Fest 13: A mecca for punk

The Vision

Twelve years ago, 60 bands played scattered shows in small Gainesville bars, parking lots and living rooms during Spring Break. 

They were friends, and friends of friends, thrown together to share music.

Three months later, the festival sprung up again, and its organizer Tony Weinbender said it was better. Each year, the trend continued. 

Today, more than 360 bands will take over downtown, playing at 20 venues with a predicted 6,000 people mulling among shows this weekend from countries around the world. 

The Fest? It’s back.

“Anytime there was a party, we would call it a Fest, like ‘we’re just having a fest,’ you know?” Tony said. “Put a ‘the’ in front of it, and now it’s official: ‘The Fest.’”

What started out as a gathering of friends who wanted to vibe will now pack Bo Diddley Community Plaza with merch, beer and influential punk bands like the Descendents.

“We always wanted to be a party,” Tony said. “That’s what it was — a controlled party, a good party.”

When Tony was in the seventh grade and elementary and middle schools started to combine, he was introduced to punk. His good friend Chad Smith visited his cousin in West Virginia and came back with a collection of punk vinyls and a skateboard.

“His cousin was older and had dreads and a skateboard. And he was like, ‘Did your mom give you any money?’ and Chad said, ‘Yeah, I got like 20 or 30 bucks,’ so his cousin said, ‘Alright, let’s go to the record store.”

When Chad got back, he and Tony made a mixtape: Firehose, Fugazi, Bad Brains, Dead Kennedies, Minor Threat. These bands opened a new dialogue for him.

“The majority of people we knew were racists, and to listen to a band singing about fighting that, or fighting sexism, or fighting police brutality, or just being young skateboarders... I don’t know how many times I’ve been thrown in to sitting in front of the sheriff, being interrogated without my parents, without a lawyer, sitting with green hair and baggy pants.”

Tony started organizing bands in his hometown of Roanoke, Virginia, when he was 16, while a singer and saxophonist in a band himself.

“Our first tour we got out of high school, and two days later, we went and bought a van, and we did two weeks of just small shows,” he said. “Everyone was really helpful back then, and that’s how I really got into this and why I moved here and why I love Gainesville.”

That band’s name? Swank. Tony said they played with other high school groups with similarly “dumb” names, like Integration and Slaphappy.

“I had always done shows since I was 16 because we had to,” he said. “There was no way for punk bands to play.”

The groups he met that way kept calling him for gigs once he moved to town in 2000. After quitting the job he moved here for, he worked wherever he could while continually putting on live shows.

“There was a coffee shop called Common Grounds, and I walked in one day and asked, ‘Hey, do you ever do shows in here?’ And they were like, ‘We have bands kind of play in that corner.’”

“They didn’t do shows,” he laughed. “They had bands play in a corner.”

Year after year, momentum built. Tony had experience organizing volunteer-based, multiday, multivenue shows from when he lived in Virginia and worked with a college festival called MACRoCK. He liked the vibe, so he invited his friends’ bands down to Gainesville to play — they brought their friends, and Fest was born.

“For the first several years, we built the stage out of pallets and a tarp,” he said. “One of the early years, we built a stage and had Matt and Kim play there with This Bike is a Pipebomb and Ghostmice, and the stage pretty much broke during Matt and Kim. It didn’t really break, but it was broken.”

By Fest 10, Tony thought to himself, “Holy shit. This is big.” Not because of the 100-plus bands, he said, but the reach of the music.

“I think that was the largest attendance we had to date. Ten was the year we realized we had such a huge overseas population coming.”

The addition of Bo Diddley this year increased capacity, but are his volunteers ready?

“Our team can do this shit,” he said. “Can Gainesville do it? That’s the question.” 

 

The Venues

Loosey’s became an unofficial venue the day after it opened in 2010.

“We kind of rushed to open for Fest,” said owner Danny Hughes. “We couldn’t open to be an official venue, but we did what we could.”

Bands had been playing outside behind The Top, but an old man in the Pleasant Street neighborhood complained to the police about the noise. Tony mentioned it to Danny, and that night, Loosey’s hosted its first Fest shows.

“We printed out directional fliers and put them up 10 minutes before doors,” Tony said. “The whole show moved, and it was great.”

For the first year, bands played on the floor in front of a piece of cardboard; there wasn’t a stage yet, but no one minded.

“Especially with punk rock music, there’s a huge DIY scene,” Danny said. “A lot of bands actually prefer playing these intimate shows.”

Before he opened Loosey’s, he’d been to Fest and was a huge fan of the music. Owning a venue only elevated the experience, because now he can talk to artists one-on-one and see bands weave in and out of his venue, enjoying other groups and catching up with friends.

“You’re watching this band that no one has ever heard of,” he said. “It’s you and 10 other people, and the guy next to you is the lead singer of your favorite band.” 

 

The Volunteers

When Jacob Harn turned 18 on the cusp of last September, Fest was on his mind.

The 18-and-up music festival lets local fans volunteer to run the shows in exchange for the proverbial golden ticket, a three-day Fest wristband.

“I’d been wanting to go for years throughout high school,” he said. “I’m glad I got to be a part of the whole thing instead of just going.”

Jacob volunteered at :08 downtown on the Friday of Fest, checking wristbands at the door. Volunteers can pick the job, venue, day and time they help out, which gives flexibility to see favorite bands.

“Being at :08 was cool because I got to listen to bands that I wasn’t as stoked on,” he said. “I got to help out and listen to the music from a really good vantage point.”

At the festival’s final volunteer meeting last week, Tony faced a ballroom full of help — a motley group of tattooed, pierced, not-tattooed, bald, dreaded, beer-drinking volunteers. 

“You would never think the Gainesville Police would be a fan of a punk-rock festival,” Tony said, “but they’re a fan of our work ethic.”

Projecting his voice across full rows of seats and those standing in the back, he continued.

“This is what I look forward to most during Fest weekend — seeing all of your wonderful faces.”

Tony reflected on the family and the connection that Fest brings through a shared love of music. No other town can boast the DIY nature and success of a music festival run solely by volunteers.

 “This is the core of Fest,” he said. “This is why we can keep doing this for 13 years.”

Jacob said one of the best parts about volunteering was meeting people from all over the globe.

“It’s crazy because a lot of them were from the other side of the States and even the other side of the world. I met people from Germany, from Japan, from Australia.”

These simple acquaintances start out as the guy standing next to you in line sharing a cigarette who happens to love your favorite band and turn into lifelong friends.

Not only did Jacob met new people while volunteering at shows, but he also reconnected with old friends while seeing their favorite bands.

And in between gigs, he said Fest-goers can explore other parts of downtown.

“Most of these people would never hear of Gainesville, but Fest showcases Gainesville in a way that you normally wouldn’t get to see it: People can go try Flaco’s, or grab something at Pop A Top.”

But undoubtedly, the best part of the weekend will always be the music. Jacob saw one of his favorite bands, Ceremony, play at The Wooly last year and ended up crowdsurfing over the tossing waves of the pit.

“It was funny —  I was actually wearing a white shirt, and after the show I went outside in the light and I saw some shoeprints on my back,” he said. “It was crazy. It was amazing.” 

 

 

Fans on Bo Diddley Community Plaza spent Saturday and Sunday night shivering once the cold front settled in.