In coordination with the Office of Experiential Learning, a crew of Berklee students helped produce the inaugural Yellow Dog Music Fest. The following post was written by Noah Gopen, one of the festival organizers. Read a post by fellow organizer Selina Meuross.
By Noah Gopen 
When I was asked to join the Yellow Dog team I had no idea what to expect. I had heard about the festival before—it was some type of beach concert in Cape Cod that featured seven Berklee bands. This was all I knew. When I decided to commit to the position as digital media lead, I thought I would just be setting up Facebook posts and making sure everything ran smoothly. Turns out that Yellow Dog is developing itself similar to any startup business out there, and booking Cody Simpson only made the job even more time intensive.
It was as if one minute we were dealing with a local music festival that featured college bands and the next minute something like, “Oh, whoa, Cody Simpson just accepted our offer, looks like we need to step up our game.” Within a couple of days we took a turn that landed us with an international superstar. This means that every aspect of the festival needs to meet the standards of excellency. So what did we do? We did just that, and we started working on turning a small-scale concert into a festival on the international level.
Two years ago, Yellow Dog was held in the backyard of Sarah Mayo’s house (Sarah started the annual concert), last year the concert featured seven Berklee bands, and this year Cody Simpson is headlining. Who knows what next year will look like, hmmm, Bieber? This entire process has been an amazing journey as our team works together to get firsthand experience setting up an event for an international pop star; I couldn’t have asked for anything more. No one knows what Yellow Dog will evolve into in the next couple of years, but I can promise you that it will increase its greatness and become a staple of Cape Cod entertainment.
Noah Gopen is a sophomore studying music business/management at Berklee, where he serves as assistant tour manager for David Duchovny, executive assistant at Honua Music, and manager of touring band Self Portraits. His role at Yellow Dog is structured as an internship through Berklee’s Office of Experiential Learning.
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Jeff Gopen
Great job! Should be a blast.
Michelle Deitel
We are so proud of you! You are a rock star Noah! We’re so excited for this concert!