(This is my second column on the Middle Waves music festival, published in the print version of Whatzup on Sept. 1)

Festivals are organized by committees, but not many festivals feel the need to engage the services of a vibes committee.

The Middle Waves Music Festival, happening September 16 and 17 at Headwaters Park East and West, has a vibes committee.

It is the vibes committee’s job, according to festival co-organizer Matt Kelley, to make sure the festival gives off the right vibes.

“You know, you have all the usual stuff: logistics and booking and marketing,” he said. “But it was like, ‘Who’s helping this thing have a personality that is distinctly ours?’ That’s what they’re charged with.”

It’s a fair bet that no Fort Wayne event has ever before radiated Middle Waves’ vibes. Middle Waves is a music festival the likes of which Fort Wayne has never seen nor heard.

It could put Fort Wayne “on the map” — a map drawn annually by people who are willing to drive to other states and other time zones for the opportunity to spend several days listening to a live mix tape and basking in vibes.

Middle Waves is what is known as a “destination music festival.” It’s what used to be known to Jack Webb’s counterculture adversaries on “Dragnet” as “a happening.”

People come for the music, of course, but the music is secondary to the ambience, the gist, the camaraderie, the élan.

The vibe.

“Many people in Fort Wayne travel distances large and small to attend destination music festivals,” Kelley said. “The thing you get to experience is the community you’re in. These festivals have a vibe unto themselves. Also…I don’t want to say they’re genre-less. They are curated. But the fact that you can see Kendrick Lamar followed by Radiohead followed by the Avett Brothers and nobody moves…that’s just something that we don’t really see at the festivals that exist right now in Fort Wayne.”

Kelley, who owns the design and marketing firm, One Lucky Guitar, said destination festivals like Middle Waves can’t be marketed like music festivals where a single genre is the theme.

“We have to market the experience,” he said. “And that you might hear Americana and then hip hop and then psychedelic rock and that’s OK. We’re excited about that fact that it will push Fort Wayne out of its comfort zone a little bit in a good way. We want to wake up the next day and say, ‘We did that and we’re cool enough for it.’”

Wondering if we are cool enough for things is a stigma Fort Wayne residents have suffered for decades. But the stigma may be on the wane.

Kelley said he was jogging with a friend of his this summer and his friend wondered aloud if he was cool enough for Middle Waves.

Kelley’s message to his friend and the entire city is: “Yes. You’re cool enough.”

As of last weekend, the festival line-up had been fully announced and it features psychedelic garage rock (Jeff the Brotherhood), post-grunge (Bully), alternative hip-hop (Oddisee), electronic dance music (Tanlines), jazz rap (Sidewalk Chalk), jangle pop (Best Coast) and indie hip-hop (Doomtree).

Local acts will be mixed in throughout, Kelley said.

The news that the Flaming Lips would be headlining the festival generated more shock and astonishment on social media than a string of tornado warnings.

Fort Wayne has hosted popular bands and it has hosted cool bands, but it may never before have hosted a band this popular and cool.

All of this entertainment will occur throughout a Headwaters Park that has been transformed into its own small city: Middlewavesburgh.

And Kelley said he is already hearing from promoters who want to discuss Middle Waves 2017.

“They’re like, ‘What are you doing next year?’ he said. “They’re already planning that far out. They’re presenting options to us, ideas. It’s exciting to think that we’ll have even more options next year.”