Fest, I’m coming home (photo: Kaitlyn Laurel McGann).
How do you explain the Fest, the annual punk rock music festival that takes place in the Florida university town of Gainesville, to someone who has never attended it before? Well, if you’re Rice and Bread Magazine, you interview its attendees and the bands that play it and then, most importantly, sit down with Fest organizer Tony Weinbender for some real talk. So, that’s exactly what we did.
We hope that what follows encapsulates the almost indescribable feeling of being at a music festival the way it should really be done: regardless of the music genre it focuses on (punk rock!), the Fest strips everything down to the basics of friends, family and fun. The Fest is a different kind of music festival and Weinbender started it in 2002 with the very idea of doing something different.
Now a huge undertaking with 250-plus bands playing over three days in Gainesville and two days of Pre-Fest in neighbouring Tampa, Fest has not strayed from its do-it-yourself roots.
The result is like a big punk rock family reunion at the end of every October.
The players:
Fest organizer: Tony Weinbender
Weinbender started The Fest 13 years ago when he moved from Virginia to Gainesville, Florida to take a job. With a history of promoting punk rock shows and playing in a DIY band, Weinbender began working at a college radio station in Virginia where helped to start a music conference called MACRoCk, which is still around to this day. When he ended up in Gainesville, the idea came up to start something similar in his new home.
Weinbender: A bunch of us in Gainesville were sitting around one summer, drinking 40s and someone said, ‘You should do MACRoCk down here.’ But I didn’t like the conference part of it. I liked helping friends and doing the festival part, and that communal vibe that happens, but I didn’t like organizing speakers and all of that stuff. So everyone was like, ‘Just make it a party then.’
Fest band: Devon Kay - Direct Hit!, Devon Kay and the Solutions
Kay’s first experience at The Fest was in 2012 at Fest 11 with his rambunctious Milwaukee/Chicago pop-punk band Direct Hit! Last year, the now Boston-based musician played three sets at Fest 12, one with Direct Hit!, one with his own project, Devon Kay and the Solutions, as well as a solo acoustic set. He remembers his first experience at Fest 11 vividly, despite being highly inebriated.
Kay: When Direct Hit! got there it was so much bigger than we thought. There were people everywhere and we were all checking things out. I was watching Masked Intruder at one of the venues and had just been handed my fifth double vodka and tonic by my girlfriend when I got a text from [vocalist/guitarist] Nick [Woods] saying we were going on in five minutes. So I downed the drink really fast and I stumble-ran my way across the street to the place we were playing and there was a line around the venue, and I had no idea it was for us. Inside it was hot, and sweaty, and full, and incredible, and there were people outside of the window who were crowd surfing and it was just unreal. It was a sea of bodies and I don’t know what it would have been like to be in that audience because it was just humans, fluid and gross all over each other. It was awesome. One of our top five shows ever, I’d say.
Fest band: Greg Barnett - The Menzingers
Pop-punk band The Menzingers have gone from being what Weinbender calls “Fest babies” to seniors of the long-running festival. The Philadelphia-based foursome look forward to The Fest each year and will be playing it for the eight year running this October.
Barnett: We’ve played every single one since The Fest 6 and we haven’t had a year off. It’s so weird to think back. I was under 21 and we were opening up a show at [Gainesville venue] 1982 and there were three people there. And that’s not a lie, it wasn’t like there were 20 people, no, there were three people there, and they were our friends. I think the Flatliners headlined that show, and there were some other people there, but it wasn’t like it is now. It’s become something crazy, and it’s great.
Fest attendee: Yanira Lopez
Fest 13 will be Lopez’s sixth Fest in a row, which is really something considering she travels every year all the way from Los Angeles, California: at least a seven-hour flight. When asked how Fest compares to other festivals she goes to, she says simply, “It doesn’t.”
Lopez: I’ve never been to a festival like this one, where it’s just small bars and venues and anywhere you stand you get a great view. And the headliners aren’t elitists; they’re all attending Fest, just like everyone there.
