A few days before appearing on The Montclair Pod, Dan Campeas floated an idea on social media: What if Upper Montclair had its own music festival?
The response was immediate.
“It felt like everybody had the same thought, but nobody had actually said it out loud yet,” Campeas said. “Then we posted it, and it was like the whole town collectively exhaled and said, ‘Yeah, of course.’”
That post became the beginning of Dan & Day’s Music Festival, a new live music event coming to Bellevue Avenue this fall. And already, it is shaping up to be much bigger than the organizers initially imagined.
Campeas and his partner, Dayanna Ordonez, owners of Dan & Day’s Burger Place, are organizing a daylong music festival in Upper Montclair or “Uptown” as he lovingly calls it, on September 26.
The plan is to close down Bellevue Avenue and transform it into an outdoor concert venue, complete with a large main stage and a full afternoon of live music. Campeas describes the vision as inspired by Jazz Fest energy, though on a smaller scale.
The festival is scheduled to run from noon to 6:30 p.m. Organizers expect five or six bands to perform full sets, along with several solo artists and duos playing shorter sets throughout the day.
While sponsorship packages and final programming details are still being finalized, the overall structure of the event is already in place.
Why This Feels Different
Live music festivals rarely land in this part of Montclair. Most large events tend to center around downtown, leaving Upper Montclair feeling somewhat overlooked.
Dan & Day’s Music Festival is, in part, a response to that.
What surprised Campeas most was how quickly he found advocates from many different corners of town. Not just neighbors or Bellevue regulars, but downtown residents, developers, local business owners, and musicians eager to get involved.
“We’ve received support from people all across Montclair,” Campeas said. “From business owners and developers to individual musicians who just want to be part of it.”
The Upper Montclair Business Association — known locally as UMBA — has also been supportive from the start. While the festival is not officially a UMBA event, the organization and many of its members have helped champion the idea.
The festival itself will operate as a nonprofit, with any revenue beyond operating costs going back into future events and programming.
Campeas acknowledges that attaching the Dan & Day’s name to the festival naturally helps promote their businesses. But he insists the larger goal is community-building.
“We want this to feel like a true community event,” he said. “We want people to feel ownership of it.”
A Homegrown Project
The festival is also deeply personal for Campeas and Ordonez, both of whom have strong ties to Montclair and Upper Montclair specifically.
Campeas talks about Bellevue Avenue less like a commercial corridor and more like the neighborhood street where he grew up. Opening Dan & Day’s there, he said, was never just a business decision. It felt like coming home.
The music festival feels like an extension of that.
“Day and I really love Montclair,” he said. “We love the history here. We want to be part of it.”
And this may only be the beginning.
Campeas says the long-term vision is to eventually grow Dan & Day’s Music Festival into a larger, potentially multi-day event with regional or national acts — something more akin to Maplewoodstock than a typical downtown street fair.
“We want it to become something big,” he said. “Something people really look forward to every year.”
How to Follow Along
Dan & Day’s Music Festival is scheduled for September 26 on Bellevue Avenue in Upper Montclair from noon to 6:30 p.m. The lineup, ticketing details, and sponsorship information are expected to be announced in the coming months.
For updates, follow DanandDaysMusicFest on Instagram.
You can also hear the full conversation with Campeas on this week’s episode of The Montclair Pod.
And if you missed it, check out the Pod’s recent coverage of Farmhouse Fried Chicken, the new restaurant Campeas and Ordonez are opening on Bellevue later this summer
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