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Philly aims for "South By Southwest" style festival this week.
Every city wants its own version of Austin, Texas’s South By Southwest Festival, but in Philadelphia, it only took a few ambitious individuals to bring this city closer to that goal. Village Green Productions, a small Philly-based booking company, got the ball rolling with The 2nd Annual Philadelphia Film And Music Festival. The festival will take place at venues throughout the city from Thursday September 22nd to Sunday September 25th.“It’s something that’s done well in advance,” Ben Rosenau, 25, of Village Green says about planning the festival. “I started working with Village Green in January and they had already started working on it. It’s not an easy thing to do just with three people running the entire event.”
With over 100 acts and a series of music-based documentaries and short films, it may not be ‘South By,’ but it’s certainly one of the biggest arts events in the city. The focus is on local acts, like Hezekiah Jones, Reading Rainbow and Adam and Dave’s Bloodline. But that doesn’t mean the bill isn’t replete with legendary punk acts like The Descendants, The Suicide Machines and Philly’s own Dead Milkmen, who are all playing together at the Festival Pier.
“As far as local bands I think what really is going to resonate is our show on the 25th” says Rosenau referring to the all day event at the Ukie Club (847 N. Franklin Street), “Good Old War and Jukebox The Ghost, they’re both national acts, but they’re from Philly. Both bands have really well-crafted songs, a little bit of folk and well-crafted harmonies. Then we have Nicos Gun and Reading Rainbow who are so full of energy.”
The Ukie Club show has both an outdoor and indoor stage and will feature sets from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. outside and from 1 p.m. to 6:45 p.m. inside. Philadelphian Birdie Busch and Mirah collaborator Thao and her band The Get Down Stay Down will both be taking the outdoor stage while Toy Soldiers and Stephen Lyons will be among the indoor performers.
The films are promising, too. With documentaries about the late Jay Reatard, legendary South Street bar J.C. Dobbs and Color Me Obsessed (a documentary about The Replacements), the films are as rock and roll focused as the music itself.
A themed show at Fishtown’s 2424 Studios will feature local acts performing as well-known bands, like Philly post-punk rockers The Silence Kit performing as Minor Threat and New Jersey’s House Bat as Sonic Youth. That show was originally slated for Fishtown’s Bookspace, but was moved due to that venue’s unexpected closure.
If all that doesn’t sound like enough, the boys at Village Green have even bigger plans for next year.
“We want to keep expanding: bigger bands, more shows,” says Rosenau.
Ticket and schedule information can be found at http://www.phillyfmfest.com/home.
Article by Billy Kekevian
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