Brothers Brad and Matt Shultz, like many young teens, were hungry for a life beyond Bowling Green and dreamed of showcasing their talent to the world. Yet, as their dreams became a reality with their band Cage the Elephant, their ties to the community only became stronger. Family, friends and home would be a constant theme in their interviews whether for Rolling Stone or Kentucky Living. In 2012, after two critically acclaimed releases, Cage the Elephant has taken a break from a rigorous touring schedule to come home to work on its third album and enrich the local scene by curating the Starry Nights Music & Art Festival.

Cage has long been associated with other local artists. Members Brad Shultz, Matt Shultz, Jared Champion, Daniel Tichenor and Lincoln Parrish honed their skills alongside other artistic minds hanging around The Pirate House. The former fraternity house, which was scheduled for demolition at the time, had been temporarily claimed by Micah James of the Karmadons, who, with other friends, created what was for a time the bohemian hub of Bowling Green.

Songwriters, visual artists and musicians collaborated and fed each others’ creativity at The Pirate House. The walls became a canvas and the floors a stage as it served as host to endless parties featuring local bands. Many of the bands associated with the house are still together or have evolved into other active groups. Several, including CTE, Sleeper Agent and Morning Teleportation, have gone on to claim national attention and others, such as Schools and Thee Japanese School Girls, appear poised to do the same. In November of 2009, The Pirate House shows came to an end – Morning Teleportation was playing to a crowd so large the floor gave way. Though the damage was converted into a work of art, it marked the end of an era and its residents moved on.

The Shultzes hope to bring some of the old Pirate House magic back for Starry Nights. Their mantra for the festival is to do “a lot of things most would not dare to create a family atmosphere.” While they would like to see Starry Nights grow into a local Bonnaroo-size event, they believe that many of the massive festivals that dominate the music landscape have become institutionalized and have lost touch with the people.

“That’s where the culture is,” according to Matt. “Family and friends enjoying themselves and being part of the experience. We want to watch what happens naturally and to help magnify that.”

“A lot of that is just the approach” adds Brad. “It’s not about commericiality and major corporate sponsors, it’s really about the music, the experience and bringing people together.”

Ticket prices have been set to a reasonable $45 for a two-day pass, which includes two nights of camping.

They have secured permission from the owners of Ballance Farms in Oakland, where Starry Nights will be, to use the property as a blank canvas, including creating some permanent, environmentally friendly art installations. They want to involve as many community members as possible and encourage campers to decorate their campsites. Those showing the best decorated site will secure tickets for life.

Recreation will take place alongside the artistic endeavors with a glow-in-the-dark disc golf course winding through the site and what they hope will be the world’s largest game of Capture the Flag.

Another unique event taking place is the Pancake Breakfast Contest, an addition by Brad that harkens back to memories of The Pirate House. As Matt explained, after the crowd had gone home, the bands would stay up through the night exchanging ideas and playing records for each other. In the wee hours of the morning, various people would cook up some breakfast and the artists would break bread together. And so, the Pancake Breakfast Contest will involve winners being selected to join all the bands for breakfast, where they can have personal time to meet and chat with performers.

The Starry Nights Music & Arts Festival will be Sept. 28-29 at Ballance Farms in Oakland, just north of Bowling Green. Local bands will be featured Friday night, but lineup is yet to be chosen and will be done through fan voting on the Starry Nights’ website at www.starrynightsfestival.com. The options will be 15 all original local bands chosen by a who’s who of the local scene including: Jeff Sweeny, Mike Natcher, Tommy Starr, Chris Rutledge, Brian Graves, John Tidball and David Downing, as well as Brad, Matt and their manager, Ryan Zimwalt.

Each of these music luminaries is providing a list of their top 15 favorite local groups and the 15 most named groups will form the list from which the voters can choose. Announcement of the lineup is expected in early September after about three weeks of voting time. You can follow the festival on Facebook for updates regarding the contest and other news.

Beginning at noon Saturday, national acts will be featured, including a few that started locally. The lineup includes Portugal. The Man, Manchester Orchestra, MiMOSA, Justin Townes Earle, The Whigs, Sleeper Agent, Moon Taxi. JEFF The Brotherhood, Margot & The Nuclear So and So’s, Morning Teleportation, Wild Belle, Space Capone, PUJOL, The Kingston Springs, Five Knives, Bad Cop and Cage The Elephant.

