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Select Board finds noise violations at Bad Martha’s brewery, orders mitigation plan and stops DJs
Summary
After multiple resident complaints and audio evidence, the Falmouth Select Board found Bad Martha’s Farmers Brewery in violation of its entertainment license and required the business to submit a sound‑mitigation plan, end DJ nights and report progress every six weeks to the town manager.
The Falmouth Select Board on Jan. 6 found that Bad Martha’s Farmers Brewery LLC had violated the conditions of its entertainment license after residents and town staff presented multiple complaints and audio recordings of loud music near the East Falmouth brewery.
Assistant Town Manager Peter Renshaw opened the hearing by summarizing written complaints and three audio/video submissions from neighbors, then played excerpts the complainants provided. The board reviewed a police incident report from Aug. 17 in which an officer reported hearing music while parked near the business. Renshaw noted the license had been issued Dec. 16, 2024, and the Select Board had earlier warned the business about noise complaints during a July hearing.
The brewery’s manager on record, Joshua Flanders, joined company colleagues and told the board they were “here to listen” and take responsibility if they had erred. He said most live music had been outdoors, that musicians often face away from the road and that the brewery had tried to monitor sound readings. “I think the occasions where we have a DJ, I think those are louder occasions,” Flanders said, and offered to reduce programming accordingly.
Board members and the town’s staff discussed potential remedies including moving performers so sound projects away from neighbors, adding sound barriers or angled partitions and using multiple distributed speakers at lower volumes rather than single, powerful speakers. Falmouth Select Board member Douglas C. Brown suggested building a physical staging element to reduce reflection off the building’s flat surfaces; other members urged a concrete timetable for mitigations.
After discussion, the board voted unanimously to find a violation of the entertainment license and to add conditions to the license: the brewery must develop and begin implementing a written plan for physical sound mitigation and for modified programming that aims to prevent repeat violations; the brewery must provide progress updates on that plan to the town manager’s office every six weeks; and, in the interim, the business agreed to remove DJ nights from its programming. The board retained the authority to consider additional discipline if further complaints or violations occur.
The Select Board emphasized that the condition requiring the plan and the reporting schedule will remain attached to the entertainment license; the board said it expected demonstrable progress at each update.
The board’s action was unanimous. No suspension or revocation of the alcohol license was ordered at the hearing.
The hearing record will be used by staff to track compliance and to schedule follow-up reporting from Bad Martha’s to the town manager’s office.