Fest attendee: Dixie Ross
Attending her fifth Fest this year, Ross doesn’t have to travel nearly as far as Lopez; she lives only a couple of hours away from Gainesville, just outside of Tampa. At 37 years old, Ross says she’s “not your typical Fester,” but it’s still her favourite festival, mostly because she likes bouncing around between the different venues and the positive energy of everyone there.
Ross: The people at Fest are your best friends. Everyone has common bonds through the music, but everybody’s so nice. You meet people from all over the world. The people in the bands are down to earth and it’s really fun.
It’s all about the wristbands (photo: Dixie Ross).
What makes the Fest different is that it’s not trying to compete with the glut of music festivals that seem to be popping up everywhere the past few years. Weinbender books Fest like he’s planning a big party with friends and family. It’s not a question of how to make the most money, or how get the most people out, rather it’s how he can get as many of the people that he loves in the same place at the same time to celebrate the common bonds of music, beer, food and fun (not necessarily in that order).
Weinbender: What separates us is that we’re totally a different beast than other festivals. Instead of seeing a giant list of headliners that makes your jaw drop, our list is more like a giant list of friends and family. There are a lot of new, up and coming bands and we pride ourselves on really trying to help bands out.
Kay: Fest is definitely it’s own unique feel. It’s more community-driven than big festivals like SXSW, which has a very impersonal feeling. The reason Fest is so special is a band like Devon Kay and the Solutions might play six shows a year and record once in awhile, but we can go to Fest and basically have all of our fans shipped in for the best show of the year. It’s really hard to find a bad show or a bad experience at Fest because everyone is there for the same reason, with all of these nerds nerding out over the same stuff. It’s almost like Comic-Con, but way dirtier.
Talk to people at Fest, whether it’s attendees, bands or Weinbender himself, and you’re sure to quickly hear the term “family reunion” (it’s even right up there in our intro). And if there’s one way to paint the picture of what actually goes on at Fest, that term “family reunion” works best: that is, if you’re family is a bunch of rambunctious punk rockers who like to sing along to their favourite bands, crowd surf and pogo/slam dance at the drop of a snare drum, and basically stay up for a week straight partying and nerding out about music.
Weinbender: Ever since Fest started, instead of going onto a list of bands on the Internet and dealing with different agency groups like bigger festivals do, we looked to our friends and family and said, ‘Hey, we’re going to throw this party. Do you want to come?’ And that’s still how it is today. We had a core crew when Fest first started, and it was friends and family, and then everyone invited their friends to come and play and that group morphed into a next generation of Fest family, almost like the originals were like the seniors, or the camp counselors in a way. Bands like The Menzingers, and The Flatliners, and Broadway Calls, and Banner Pilot, and Lemuria and The Copyrights, that’s like one whole, big family, and they all have bands that are part of their family that they bring in. There are bands that play year after year because they love it and it’s a great opportunity to see all of their friends. And then you see them taking each other out on tour and you see these connections.
Barnett: It is like a family reunion. Even if The Menzingers didn’t play, I would still go, just because I love being able to see a band and then hang out with my friends that I only get to see once or twice a year. And it’s cool because it immediately feels like everyone is just picking up from the last Fest. Back in that mindset, and here we are again. There’s no catching up like, “What have you been up to?” It’s just like being with your buds that would hang out every day. And that’s what so cool about it.
Virginia’s Tim Barry meets an eight-months-pregnant Dixie Ross at Fest 10.
For a lot of the attendees and bands that travel to Gainesville every year, not going is rarely an option. As Weinbender explains, he fully expects certain bands to come back each and every year by design because, as he says, “If you’re having a party, you’re going to invite your friends. And then at your next party are you going to say, ‘No, all of those friends came last time. Nah, we’re going to invite a whole different group of friends this time.’ That doesn’t make sense.” Meanwhile, Ross says that even a late-term pregnancy didn’t stop her from rocking out at Fest 9 in 2010. She refers to going to Fest while eight months pregnant as “an adventure.”