In addition to working tirelessly on planning and promoting Starry Nights, Brad and Matt are using their tour break to work on an upcoming album they hope to be released in the spring. All the band members gather in town four days a week to write and record demos. Many of the songs have been written in the last six to eight months, while others being looked at were written some time ago and not considered for previous albums. According to Matt and Brad, their process is substantially different this time around.

In the past, though ideas came from all members as well as others, Matt wrote all the lyrics. As Brad describes it, “This time we are letting it fly by the wind and every individual is open to the songs changing … Even bare bones songs – everybody is bringing to table and they are all getting broken apart and put back together.”

Matt explains that his ownership of the songs has become “less precious, more collective and based on what is best for the song. It’s a great place to be creatively,” he says, adding that “pride comes before the fall.” He has evolved to “be able to open my mind and heart for whatever is best. It’s a scary place because you get strong ideas, but it’s equally surprising when change comes and it wins you over.”

The songs they are re-examinging were not left off previous releases because they weren’t good, but because the band felt they didn’t sound like Cage The Elephant songs. Today that notion has been tossed out and they no longer put constraints on what their sound is or what may or may have commercial appeal. It’s about making music they love.

“We were afraid a song might be too obscure or too poppy instead of writing for that particular song. We’ve let go of those constructs and write for the pure creative experience and whatever is best for the song,” Matt said. “Living in London we were writing a bunch of songs we didn’t feel were that great but were in the same vein as the first album and we were writing others that we were excited about but thought they weren’t CTE.”

“We realized CTE doesn’t have to have a particular sound – we can go anywhere we want; that’s the beauty of art,” Brad added.

For the band, the third album is a welcome break. Their career took off after they were discovered at the 2007 South By Southwest and signed, embarking immediately on a UK tour. The next year they struggled overseas, sometimes playing shows to an audience of three, until they finally built a fan base and became a sensation. For almost two years they were also impacted by the media and their management’s attempts to groom and pigeonhole them. Always seeking exploitive headlines, they were presented as bad boy, rock-and-roll rebels born of a repressive, Southern cult-like upbringing. Their rise across the pond was largely unnoticed stateside.

Upon returning to the States, a bit older and much wiser, they were ready for new management and a career on their terms. Their new album had already been written and they pushed to soft release the debut album and release the second album right away, having grown weary of performing the same songs during almost two years of constant touring. It was however, thankfully, not to be and U.S. audiences would soon become familiar with songs like “Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked” from their self-titled debut through extensive radio play and its inclusion in commercials, movies and video games.

“We returned at the end of November, recorded the second album, released the first and within a month it was moving up the charts,” Brad said.

Inclusion of “Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked” on the Borderlands video game’s opening sequence, as well as its commercial trailers, put their single on televisions around the country regularly. Borderlands became a sponsor of WWE’s Monday Night RAW, which resulted in the trailer being broadcast throughout the program as well as in promotions for it. This alone generated major exposure, as, according to the company’s ad sales site, “RAW is consistently the highest-rated regularly scheduled program on cable television, and is the longest running episodic entertainment series in television history.”

“No one in the band knew how big that was. Video games are the modern day MTV,” Matt said. “We had never experienced anything like it, never could have anticipated. There was no hype behind the game, no one even knew it. Jared’s really into video games and it passed his rod, so we gave direct permission for the song to be used.”

In the end, close to 400,000 copies of the album were sold and three Top 5 singles produced. Finally, in January 2011, their second release, “Thank You, Happy Birthday,” debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 chart.

This time around, they refused to become pawns of the media and they established a more symbiotic relationship with new management that earned their trust. Interviews and promotions began to pay homage to their roots and the family and community that had supported and encouraged their talent. They in turn worked to shine the spotlight on other groups from the area whose music they respected, playing demos for anyone that would listen and enlisting local acts to warm up for them or participate in Bowling Green-themed shows.

But Brad and Matt are quick to point out that their loyalty is not just based on shared beginnings, but the quality of bands that have emerged from the local scene, insisting that several of the bands are among their favorites they’ve heard anywhere.

“My favorite songwriter up-and-coming is Tiger Merritt – he’s one of the most brilliant songwriters,” Matt said.

And the Bowling Green audience continues to influence Cage The Elephant.  “As a writer it’s hard enough to stay relevant in BG music scene and I’m just as much challenged with what local fans will think than by our audience as a whole.”

And so, CTE embarks on a new journey from their Bowling Green base, both with their new album and the festival they hope will become their legacy.

“It’s something we wanted to really give back to the community because this community has given so much to us,” Matt and Brad agreed.