Devastation In Midwesthell

I’m a day late in posting this one, for which I’d apologize, but hey, better late than never, right?

Last weekend I attended the Circle Pit Conservative’s Devastation Fest 2 in Anderson, IN, a day-long offering of some of Indiana’s best and most brutal metal bands. This show could pretty much be considered a who’s-who of the Indiana metal scene, with long roots in the local scene, going all they back to the 80’s, as well as representing the uniting forces of Midwesthell, with people in attendance and otherwise supporting from The Forge, The Doom Room, Midwesthell Melodies, Hert Promotions, and of course, the CPC guys. It was much more than just a bunch of bands coming together to honor and memorialize two of our scene’s recently departed (Jason McCash of The Gates of Slumber, and Tom Ball of Radiation Sickness), it was also a message to the scene at large that Midwesthell is here, we are a force, and things are changing.

Lawbringer @ Devastation Fest 2 6/21/1

[Photo Credit: SickenDesigns]

The show was great. Solid line up of bands that included AnarchAtecture, Lawbringer, Legion, Born Under Burden, Armored Assault, Necrophagus, We’d Be, and the aforementioned Radiation Sickness. Every single band threw down, and they threw down hard. It was unadulterated brutality, and I can’t help but wonder if seismographs weren’t registering the moment, that’s how heavy it was. The sound, despite being an absolutely -minimal- set up (only the vocals and the kick drums were mic’d–everything else was raw straight from the stage), was perfect; it was loud, in your face, and captured every band’s sound the way they deserved to be. The venue was an AmVets Post, with a stage that was accessible, and made it partly a floor show, which Lawbringer did 100% of the way. Nick Maxon of We’d Be was busy in the pit with the fans when he wasn’t handling his vocal lines during their set, and the fans were able to get right up and interact with every band.

That said, I have some thoughts, and some of them relate to my post from Sunday about the Outhouse United show last Friday at Centerstage.

I’m personally not a fan of all day fests–there’s nothing wrong with them necessarily, it’s just my thing. Maybe I’m old, maybe I’m just not ‘trve cvlt’ enough, maybe… I just suck. For me, there’s a simple fact: while I loved every band and am a fan of all of them, as a radio guy, I spend HOURS a day listening to music. Not just passively, like the average listener, but actively, both as a musician and as part of my job in screening music for airplay as well as from a critical standpoint as a reviewer. This means that my ears get tired, and sometimes I just need a break. ‘Fest’ shows are even more taxing for me when every band on them sounds similar enough that at a certain point it’s difficult to distinguish them from each other–I’m one of those guys that needs variety to stay engaged, and I dare say that with the exception of those fans that are super hardcore about their favorite genres, this applies to most fans. I don’t have hard numbers to back this opinion up, only observation: it’s been my experience that the shows that do best are the ones that feature bands with enough difference between each other that the listener can stay engaged because they don’t feel like they’re hearing the same thing over and over for hours on end.

Another issue I have is set lengths–very few ‘local’ (or even ‘regional’) bands have the kind of draw and holding power to need to play hour-long sets, and at an all-day show, by the third or fourth band, those hour sets start to feel a lot longer, especially if there’s little differentiation from one band to the next. Again, some of this is personal preference, but some of it comes from my time in the scene, both on stage and from simple observation: all but the most dedicated and committed (committable?) fans tend to get bored pretty quick. At shows with large audiences, this is less the case, because a mob mentality takes over, and let’s face it: we ALL thrive on the energy of being there, being part of the masses, being part of the bigger picture. But at smaller shows, the energy is different, because there are fewer people to sustain it, and if just a few people need to take a break, it’s much more noticeable and there are fewer people to make up for it.

Interestingly enough, this creates a vicious cycle: Promoters are, rightly so, of the mindset that they should be billing every show like it’s going to be the biggest, baddest show around (if they’re not, they’re not doing their job). But when the attendance isn’t what they planned for, they tend to feel let down, by the scene that they feel didn’t support them, but also because they feel that they let down the bands they promised a great show to. Promoters get that difficult job of trying to sell something not knowing how it’s really going to turn out, especially if they’re working at the local level, and I don’t envy them that. However, there has to be some kind of balance struck between planning for what’s most likely to happen (smaller shows with lower attendance) and what we all hope to achieve (bigger shows with packed houses). It’s a tough job to be sure, and I don’t envy the guys that are trying to make it happen; in fact, I applaud them, and I fully support them, and will do so however I can–such as I did at this show when I was asked to MC it.

I think that part of the problem some promoters have is that they get an early taste of success and start reaching too far too fast, expecting more than they really know is realistic. They put the work in, but they lose sight of the market they’re working in, and instead of building shows around that market, they reach for the stars, hoping for that magic moment, and when it doesn’t happen the way they had hoped it would, they’re naturally disappointed.

Devastation Fest had an audience turn out that was disappointing to the promoters, and I say that only because they have been pretty vocal about it themselves on social media. Dan and Nate are guys I know, and they’re good guys trying to do a good thing for a scene that they love and want to see life return to, and I completely empathize with their feelings about the turn out. We ALL want big shows with packed houses for local shows… but the scene isn’t ready for that yet. Not because people don’t want it, but because people are afraid to be the ones taking chances. Dan and Nate took a chance on creating one of these shows, and while it didn’t turn out the way they might have hoped, the show itself was a resounding success, because the people that were there and the bands that played bought into it. They took what was given to them and made it theirs. They owned it. As they should have. The people that weren’t there only know about what they missed because those who were there have made it a point to say publicly how awesome it was.

