So What?! Music Festival 2017 Festival • Page 7

I was barricading that stage the entire day -- Joe fell two feet in front of me and gashed his arm on the barrier. As far as full album plays, it seemed like most of the bands slated for album plays chose to vary the setlist on their own, though it was 10 year album-heavy. For the set times being pushed back, everything was on track until Envy on the Coast (3rd to last band, behind WTK and MP) started a few minutes late and ended 10-15 minutes late. WTK and MP did seem to take an awfully long time to set up anyway, though.

 

I was bummed that the only true album play was Mayday but they were amazing. I felt like nevershoutnever spent more time tuning than playing. Seeing the Friday night boys after 8 years was pretty amazing. Overall it was a pretty decent day until, like everyone else said, the set times got pushed back massively.

 

Kind of shitty to heavily advertise that 6 bands would be playing their full albums for the 10 year anniversary and only have one actually do it

 

The lateness has happened at literally every Third String festival I've ever been to, it's kind of par for the course with them. I'm hoping I can make it out for SYG tonight and also that it doesn't rain like it's supposed to

 

Every year something seems to go wrong with this festival

 

I went later on Sunday and the crowd seemed smaller than the Saturday crowd. I didn't stay for The Story So Far, but it did seem like a lot of people left after Four Year Strong. Nothing will compare to the Plano Centre days but still a good fest.

 

The entire So What facebook page went black. I guess they are finished with the festival for good?

 

I think they just do that once the fest is done like a reset or something. I'm interested to see if they'll do a fall version again this year.

 

Wouldn't surprise me. From the pics I saw, the crowd was very very small

 

They need to scale things back. Forget the huge outdoor show and just make it like one, maybe two nights in Deep Ellum.

 

We talked about the possibility of doing it like 4-5 years back, it was cool hearing it was starting to go in that direction this year

 

Saturday for sure had a bigger crowd. A lot of people I talked to couldn't believe TSSF were headlining. I agree doing just a deep Ellum festival makes more sense.

 

We? Do you/did you work for Third String?

 

No I don't/didn't but Mike and I were in Austin for a weekend and we continuously talked about this idea of doing a multi-venue festival-type thing in Deep Ellum, and he mentioned how he wanted SBSW to be able to become like that but didn't think it was possible at that time.

Even though we don't work together we used to bounce ideas off each other a lot.

 

Gotcha. I dunno if you remember "Deep Fridays" but I think they should do something like that. It was where you paid a certain amount and you could club hop to like 5-10 different venues. I think it was $10 back then, and it was just local acts, but it was a lot of fun.

 

That sounds like it was an awesome time. I do wanna do my own local series sometime, I have plans kinda written out but want to figure out the best way to execute it. Maybe at some point it could grow into something like that.

 

It was great because you paid one cover and could go everywhere. The Deep Ellum shows they did on Friday you had to pay for each individual show unless you had a full weekend pass. The "fest" that Parade of Flesh did last weekend was the same way. They had shows at 2-3 different venues but it was $20 to get into each one. You should definitely follow through on your plans.

 

I feel like I have an advantage that Mike doesn't, which is that I don't need to do any of it haha. Like, with Mike I completely get why he had individual show costs or a pass cost, since he has to make enough to live + pay his staff/bands + front the next festival. For me, I don't have any desire to make a career out of music and greatly enjoy my day job, so if I were to do a similar festival, I could just take a loss and be happy with it because I wouldn't be hindered in my own life by it.

 

For sure. If you get some local acts and low-mid level national acts to balance out the bill, you can probably keep costs fairly low. Or find bands that are on tour but skipping Dallas. Maybe B marker tours. If you schedule it during an off-season or during the week, but I can't imagine venue costs would be much. I really don't know but I'd guess talent and security are probably the biggest expense.

edited my post a bit