We organized and hosted our own festival last summer. "Shrekfest" (based loosely on the last name of our drummer)...rented the stage on our own money, booked the bands ourselves (mainly just our friends, but one outside band was contacted and ended up playing for us)...the drummer worked as a janitor for a pretty popular church in the area, and the church owned a giant recreational room that they let us use for free that night. Just a big old room. Ended up being an awesome time- performances started at 6PM, and we ended up going on at 8:40 and playing just over our "curfew" of 10:00 set by the church. Collected $2 admission from everyone who came in, and we donated all of the proceeds to food pantries.
It was awesome to headline a show, even if it was our own and we were in charge of the order...people were filing in little by little, and it was awesome to have the support for the rest of the bands be sticking around for our big set. Spent well over a month preparing a setlist for that show- rehearsing it over and over, rearranging the order, adding original frills and solos and breaks to cover songs, pulling songs at the last minute....just such an exciting time for us.
We don't bother with any of the official "local promoter" BS. Hell, I think our Facebook even has only like 39 fans of the band. We could care less who shows up or how much popularity we gain. The same group of our friends always shows up to give us some familiar faces, because they know we just want to play. We'd play for an empty room if we had to!
Wow that sounds awesome dude! I can't imagine organizing an event. That's so damn cool. Good on you guys for donating the proceeds too. All of that extra stuff on top of playing, organizing setlists, and things like that are always a blast. It just makes you feel so damn pro
And right on about the popularity. It might sound cheesy and DEFINITELY naive, but my friend and I still have the dream of hitting it big, hence the playing of original material and associating with local promoters. It's the reason we're trying so hard to find guys who share our interests. If it wasn't we'd totally be content with writing and recording music in my basement and just listening to it afterwards, which I'm sure that's what it'll come to before long. I haven't hit the brick wall that reads "end of the dream here my friend, time to start thinking about a normal life!", so I still have the bug. I know how much of a long-shot it is, but for some reason that doesn't break my optimism. Can't help but think we have "something". Who knows. We both agreed that if these guys don't work out, we'll probably just settle with writing music between the two of us, because it's easier and we have a lot of fun doing it without all of the trouble of finding people, transporting stuff, practise space, getting gigs, etc.