Because it was awesome.

Every show has something about it that could be done better. Every show has something that goes wrong. Me? I’ll take a low-attendance show as the ‘problem’ with a concert any day over technical difficulties, a band bailing, or anything else like that. They key is taking the sum total of all the things that happened, and weighing them against each other. And no matter what could have been better, Devastation Fest 2 -was- a success, and I expect that next year it will only be that much better.

This Thing We Call Midwesthell

So, there’s this thing. An idea. A reference. A thought.

It’s known as Midwesthell.

The Hand of Midwesthell

Admittedly, among a few of us in the local Indiana rock/metal scene, there’s an understanding of exactly what that is, and while some people have managed to pick up on it, and even better, make it their own, there tend to be questions surrounding this thing called Midwesthell. I think maybe it’s time to answer a few of those questions.

So what the hell is Midwesthell?

Well, the short answer is that it’s the Midwest. Specifically, the Midwest underground music scene.

The extended answer involves an attitude, an idea, an understanding, more than a little booze, and a whole lot of smoke.

Sitting in the heart of the Midwest, Indiana has had for the last decade and then some, a pretty dismal music scene. There are a lot of reasons for this, and they include everything you could think of – crappy bands, crappy venues who don’t pay artists, crappy fans who don’t go to local shows, crappy promoters who leech off the bands they’re ‘helping,’ labels ignoring the few good bands we’ve had, etc, etc, etc, ad nauseum. As a few of us in the IN scene began to network out and explore the other states around us, it became clear that it wasn’t just Indiana that sucked, it was everywhere. Indianapolis. Chicago. Cincinnati. Cleveland. Detroit. Milwaukee. Louisville. St. Louis. Each of the major markets around the region were the same – shitty scenes, each dealing with the same things, and all the stupid drama and politics that such things bring. The Rust Belt above us, stretching from Chicago Cleveland, the Bible Belt below us, we came to understand that we, the collected musicians of the Midwest, were in Hell. And so, a couple guys–Dan and Jamesus from Born Under Burden–amidst the haze of smog that marks the northern border of Indiana, the dust of corn, wheat, and soybean fields (and other hazes) coined the term, “Midwesthell.”

At first, it was sort of an inside joke, but as such things tend to do, it was picked up by guys like me, and it spread; in the course of the past year or so, it’s become a sort of mantra, a reminder of where we are, and also an inspiration. It’s also, under James and Dan’s careful planning, become the name of a new independent DIY record label: Midwesthell Melodies. MWMH, like The Forge, and other entities in the scene, were born in part out of the recognition that the Midwest scene has sucked for a long time, and that the only people who were going to fix it were the people in the scene: US.

There wasn’t anyone coming to save us from ourselves, there weren’t any local bands suddenly making it big and working to breathe life into their home scene, and there sure as hell weren’t any big labels sniffing around looking for the next big thing. All we had–all we still have–were ourselves and each other.

And then it happened: Several of us, though knowing each other for years, independently began to take stock of the situation, take stock of our resources, and we began to -do- things. We evaluated outdated business models, we looked at other supposedly ‘successful’ scenes, tried to learn what worked and what didn’t, and why, and we did our best to try and understand all of those things in the context of our modern society, seemingly so far removed from even just a decade ago. We paid attention to the industry, the mainstream, the major labels, the national and international touring bands, and we listened and we learned.

Gone are the days of major labels making rockstars out of nobody kids who honestly worked their fingers off learning to play–now we get ‘reality’ TV game shows to find the next big pop star, bands built by labels to fit an economic paradigm that they created; gone are the days of New York and Los Angeles being the place where bands can go to win their fame and fortune. Seattle and New England taught us that the DIY ethic works, and with some adjustment for current trends in technology and social media, the current generation of musicians and bands can ‘make it big’ even easier than ever before.

We realized that the industry didn’t care about us, and we accepted that. Why should they? The majority of the underground isn’t offering the next Nickelback or Madonna, and we don’t want to! Sure, we all dream of a stadium gig playing in front of 50,000 people, but we’re all just as happy playing a house show with 50 kids that are there for us, and giving as much to us as we are them. The music, the craft, the performance all matter more to us than the money or fame, and most of us would just be happy to just pay our bills by making and playing music–you know, to reap the benefits of the work we do, just like every other job does. So we started to change it.

What happened was that a core group of us came together and began to share our resources in such a way that we have all benefited, while taking nothing away from anyone else. We have a label, we have a radio outlet, we have several venues who treat the bands like the working artists they are (that means they PAY the bands GUARANTEES), we have promoters who bust their asses for their take of every show they book, we have bands who self-promote AND cross-promote, and we have fans who SHOW UP. Individually, we are a group of independent entities and organizations who would fare all the worse on our own, but collectively, we have become a force of action, a force of change, and we empower each other.

And change is happening. More and more bands from not just Indiana, but also the surrounding states are starting to see the change and benefit from it. Bands from other regions are starting to pay attention to what’s going on here in Indiana specifically, and the Midwest at large, wanting a piece of our action. Why? Because we have something to offer that goes beyond dollar signs – we have a sense of community, a sense of family, a sense of being that this scene, this thing we call Midwesthell, is mine, and yours, and ours.

It’s not perfect, but it’s ours. Our scene. Our voices. Our hands. We are building this thing, one piece at a time, one band, one venue, one promoter, one label, one station at a time. It’s mine. It’s yours. It’s ours.

It’s Midwesthell.