Rataj Berard
Fresh off the AtwoodFest stage, local guitarist Dan Walkner chats with Mama Rökker while he chows down at her backstage bistro.
It’s Saturday afternoon on Atwood Avenue, and Madison’s biggest neighborhood festival is in full swing. The sun is shining, the streets are packed, and the sultry sound of rock ’n’ roll music — and the enticing smell of garlic bread — lingers in the air.
AtwoodFest is a great party by any measure, but one of its best-loved traditions actually takes place behind the scenes. For the last 14 years, Michelle Schneiderman (aka Mama Rökker) has shared her legendary hospitality with hundreds of hungry musicians, roadies, crew members and other festival VIPs at Mama Rökker’s Band Bistro.
“Sometimes I think, ‘What’s wrong with you, girl?’” Schneiderman says with a laugh as she surveys her backstage feast. “Nobody in their right mind would ever make 800 meatballs.”
A tent behind Monty’s Blue Plate Diner serves as an open-air green room, complete with a buffet line, plenty of seating and umbrellas for shade. As the guitar riffs swell from the Harmony Bar stage, Schneiderman bustles about making sure the tables are stocked with vats of homemade pasta and mountains of fresh salad. Guests fill their plates, and you’d better believe they’re going back for seconds, because Mama Rökker insists.
Schneiderman, 71, is the mother of the mononymous Rökker — a musician, publisher of Maximum Ink magazine and Max Ink Radio, purveyor of Rökker Vodka and longtime AtwoodFest organizer. The pair has teamed up to feed the festival bands since 2002, but even before that, Schneiderman was famous for catering Rökker’s shows around town. She’s fed more than a thousand musicians over the years, by his estimate.
“I do the booking, she does the cooking,” Rökker says. “Mama Rökker’s Band Bistro is the secret ingredient of AtwoodFest.”
The planning starts several months in advance. Schneiderman stockpiles boxes of pasta, jars of sauce and other dry goods (and stores them all over the house, her husband points out), and keeps an eye out for sales on meat. She makes as much as she can ahead of time, freezing as she goes, and transports the whole operation from Waukesha to Madison the week before the festival. From 2002 to 2013 (when the event was known as Atwood Summerfest), the Schneidermans footed the bill, but when it switched to AtwoodFest in 2014, the festival began providing a budget to help feed the bands.
“The trick is knowing when to thaw everything out,” says Schneiderman, who keeps a detailed calendar to help organize the whole operation. “You just can’t believe or fathom what goes on these few weeks.”
Schneiderman’s love of music started when she was a teenager in the 1950s and ’60s, back in the days of American Bandstand and canteen shows. She met her husband — an electrical engineer who prefers classical music and opera — in 1964 and introduced him to the rock ’n’ roll lifestyle. She ran a music venue, Mishelli & Co., in Waukesha and spent countless hours supporting her sons’ musical pursuits.
“They were always pounding on the drums — we had to get earplugs,” she recalls. “I think they drummed their daddy crazy.”
In addition to raising two rockers, Schneiderman has also served as a surrogate mama to many artists over the years. Some of her favorite folks to see (and feed) backstage are local disco dance band V05 (which includes Isthmus arts and culture editor Catherine Capellaro), national blues act Sonny Knight & the Lakers and Madison tribute band Steely Dane. And the bands love her back. “When I was booking Sonny, one of the reasons he said he’d play was the backstage hospitality,” Rökker says.
“I remember one year,” adds Schneiderman, “the Outlaws showed up the next morning at Rökker’s house for more pasta.”
Nobody appreciates a homecooked meal quite like a touring musician.
“This is fantastic,” says Dan Walkner, a guitarist with the local blues-country band Wrenclaw who was playing with Teddy Davenport on Saturday. “Backstage at a normal show, we’d be outside changing our shirts in an alley.”
Schneiderman’s hospitality reminds Walkner of his own mother and of all the other rock ’n’ roll moms who seem to live to support the music.
“They’re always the first ones out on the dance floor, the first ones to help out with anything,” Walkner says. “That’s what it takes to make this community work.”
Mama Rökker’s Band Bistro stats from 2016 AtwoodFest
Number of meatballs: 800
Loaves of garlic bread: 14
Amount of pasta and sauce: 10 gallons sauce, 15 Pounds of pasta
Rockers (and friends) fed: About 200
