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 Olive Schulte (They/Them) of Young Animals 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 Young Animals; your history, your mission, your sound?
Young Animals has been around for almost a decade! Started out as an instrumental group, and then found both our singer, Olive, and our bassist, Tommy, through craiglist almost 8 years ago. We have released 2 EPs and 1 full length album as a full band. We describe ourselves as twinkly, mathy, midwest emo!
You are gearing up for Midwest Friends Fest in the coming months, what does the festival circuit mean to artists like yourselves?
It’s incredibly exciting to be invited to play a festival – definitely a huge dream of ours, especially when you get to play with other musicians that you look up to and have been following for a long time.
What does Young animals have planned for us beyond MWFF?
We released our newest EP, Scout, back in mid-March, and are going to continue to promote that throughout the year, hopefully going on another small tour before the end of the year. The dream would be to get to do a full North America tour – we would need to hop on a be an opener for a bigger band for that to come to fruition – so any bands out there looking for a high energy opener, hit us up!
What have been some of the most memorable moments or experiences with the band so far? What’s been the most unexpected? The weirdest?
Before COVID, we were able to play Hikes Fest down in Austin for SXSW. Hikes is definitely one of our fave bands, and it was incredible to be invited by them to play. Because of this, we can officially say we have “opened” up for Elephant Gym twice in one weekend – they played Hikes Fest, and also Math Rock Times fest that weekend. After our first album, it was super unexpected that a Columbia, MO newspaper wrote about us being a top 5 band in Missouri you should be watching – so cool! The weirdest – one time we played in Columbus, OH in this room the size of a bedroom, to just the local band who was on the bill and maybe 2 of their friends… but the vibes were there and our bassist LOVED the music.
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 are stoked to bring the energy and probably a themed costume! We typically decide on a theme to all dress up as for most of our shows. I think people tend to be surprised by the energy I (Olive) bring to the stage, as well as the rest of the band. People usually comment on how they can tell we have been playing together for a long time, because we tend to sound pretty polished live!
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?
We’ve been really fortunate that we haven’t had to turn down too many gigs that we were stoked on. Probably the biggest regret, if anything, it just not having the ability to tour more often.
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?
I think there’s a lot of diversity in the musicians you have in these types of bands – for example, I am genderqueer and am very open about that, and have a lot of musician friends who are also in the LGBTQIA+ community. We are very supportive of progressive causes and try to be very vocal about it, and support others that do the same. I think a lot of the gatekeeping comes from a place of love – not wanting anyone hateful or bigoted in the scene – people just tend to go overboard with it sometimes.
This festival is all about friendships and music. What do you value most in friendships amongst yourself and your stagemates?
We have all been through a lot together and continue to build eachother up daily. Even if I am having a terrible day, if we have band practice, I know I am going to be laughing by the end of it. The guys are all genuinely good dudes, who have hearts of gold, on top of being amazing musicians, and I love them to death.
I’ve got to be honest, I wasn’t very familiar with Young Animals before you joined the MWFF roster. Now that I’ve listened to “Slow & Deliberate” and “You Can’t Just Ask A Person How Many Cell Phones they Have” I’m fairly obsessed with both. Tell me a little bit about those 2 singles you dropped last year? What was going on at the time that helped kickstart the songwriting process?
“Slow & Deliberate” was actually the first song we had wrote with Joe as our new drummer 4 years ago (crazy!). I actually wrote it about our ex-drummer – I had a lot of feelings at the time, and it just seemed appropriate as a final goodbye to him. “Cellphones” (as we call it, since it’s a mouthful!) was written about 2 years ago, during a time where I was really struggling with my mental health and just feeling like I was really letting down my friends. The lyrics are a way for me to kind of admit all my issues to myself and my friends, but also, make sure they know that I truly do love them and would do anything for them. It’s kind of a “Part 2” to our song “Burrito Break” from our EP BBQ Dads we released during COVID.
The world has been going through some shit over the last few days, weeks, hell, decade. What affect, if any, have the cultural and political landscapes of the last few years had on your music or the live scene in general??
I have written two songs, “Get That Corn Out of My Face” off of BBQ Dads and “Unfriendly Ed” off of Scout about religion, religious trauma, and growing up genderqueer in a Catholic setting. I wrote both of these as a way to get my own feelings out, but to also ensure that others out there listening know that they are not ever alone in this fight. We have played several Trans Benefit Shows over the last several years, as well as a Free Palestine benefit show last year. My 30th Birthday Show was a Shrek Themed one where the proceeds went to Missouri Trans Umbrella Group, a local STL organization. We try to be very vocal about these things – we got off of instagram/facebook for a month at the beginning of this year as well as a way to protest the fascist rhetoric of a lot of social media .
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?
Delta Sleep definitely fits that mold. They are a British math rock band that really made a huge impact over here in the US. I went to their first ever show in the states in Chicago awhile back, which was sold out, and I just remember them being blown away by their reception. I was about 2 years in Young Animals at that point, and remember thinking – “wow, that’s the feeling I would love to feel someday – going somewhere that is so far away from home, but feeling so much love and togetherness that it’s like I never even left”. They have also been a huge influence for us musically for us.
Local to St. Louis, we love Wes Hoffman and Friends, Dialogue, Amy Elizabeth Quinn, and Hopeful Utopian, and they all deserve the MOST amount of love!
I don’t know if you’ve heard about this newcomer by the name of TaylorSwift. Her growing fanbase trades friendship bracelets. If you made a bracelet for MWFF, what word or phrase word you put on it?
YA for ya! (Young Animals for ya, hehe)
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)?
Hmm, that’s a tough one! Honestly, might do “Camp Adventure” by Delta Sleep. Nathan, one of our guitarists, knows it on acoustic and it would be a nice sleepy jam to sing to everyone!
Midwest Friends Fest is a smorgasbord of fantastic acts. Which bands are you most excited to see?
Boy Clothes, Cinema Stare, Dad Hats, Ghost Town Remedy, Kat and the Hurricane, Leisure Hour, Life in Idle!
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/