The Brooklyn electro-dance-pop duo EarPwr
By Jim Testa
Imagine if you could invite all your favorite
bands and all your best friends to a big party,
and let everyone hang out and drink and listen
to music until they were ready to pass out,
and sleep on the floor and then do it all
again the next day, and the next, and the
next…
That’s sort of what W.E. Fest is like.
W.E. Fest – or The Wilmington Exchange
Festival, to be more precise – is an
independent, DIY music festival that takes
place every year, wrapped around Memorial
Day Weekend, in the town of Wilmington, NC.
While not nearly as well known or mammoth
as commercial festivals like SXSW or the CMJ
Music Marathon, W.E. Fest has charms all its
own. It’s run by volunteers, not professionals;
showcases only indie performers; and in place
of the careerism, commercialism, and overwhelming
me-first-ism of those bigger, more corporate
festivals, W.E. Fest actually encourages its
participants to hang out, socialize, network,
and bond. It’s like summer camp for
indie rockers, only way noisier and with way
more alcohol.
The Challenged
2008 marked the 12th annual W.E. Fest, which
ran from Thursday, May 22 to Memorial Day,
May 26. Having outlived a variety of venues
in gentrified downtown Wilmington, W.E. Fest
has found the perfect home in the multi-tiered
Soapbox Laundro-Lounge, which features a basement
dance club, a first floor lounge with a small
stage and bar (and a laundromat in the back,
in case you need to wash some dirty clothes,)
a second floor DJ lounge, and a big rock club
that can fit several hundred people on the
top level. W.E. Fest made use of all of these
facilities, offering fans a choice of three
different, fully-booked venues a night –
for the ridiculously low cover charge of $1.
W.E. Fest began in 1996 when five friends
– revulsed by the commercialism, greed,
and major-label domination they found at the
regional music festivals they’d been
attending in places like Philadelphia and
Austin – decided to try it doing it
the themselves, they way they’d like
to see a music festival run. In those pre-Internet
days, bands were linked by an underground
network of pen pals, print fanzines, and mix-tape
cassettes; that, along with a lot of positive
word-of-mouth, got the festival started and
kept it growing through its early years. W.E.
Fest only had two rules: No major label bands,
and no corporate sponsors (although a local
micro-brewery would donate a keg or two each
year for after-hours “late nights,”
when the action would move from the clubs
to a basement or loft and keep the music going
until dawn.)
For the 2008 edition, organizer Kenyata Sullivan
tried something different: He asked friends
from various bands, websites, zines, and college
radio to book their own showcases, and he
recruited a few sponsors to help defray costs.
That allowed him to keep the admission price
at one dollar, offer the bands free beer,
and stock the “Exchange” part
of the Wilmington Exchange Festival with a
roomful of free magazines, CD’s, DVD’s
- and in the case of one sponsor, a local
“adult entertainment” company,
condoms.
L.A. Tool & Die
“In this new music economy, money has
to come from somewhere, and I can only see
four places where independent events can generate
revenue: 1) the artists themselves, 2) the
music fans, 3) the music venues, or 4) companies
willing to sponsor the events,” Kenyata
explained. “Most events try to pry money
from all four of these revenue sources, but
in our case, we feel that musicians should
be respected and applauded, fans should be
appreciated and encouraged to participate
in seeing live music, and venues who respect
both the fans and artists should be rewarded.
That means that the companies who benefit
financially from brand exposure - companies
being entities that exist primarily to make
money, and in a perfect world, non-predatory
companies - would be the source of the money
necessary to create these kinds of events,
because everyone benefits that way.”
“That being said,” he added,
“if we don't get a single sponsorship
dollar moving forwards, we'll just sell our
shit on eBay and do it again, fuck it! You
can't let the companies ever tell you how
to do things. It's important to remember that
we did this for free for over a decade, and
we can do this for free for another decade
if need be. It's important to always retain
the power to tell anyone who's behaving badly
or unethically to fuck off.”
Having a few dollars to play with provided
some support for this year’s festival,
but Kenyata stressed that money wasn’t
really an issue with something like the W.E.
Festival, where no one takes a salary and
profit isn’t a motivation. “The
single most important principle of an expanding
DIY event is that if everyone else bails on
you at the last minute, you can still get
the jobs done yourself, because you know how,
you've done it before,” he said. “Experience
under dire circumstances gives you an amazing
amount of power when it comes to holding on
to the basic ethics of an event.”
As far as having other people book the bands,
Kenyata felt this was also a really good move.
“Because we decided who got to book
and who didn't, we still had some control
over the quality of the event as a whole,
but we as organizers also opened ourselves
up to being surprised and excited by things
that were new to us,” he enthused. “We
had faith in the people who had faith in us,
and with a very few exceptions, that faith
paid off in spades. We're going to do it like
that again next year, specifically looking
for music critics who we think have good ears,
critics who ethically understand where we're
coming from, and we can't wait for 2009.”
