Pick up some Skyline Chili, make a few friendship bracelets and grab your buds as Midwest Friends Fest is returning to the Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky area for its sophomore year. Midwest Friends Fest is once again taking over the Southgate House Revival in Newport, KY.
The 2-day festival with multiple stages and amazing national and local acts like Signals Midwest, Cinema Stare, The 1984 Draft and Tooth Lures A Fang will take place from 30 & 31 May with tickets available here.
Today Beth of Cincinatti’s Glassworld has joined TGEFM to discuss this year’s festival for this installment of our MWFF interview series. Check it out below and we’ll see you at the bonfire in the woods!
Thank you so much for agreeing to this interview! What should our readers know about Glassworld; your history, your mission, your sound?
Glassworld was formed by me, Beth, back in 2014. I had just ended my run with a 7 year touring band and at the time I was looking for more rawness and a new sound. My main mission was to do life with people because there were more than enough people out there criticizing that honestly, we needed less of. So when I started writing it was a lot of hey, I’m a mess too, and that’s okay, let’s get through this together.
You are gearing up for Midwest Friends Fest in the coming months, what does the festival circuit mean to artists like yourselves?
Fests are our biggest source of fun because we not only get to network with other bands grinding it out but with a variety of fans that just love music.
What does Glassworld have planned for us beyond MWFF?
This year we are going to be back in the studio along with playing in multiple states (OH, IN, KY, MI, and PA) and hoping to secure more festival spots.
What have been some of the most memorable moments or experiences with the band so far? What’s been the most unexpected? The weirdest?
Memorable moments for me personally are when we get to talk to and befriend fans. This is a community project. It’s what I’ve wanted from the start was to be approachable and welcome in people who truly love music and community. So any time I get to do that- it’s memorable and meaningful. The most unexpected I’d have to say was getting a spot on the last Vans Warped Tour (ya know, before they decided to bring it back) and Is For Lovers Fest at Riverbend. Both of those were dreams of mine. The weirdest…that’s a tough one. I’ve been doing this for 18 years come December so I have many but one of the weirdest moments was
Regarding live sets, what are you most excited to bring to the Midwest Friends Fest audience? What do you want the attendees to say about your set when they tell their friends about you?
I think the most exciting thing for me is no one really expects (unless you’ve seen us or heard of us before) that I am the vocalist. I love to see the wide eyes when I take the stage and get loud. All I hope is that they love our energy, our antics and enjoy what we bring.
We’ve all got a few, what is your biggest regret? A gig you turned down, advice you didn’t take, what one thing do you wish you handled differently as a musician?
I think being an imperfect human is honestly beautiful and how we handle things is what sets us apart from just being an unhealed mess but my biggest regret thus far is trusting into the industry too early and getting burned. My last band was signed to a pretty small label and I had a lot of trust in it when I really shouldn’t have. It took a few years to really understand that what we want, we can get ourselves.
The punk, ska and indie scenes have almost always been at the forefront of inclusion and diversity within the music scenes. The flipside of course is that the gatekeeping in the scene is also very prevalent? Why do you think the genre brings in such a welcoming community and is so happy to let everyone in and also seems to shut the doors so quickly behind themselves?
Honestly, I could say the same for the metal community as well. Which is why we are the band that we are. We could play Chaos and Carnage one night and then turn around and open for Seventh Day Slumber (totally happened). But we’ve felt the gates. Since we are in such an odd space (are we metal, are we metalcore) that sometimes we just don’t fit the hardcore shows. And sometimes we don’t fit the heavy rock shows. And sometimes we don’t even fit the metalcore shows. But we show up anyway. We do what we do from the stage and cultivate fans from different fan bases because of our openness. I honestly don’t care who I’m opening for and how well it mixes with their sound, I’m more interested that we connect with people standing in front of us giving us a chance. I think each individual music community could be more open to diversity in sound and they’d be surprised how many more fans they’d get.
This festival is all about friendships and music. What do you value most in friendships amongst yourself and your stagemates?
The biggest thing for us is we are a family. I have followed the phrase “friends are family we choose for ourselves” for decades now and I truly take it to heart. When you come to a concert you want to enjoy your favorite band, you want to have a drink or two, or just get out and let the stress of every day life go for a few hours, and it’s my job to perform and connect with you. And hopefully welcome you into the family. It’s the core of who we are.
