Patchogue music festival aims for concert vibe with local flavor

With their third Patchogue music festival set for Saturday night, long time friends — both musicians, entrepreneurs and deep into Long Island's arts and culture scene — hope it builds on the aims of the first two: tuning in more Long Islanders to homegrown music and providing a launchpad for performers.

The Listen Up Long Island Music and Arts Festival, a night of live performances and exhibitions, starts at 6 p.m. on Saturday at Stereo Garden — one year to the date after the inaugural festival at the same Patchogue venue.

Both the first Listen Up and another hosted last September brought five Long Island musical acts under one roof. This third go around, the brainchild of Shay Motion, 36, of Syosset, a guitarist in the band, Sound Creation Station, and a friend, Alexander Terezakis, 29, a Long Beach singer-songwriter with the band, Voodoo Van Jam, will feature nine Long Island artists.

In an effort to grow the festival, its organizers have welcomed two acts who hail from New York City: the rock band, King Falcon, and Big Daddy Marc, who amassed 1.7 million followers on TikTok. They also attracted a major sponsor, D’Addario, Farmingdale-based guitar string and musical instrument accessories company.

"It’s definitely our hope that we can continue to scale it, eventually to an outdoor festival," Terezakis said.

In the meantime, the stage inside the Railroad Avenue concert hall will play host to musicians who in many cases have never performed before crowds as large as those anticipated Saturday night. 

The pair tries to create a concert vibe that gives "local bands the feeling of performing at a major festival," Motion said.

The Listen Up festival, which also has space set aside for specialty food vendors and artists, can also be seen as a musician's version of a resume builder for musicians who want to play the island's annual Great South Bay Music Festival or another outdoor spectacle beyond Long Island.

"The footage from performing a show like this is exactly the kind of material you need when you're applying to perform other, more established festivals across the country," Terezakis said. "If any of these bands bring down the house, the footage from that is just gold."

Terezakis said he also hopes the festival will coax Long Islanders to "listen local," just as they proudly "buy local."

Singer/songwriter Sarah Gross will be one of the locals performing.

Gross, a William Floyd High School graduate and Patchogue resident, will perform with her band at the festival in support of her new EP, "The Library." In recent years, Gross said, she has noticed a few more Suffolk venues for musicians who want to play their own songs as opposed to covers, but many burgeoning artists must still venture into New York City for consistent gigs.

"For songwriters on Long Island, you don’t have as many opportunities to play your music and your songs," she said during a telephone interview while driving up from Nashville where she recently recorded and performed. "A festival like this that’s all original music is really exciting because you’re allowing artists in their own community to showcase what it has to offer."

Playing a festival with 11 artists of varying genres, "you’re definitely in a better opportunity to grab a few new fans on the live front than trying to do a show with one or two other bands," said Chris Ruben, the singer and lead guitarist of The Chris Ruben Band, which performed as last year's festival and is back in 2025.

"It’s definitely helpful," Ruben added, "on what scale, that’s yet to be determined."