making sure people are comfortable.”

Hinterland is also doing something new and unheard of in this industry. They’re calling it “A 90-degree Guarantee”. If it’s forecasted to be over 90 degrees, you can submit to get a refund.

“The idea is that if the temperatures are up above 90 degrees, approaching 100, folks may want the opportunity to return those. And there may be other folks that want to come to the festival and fill those spots,” Summers said. “So, it’s just something that we want to do to call attention to the changing in temperatures and then also just good water for our customer.”

The festival takes over the small town of St. Charles for an entire weekend. That town has a population less than 700 people yet will see visitors from all over the country, and maybe the world, at Hinterland. 

“So, 70% of our people are traveling in from out of town. A lot of them haven’t been to the state before,” the Hinterland owner said. “They are very excited for the new stage, being able to expand into Warren County and bring more people, give the opportunity to more people to see the festival.”

Summers said as of Tuesday, the single-day tickets for Sunday are sold out, but other days and packages are still available, including camp sites. 

This year there will be a parking and shuttle option from the Casey’s Center in downtown Des Moines.

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