Glassworld is from Cincinnati. I thought the city was only known for amazing chili, a dog-obsessed racist baseball owner and the greatest rollerblading movie of the 90s featuring Jack Black and Seth Green (Airborne), but MWFF is proving the city is home to some amazing artists. What’s going on in Cincinnati that led to so much of an overabundance of great music In the scene lately? How does the area feed into the music you are writing, if at all?
Well, I can honestly say that this is one Cincinnati neighbor that doesn’t like the chili. Or baseball. But, I think we are finally getting over the pandemic. I saw a surge in 2022 but last year was probably the best year of music I’ve seen in a very long time. You’ve got new ones coming in, new venues, and people are just enjoying life again. Our area home venues are cherished and I think that’s the biggest difference than other areas- when there’s a show, we try to be there, sometimes not just in support of the band but also for the venue.
It could just be that I’m paying more attention as our daughters are starting to discover their own music tastes, but it seems like “femme-fronted” acts are finally seeming to get the acceptance and mainstream attention it deserved for so long? Beyonce mentioned in her Grammy speech that unfortunately sometimes genres end up holding artists down. In light of the way the world seems to be moving backward in a lot of regards, do you believe we are getting to a point where “femme-fronted” is no longer used as a descriptor when we really should just be calling bands like Glassworld kick-ass core rather than femme-fronted core?
I go back and forth on that. Mainly because I do find strength in being a female vocalist. A queer female vocalist at that. I wear that badge with honor. Does it exclude us from opportunities sometimes? Yeah. Do some people just not get it, not want it, not want to give it a chance? Yeah. Does it put more pressure on me to go out and be “just like the boys”? Yeah. But I think the biggest thing is this- I’m confident with what I bring to the table. If it isn’t your cup of tea then that’s fine. It gives me hope though because today in metal we have Spiritbox, Jinger, Kittie, Walls of Jericho, and Tetrarch who have badass powerful females taking the stage and owning it. There’s more acts to follow nowadays than there used to be. Do I get upset when someone doesn’t refer to us as female fronted? No because that also isn’t fair to my guys who work their asses off on and off the stage. But it still doesn’t make it any less true, we are female fronted, and you better believe my guys own that as much as I do.
What album or band or significant singles made you go “Yeah, this is what I want to do” Not just an influence but who or what was the catalyst? On the flipside to that one… Who are some non-MWFF bands on your radar that TGEFM readers may not know about, but you think they should?
When I started there was one band that I knew of who owned the style and that was Bloodlined Calligraphy. She was a boss. And I wanted to be her. I was fortunate to be able to share the stage with them many times as well throughout the years. And heard they reunited recently! It just inspired something in me to say “hey, you can do that.” So. I did. As far as MWFF bands, Life in Idle kills it. We were able to play with them for Is For Lovers and they’re pretty fantastic.
I don’t know if you’ve heard about this newcomer by the name of Taylor Swift. Her growing fanbase trades friendship bracelets. If you made a bracelet for MWFF, what word or phrase word you put on it?
Community. Hands down.
Post show jam session in a large, empty field. What song are you singing around the bonfire? (Pardon my playful biases, but everything I know about the Midwest comes from shitty movies and songs by the Kinsella Bros. so I assume everyone playing here has spent some time at bonfire parties in the fields off some lonely county road)?
You’re not wrong. And it’s probably going to be anything by A Day to Remember.
Midwest Friends Fest is a smorgasbord of fantastic acts. Which bands are you most excited to see?
Life in Idle, Bear the Moon, Boy Clothes
Was there anything I missed that you’d like to share or dive deeper into with our readers?
That covers it!
Bad Dad (occasionally called Ed) has been on the periphery of the punk and punk-adjacent scene for over twenty years. While many contributors to this site have musical experience and talent, Ed’s musical claim to fame comes from his time in arguably the most punk rock Blockbuster Video district in NJ where he worked alongside members of Blanks 77, Best Hit TV and Brian Fallon. He is more than just an awful father to his 2 daughters, he is also a dreadful husband, a subpar writer, a terrible dresser and has a severe deficiency in all things talent… but hey, at least he’s self-aware, amirite?
Check out the pathetic attempts at photography on his insta at https://www.instagram.com/bad_dad_photography/