Photo: Breathe Owl Breathe

This Fourth of July weekend, you can throw some burgers on the grill, take in a parade and blow your hand of with a firecracker per usual.

Option B would include watching more than 30 West Michigan bands perform in downtown Kalamazoo, in between attending community forums on sustainability.

While it was never the vision to create an alternative to a run-of-the-mill Fourth of July, Kalamazoo café and music venue The Strutt has teamed with the I.D.E.A. Foundation to present the inaugural installment of the Boiling Pot Festival on July 3-4.

The music and arts festival will be held at the Arcadia Festival Site. Tickets are $10 per day.

The event's mission is to harness the energy of live local music and the community expression of collaborative art in order to have a dialogue on issues vital to the health of our communities.

"There was no real conscious talk of planning something different," said Andy Catlin, talent buyer at The Strutt who helped bring together the event. "But the people who came together to plan the festival were inevitably creating something alternative, community-focused and unique. The festival would be the same regardless of the holiday, but that's the weekend we chose and so inevitably it is a holiday event."

Featuring bands like Breathe Owl Breathe, Minutes, and Paucity, the festival takes on an indie-rock feel but is infused with other genre.

"I was most excited to put together a Michigan music festival that focused on bands and performers that don't normally play the other Michigan summer festivals," Catlin said. "All the festivals in the forests focus on this same pool of bands, it was fun to curate something that brought together other strands of Michigan music."

Catlin and Co. are still prone to the rigors and hardships that come with launching a large-scale event for the first time, but as Catlin pointed out: "All the headaches and hard work are necessary byproducts of an event we are all very, very sincerely excited about."

In a city that boasts music festivals out the yin-yang (i.e. Island, Greek and Blues Fest), Boiling Pot is quickly sticking out.

"Boiling Pot, to me, feels like it's directed more towards the musicians and artists alike," said Devon Bynon, who will perform at the event as guitarist for Kalamazoo's Hello Victor. "It's not a [random theme] - fest with a couple jam bands that only show up out of the wood work to play.