Mobile Deathcamp
W.E. Fest has always been known for its diversity
– everything from acoustic singer/songwriters
to porch folk to indie rock to death metal
to hip hop, with a thousand variations and
combinations in between – as well as
for keeping one step ahead of the indie underground.
W.E. Fest alumni include Dismemberment Plan,
XBXRX, Lamb Of God, Discount, Mae, NYC anti-folkers
Dufus, and Mooney Suzuki, all of whom played
Wilmington early in their careers.
This year proved no different. In the past,
would-be performers submitted demo tapes,
CD’s, or in more recent years, links
to their MySpace pages, and were evaluated
by a “gauntlet” of locals and
W.E. Fest regulars who then extended invitations
to play. This year, with showcases booked
by organizations like Bootleg and Performer
magazines, NJ’s Organic Entertainment,
Liberated Matter.com, and Trekky Records (and
yes, myself representing JerseyBeat.com,)
among others, Kenyata and the other Wilmington
regulars got to see a lot of bands they hadn’t
heard before. So, any standouts?
“So many that it's hard to pick and
choose!” Kenyata said. “EAR PWR
were my biggest freshman surprise, out of
the bands who played for the first time this
year, I have to say they're the ones that
immediately stand out as just flat-out jaw
dropping. But I was stunned, there was so
much genuinely amazing music, Hammer No More
The Fingers, Spiraling, Future Kings Of Nowhere,
the 910 Noise set was fucking insane, Endless
Mic absolutely conquered, The Milwaukees played
perhaps the best set I've ever seen from them,
The Bloodsugars, The Barnraisers, Mobile Deathcamp,
Jesus Christ, so many people absolutely killed.
Anyone who reads this is gonna think I'm fulla
shit, but everyone who was there is gonna
deservedly add other bands to that list I
just pulled out of my ass. This year was awesome!”
NJ's
prog-pop Spiraling
And indeed it was. For the sake of journalistic
objectivity, let me note here that I not only
booked one of the showcases, but performed
at another. So while I am hardly an indifferent
spectator, I can report with full honesty
that the breadth and caliber of the performers
this year matched or surpassed anything I’ve
seen in the previous 11 years of W.E. Fest
(more on that in a bit.)
One of the more, shall we say, unexpected
acts this year turned out to be Zero1, the
Hollywood grunge-metal band fronted by actor/comic
Hal Sparks (best known for his long-running
role in Showtime’s “Queer As Folk,”
and as one of the hosts of “Talk Soup.”)
“Zero 1 flew on their own dime all the
way from Los Angeles, CA to Wilmington, NC
specifically to play WE Fest - for free -
because they love what they do,” noted
Kenyata. “It's pure for them, and that's
the gig. WE Fest has always been supposed
to be about a multitude of voices. The underground
isn't just about noise, punk, low-fi, etc,
it's about all of us who are doing what we
love at any cost because it's just who we
are, whether that be traditional LA Metal
or front porch country. Zero 1 stepped out
of their comfort zone and went above and beyond
the call of duty to join our tradition. That's
badass, especially since they know we evolved
from an aggressive DIY punk community that
might not have an immediate appreciation for
mainstream metal. Massive respect to Zero
1.”
New Brunswick NJ's psyche-noise experimentalists
Terminal Reynaldo
So let’s talk about the music: W.E.
Fest 2008 served up about 90 different acts
over its five days, a variety of sounds and
styles that probed and celebrated every nook
and cranny of the indie underground. I could
go on for days about all of the great music
I saw, but for the sake of WonkaVision’s
bandwidth, I’ll limit myself to a few
of the most memorable performances:
Thursday night’s opening salvo featured
the So So Glo’s from Brooklyn, who brought
the fevered energy of the Clash, tempered
with current political agitprop and an energy
and earnestness that distance them from the
army of jaded, ironic Brooklyn bands who worry
about their couture and haircuts more than
their music.
NJ’s Spiraling played bracing keyboard-dominated
prog-rock that brought a pop freshness to
the bombast of classic-rock icons like Yes
and ELO.
Terminal Reynaldo, from New Brunswick, NJ,
turned that town’s reputation for basement-punk
on its head with their ethereal blend of post-punk
weirdness, pop chops, and mesmerizing songwriting
(flavored with offbeat synth and sax parts.)
The Meltdowns
Another NJ band, The Meltowns from Jersey
City, provided a funky pop-punk dance party
that brought the crowd to its feet (so good,
in fact, that they were invited to play again
the next night!)