Weinbender: As long as I am doing Fest, there will always, always be a group of bands that are invited every year. And a lot of those bands have sacrificed a lot on their own part to make it every year. Broadway Calls were on a major tour out in California, took the day off and flew out to Florida on their own dime, played wearing Winnie the Pooh outfits and then flew out the next day to rejoin their tour. The Smith Street Band flew in and out like that, too, from Australia! The Smith Street Band, as long as they’re alive, I think, will always play Fest. Mikey Erg, since his first time at Fest, has not only not missed it but has always played in at least five or six bands.
Ross: Once you leave Fest, you’re already scheduling it for the next year. So every year you’ve gotta go, no matter what. You find a way to go. Even if it’s just for a day, you’ve gotta go.
Weinbender is constantly fielding suggestions, questions, concerns and thanks from his attendees and bands, but because he’s running his balls off throughout the whole festival, not many bands get a chance to say everything they want to him. Kay and Ross say if they had the opportunity to sit down with the man behind the Fest and tell him how they feel about it, they’d keep it casual.
Kay: I’d just say, ‘Keep it up, man.’ It’s like anything else; if it starts getting gimmicky or wacky it would tarnish it, but I haven’t seen that. Fest is still mainly driven by what people want and I’m not knocking other festivals like Riot Fest, but a lot of them have drifted away from where it started now that you have Jane’s Addiction and of that dog shit that’s going to be peppered in over what used to be a primarily punk-driven festival. If a band like Devon Kay and the Solutions can get onto the lineup of Fest for the second straight year it just shows that Tony’s going about booking bands the right way. You’ll always have your heavy hitters like The Descendents this year, but you still see bands that you haven’t heard of and bands you wouldn’t have seen otherwise and that’s really cool. Instead of getting all of these A-list bands you get the opportunity to experience something new, and that’s far more influential than just going to see Weezer play the fucking Blue Album… again.
Ross: The bands they choose are perfect. In this year’s lineup, some of the bands I haven’t seen in a looong time and I’ve been going to shows forever, so that kind of draws people there with the unique bands they get. And there are also bands that you always know will play the Fest, so that’s exciting, too, to be able to count on that band to be there.
Fest: Get stoked! Get pumped! (photo by Jessica Flynn).
Weinbender appreciates the intense dedication of Fest attendees and bands, and he understands that many people around the world now equate the small city of Gainesville, Florida, a college/university of less than 150,000 people, as being a punk rock mecca that they will return to year after year after year. And, for that reason and many others, he’s stoked.
Weinbender: A lot of attendees joke around and say it’s like their Christmas. And Christmas is fun, but this isn’t like Christmas to me. It’s like that summertime family reunion, or almost like summer camp in a lot of ways, even though it doesn’t happen in summer. It’s that thing where you get to go back to camp and you get to see all of your friends and family. And we do have a lot of core people that come back every year and that’s been our biggest fight, to be able to accommodate everyone in such a small town in Gainesville. But part of the charm of the Fest is that it is in Gainesville. It is in a small town that’s very manageable. When you’re here, you’re not overwhelmed by the city; the city is overwhelmed by you. And if none of this fully explains what Fest is all about to those who have never been, or just aren’t able to go, Los Angeles-based attendee Lopez gives a very simple, direct explanation to her employer when they asks her where’s she’s off to during the week of Halloween.
Lopez: This is what I put every time I request Fest time off at work: “Going to Gainesville, Florida for a week to sing along with my best friends, drink a bunch, eat a lot of pizza, and hopefully see some gators. I’ll bring you back a beer koozie.”
Fest takes place in Gainesville, Florida on October 31-November 2.
Pre-Fest takes place in Tampa, Florida on October 29-30.
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