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.
Griffen Holt of Columbus, Ohio’s Manor Gates joined TGEFM to chat a bit 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 Super City; your history, your mission, your sound?
Super City is a Baltimore band that has been around for over a decade now. Our goal is to keep writing music for as long as we live.
You are gearing up for Midwest Friends Fest in the coming months, what does the festival circuit mean to artists like yourselves?
We always appreciate the opportunity to play a festival! It’s something that is generally hard to have a bad time at, if it’s organized and there’s something really thrilling about playing to a large crowd outside.
What does Super City have planned for us beyond MWFF?
We’re currently writing and recording our 4th album which will probably be done this year and released next year.
What have been some of the most memorable moments or experiences with the band so far? What’s been the most unexpected? The weirdest?
Some of the most memorable experiences have been: playing the 9:30 Club in DC, opening for some of our favorite bands including Parquet Courts, Tera Melos and Bombino, and doing masterclasses/ workshops with some of the local schools in Maryland. We’ve been honored to work with students at Severn School, Frederick Douglas Highschool and Greenmount School. One unexpected but surreal moment was when Severn School’s choir arranged our song “Don’t Scream” and performed it for us, incredible.
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?
We’re really proud of the energy we bring to live shows. We feel as though it’s contagious and we hope to get everyone moving. We love when audience members tell us they’ve never seen or heard anything like us. Also, we want them to be just a little bit scared.
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?
Well, one thing we definitely look back on is the mega tour we had booked for March 2020. We self booked a 40 day/30 show tour across the US and back. It took us six months to put it together. Unfortunately, we only made it five shows in before we had to turn around and go home, y’all know why. It’s not really a regret, we just wish it had actually happened. It was heartbreaking to put that much work into something and then have it fall apart, but then again, that’s sometimes par for the course in the music industry. As a musician you have to adapt and roll with it.
This festival is all about friendships and music. What do you value most in friendships amongst yourself and your stagemates?
We’ve been a band for eleven years now. I know that we’ve stayed together for so long for many reasons, but one of the biggest reasons is definitely our friendship. We genuinely love hanging out with each other and making each other laugh, so making music together is easy.
I’ve got to be honest, I wasn’t very familiar with Super City before you joined the MWFF roster. Now that I’ve done some research, I’m really impressed by the level of showmanship in your live shows and music videos. Where did the decision to include choreography and giving your shows a more “Showy” feel come from?
Dan and Greg went to see St. Vincent at Merriweather one time and noticed that she was doing subtle synchronized moves with her other guitar player. Seeing that show mixed with a love for other choreographed bands like Devo, Talking Heads, James Brown and TFF, sparked the idea.
The world has been going through some shit over the last few days, weeks, hell, decade. What impact, if any, have the cultural and political landscapes of the last few years had on your music or the live scene in general?
What the world and our country have been going through have definitely been influencing our lyrics. We’re tired of writing about a lot of these things but also – how can you not? We hope that democracy will prevail and that we will one day not be ruled by greed. The more expensive and harder it becomes to live happy stable lives, the less people can/want to spend money to go see live shows.
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?
Everyone should check out Baltimore bands Adjective Animal, Manners Manners, Glorian and Outcalls
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?
HOG AND BUCK WILD
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)?
“Long Time Gone” by The Everly Brothers OR “Pancho and Lefty” by Townes Van Zandt
Midwest Friends Fest is a smorgasbord of fantastic acts. Which bands are you most excited to see?
The Tisburys! We’re excited to tour with them too!
Was there anything I missed that you’d like to share or dive deeper into with our readers?
On June 14th we’re re-releasing our first ep on vinyl for our 10 year anniversary! The re-release show will be at the Creative Alliance in Baltimore with The Tisburys.
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/