Friday night featured a hip hop party in
the basement, highlighted by North Carolina’s
Endless Mic, who prove that white MC’s
don’t need to play the nerd-fool to
rap. The lounge featured youthful singer/songwriter
Anthony Fiumano, the entrancing acoustic duo
known as Autumn Window, blistering pop/punk
from NYC’s The Challenged and Philadelphia’s
What Happened?, and a galvanizing set from
veteran NJ rockers The Milwaukees, who lived
up to the ambitious title of their most recent
album, American Anthems Vol. 1.
Saturday night brought suave, sophisticated
singer/songwriter Brett Harris, one of the
many performers at this year’s Fest
from the Durham/Winston-Salem/Charlotte “college
triangle” scene. L.A. Tool & Die
provided blustery fun with their low-fi comedic
punk, while the acoustic trio I Am The Barnraisers
hypnotized the big room at the end of the
night with their blend of barnyard bluegrass
and honky-tonk. The lounge lit up like a pinball
with the electro-pop insanity of NC’s
EarPwr, whose boy/girl vocals and laptop grooves
had the entire room dancing like crazy. That
was followed by the equally mindblowing dance-noise
performer known as Poingly, who assaulted
the crowd with laptop beats in a half-naked
frenzy. Poor Hal Sparks and his Zero1 grunge-metal
band – who big 80’s hair and leather
vests looked like they stepped out of a remake
of This Is Spinal Tap! – had to follow.
I’m not sure they knew what hit them.
Zero 1
Saturday night’s lineup included an
acoustic singer/songwriter showcase in the
back bar, with Wilmingthon native Andy Bilinski,
Chapel Hill’s John Harrison, and Brooklyn’s
Nina57 among the highlights. The basement
was taken over by a collective of Durham,
NC bands that ranged from the rootsy bar-punk
of the Scott Waite Debacle to the two-piece,
White Stripes-y clank-and-clatter of All Your
Science, to the transcendent indie pop of
Beloved Binge.
Sunday brought a group of mostly Atlanta-based
bands booked by Kim Ware of Eskimo Kiss Records
to the big room, including Kim’s own
enchanting acoustic duo The Good Graces, the
hearty country-pop of The Jupiter Watts, the
Husker Du-ish tumult of upstate NY’s
Gregg Yeti & The Best Lights, and, best
of all, the giddy synth-driven pop of Club
Awesome, who update Devo for the 21st Century.
Another highlight on Sunday came from the
W.E. Fest debut of Toledo’s Mobile Deathcamp,
a ferocious speedmetal trio that absolutely
shredded. Unfortunately, I had to get back
for work so I missed Monday’s acts.
The Milwaukees
That’s only a small sampling of W.E.
Fest 2008 (you can check out www.wefestival.com
for the full schedule and links to all the
performing bands), of course, but hopefully
it provides an idea of the broad spectrum
of outstanding music that came to Wilmington
this year. More importantly, no list of bands
can ever impart what it felt like to be a
part of all this.
“W.E. Fest is pure fun with a genuine
feel of community and positivity,” said
Joe DeCarolis, whose band What Happened? drove
down from Philadelphia to experience the fest
for the first time. “
Colin Kane of Queens, NY’s The Challenged
added, “I thought one night was not
nearly enough time to take in the size of
the fest. There was an insane amount of performers
in a short time period. You're almost guaranteed
to like at least one person on every bill.
As a performer, and personally, it was great
to go back to the south and play a bill with
a bunch of NY/NJ bands. The crowd was really
energetic, and all the bands brought their
A game.”
“The first thing we said when we got
home was, ‘let's do that again next
year!’” said Billy Gray, of Jersey
City, NJ’s Meltdowns. “It was
loads of fun and really inspiring to be surrounded
by so many talented people from underground
scenes all over. I was really surprised by
how friendly and forward everyone was, fans
and performers alike!”
And that’s what makes W.E. Fest such
a unique event. It’s not just all the
bands playing their hearts out for each other,
but the heart they bring to indie rock itself.
“What else is there?” asked Kenyata,
reflecting on the legacy of twelve years of
W.E. Fest. “When I was a kid, I had
cousins who were signed to major labels, I
saw the reality of it, I've always known the
rock star myth is bullshit. What's important
is that you can be a part of your culture,
that you can contribute to your community.”
Kenyata summed things up with this story:
“When Joey Ramone died, my Grandmother
said, ‘that's such a shame about Joey,
what was his last name again?’ ‘Ramone,’
I said. ‘That's right,’ said my
Grandma, ‘Joey Ramone. He was a nice
boy.’ My Grandma wasn't going to miss
the rock star who had changed the world, she
was just going to miss the nice boy who visited
from New York City and was surprised that
there was sugar in the iced tea, and that's
awesome. I don't want to be ‘known’
by a million people who never met me. I want
the people who've actually met me to remember
me well, the way my Mamac remembers Joey.
That's W.E. Fest. That's who we are. I'm fucking
proud of that.”
