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.
TGEFM was able to chat a bit with Levi and David of Mall Witch about 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 Mall Witch; your history, your mission, your sound?
David: It’s a pleasure! Mall Witch was conceived during the 2020 Covid lockdown when I decided to learn bass guitar and write a song about my cat, Milo with the help of our singer Levi. I roped in a bandmate from high school (Michael) to play guitar, one of my coworkers from Cincinnati Children’s (Dan) to drum, and a friend we met at Southgate House Revival’s open mic (Claire) to play keys. We all have very distinct tastes and influences that should probably sound awful together but we tend to gel pretty well and it emulsifies into some kind of post-hardcore indie rock sorta thing.
Our music tends to focus on social issues and the internet-era isolation that seems to have gripped most of the country. Our latest single, Home is Hell, is dedicated to the people of Palestine, with proceeds going to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund.
You are gearing up for Midwest Friends Fest in the coming months, what does the festival circuit mean to artists like yourselves?
David: Mainly it’s a great opportunity to meet other artists – I can’t count the number of amazing folks we’re still in touch with from last year. Connecting with touring and local bands, and the event organizers themselves, is really important to us. I think festivals like MWFF are the heart and soul of Cincinnati music and we’re so grateful to be part of the scene.
What does Mall Witch have planned for us beyond MWFF?
Levi: Our next single, tentatively called “Margot’s Melody”, is the first single from our 2nd album in the works. I really love getting experimental and DIY with visuals, so we’re excited to do more music videos for album 2. I’ve been writing a lot of scream-y vocal compositions, and honing my vocal control and technique for that has been so fun.
What have been some of the most memorable moments or experiences with the band so far? What’s been the most unexpected? The weirdest?
Levi: Our debut EP release show at Radio Artifact in 2024 was one of our favorite performances to date. Devin Brooks and the whole RA crew are really committed to excellence in sound and lighting design, on top of being community-oriented sweethearts.
We filmed the “Air Loom” music video in my, David and Michael’s hometown of Millville, Ohio, and parts of Ross and Hamilton. It was totally unscripted, simple, and really sentimental to us. The song is all about individualism, the blighted parts of the Midwest and the strange charm they hold onto.
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?
David: We’ve all put a lot more effort into staying loose on stage and having fun. Despite most of our songs being huge bummers lyrically, we’d like to get some folks moving and take something home with them – either some inspiration to make their own art or to get involved in their community. I want people to at least say our hearts are in it.
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?
David: Luckily we haven’t had a lot of run-ins with drama quite yet, and I think it’s because of advice we actually did take from our friend Lucky (Melodk Eye): you have to bring a positive energy to the people you work with. That said, I do think we had a bad habit early on of overbooking ourselves with gigs for how little material we had.
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?
Levi: If you feel like you have a certain market cornered, or if you are very passionate about the type of community you want to curate as an artist, it can be easy to fall into the trap of wanting to “protect” that sound or aesthetic. But networking and building an audience successfully means creating a welcoming environment at your shows, and supporting other artists at their shows too, not just showing up for yourself. You have to be willing to learn from other people.
This festival is all about friendships and music. What do you value most in friendships amongst yourself and your stagemates?
David: We’ve got a really reliable group so it’s probably the ability to depend on others or at least hold the knowledge that if things hit the fan they’d be in your corner. Our drummer Dan always says being in a band is like being in a relationship, and I’m starting to think he’s right.
Mall Witch 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?
David: This is going to sound kind of ridiculous and it’s completely anecdotal to my life, but the city has soul. Nobody comes to Cincinnati expecting much “wow” factor – you’ve kinda gotta know someone or at least get to know someone to really get into the good stuff: the restaurants, the venues. But with that friction comes a lot of awesome communities and scenes that exist organically, rather than because the city advertises itself in a certain way and is posturing to impress out-of-towners.
Levi: There are lots of consistent efforts recently to bring larger touring acts to Cincinnati since we can be overlooked by some national touring acts. In my opinion, it’s important that local Cincinnati bands tour out to strengthen our regional ties, and give our local audiences bigger headliners to get excited about. As far as the local scene influencing our music, I’ve been a fan of Foxy Shazam since high school. We also love Turich Benjy, Lashes, Lung and Mary Henry. There’s a lot of local acts who invite a strange, experimental spirit to their music.
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 Mall Witch kick-ass rock rather than femme-fronted shoegaze?
Levi: I think feminine energy deserves to be honored, but that can definitely be done without “girl power” water bottle slogan style branding. As a vocalist, I feel like we are heavy alternative that just happens to be female-fronted.
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?
David: So this is tricky because we all contribute pretty heavily to the sound and I’m sure every member would have their own answer, but when I am writing songs I’m almost always influenced by Have a Nice Life‘s atmosphere and textures. I’m inspired by albums like Deathconsciousness, which was released with unmastered, crusty audio and reaches these emotional highs almost because it’s so obscured. It really kept me focused on sound over fidelity. I want our songs to create a space you can see in your mind, and sonic storytelling is something I’m always trying to improve at.
Mannequin Pussy and Chat Pile are big inspirations to Levi also.
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?
LIVEWRONG
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)?
David: Assuming any of our friends from high school are around (in true Midwest fashion), usually an ironic rendition of Sweater Song by Weezer or something someone wrote 15 years ago that we all still think is at least a little funny.
Midwest Friends Fest is a smorgasbord of fantastic acts. Which bands are you most excited to see?
Levi: The 2-22’s (Cincinnati/NKY) is fronted by Adam Flaig, host of the Southgate House Revival open mic. We’re big fans of all Adam’s projects! We haven’t seen Glassworld (Cincinnati) live yet but female noise usually catches my attention.
Was there anything I missed that you’d like to share or dive deeper into with our readers?
Levi: Our next album is a lot more experimental than our first, and we have enough demos we’re hoping it will be full-length. There’s more screaming, more genre-bending, and more lyrics from myself, where David wrote most of the lyrics for our self-titled debut. We’re excited to demo a few new songs at the festival and can’t wait to see you there!
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/