Fri 7/15 @ 4PM-midnight
View the CoolCleveland VIDEO interview with Thomas Fox here.
A quarter century has passed since Perry Farrell unveiled his innovative Lollapalooza festival and seemingly help usher in alternative music’s place in the mainstream.
On a local level, Thomas Fox, the former creative director of Brite Winter Festival, is hoping to spark the same energy and enthusiasm. It’s called the Agumboot Festival, and it makes its debut July 15 with numerous bands performing at Dunham Tavern & Museum in Cleveland’s Midtown area. Tickets are $10 in advance/$15 at the door.
In terms of Cleveland’s presence on the national music scene, the Rock Hall and its high-profile inauguration concerts garner plenty of attention; however, something missing from Northeast Ohio is an annual music festival that acts as a destination location. That’s where Fox’s vision for Agumboot Festival comes into play.
But what the heck is an agumboot? The word is defined as the sound of celebrating, an ephemeral signal that guides travelers through onerous circumstance toward something beautiful. CoolCleveland talked to Fox about his plans for something beautiful.
Tell us about the origin of the Agumboot Festival?
I used to be the creative director, marketing co-chair of Brite Winter Festival for more than four years, and I’m no longer involved over there. I’ve been focusing my time on trying to get this thing going. There’s a big focus on emerging music and alternative music, and also I’m working to solve this problem of bands skipping Cleveland, which I think has a lot to do with there not being enough resources dedicated towards fostering new talent here. There’s a bunch of reasons all wrapped into why this is happening now.
How did the festival end up at the Dunham Tavern, which is a great location?
This festival was originally supposed to be on the waterfront. I’m working to get together a large-scale, multi-day music festival across the lakefront. I wanted to start this year to get the idea going and to use the RNC as a platform to do that. But because of the security concerns around the RNC, we weren’t able to use the lakefront, so I moved everything over to the Dunham Tavern, which is beautiful green space.
Just to be clear, Agumboot Festival isn’t tied to the RNC?
It has nothing to do with politics. If anything, it’s a politics-free zone. I figured this could be based where there isn’t that much other local programming going on in town because of the RNC. There’s a lot of different RNC-related programming going on and to my knowledge not much going on in town for local Clevelanders to have some traditional summer fun. So in a lot of ways, the Dunham Tavern is an oasis for Clevelanders not to be involved in the RNC.
What do you have planned for this inaugural year?
It’s going to be a smaller festival. I put it together with a crowd-funding campaign that was $10,000 from people in the community who thought this was a good idea that we should have a big music festival even though this event isn’t big. You can’t make a big festival with $10,000 but this is the beginning of the march towards that. This year is going to be three stages and a dozen acts from different places across the country.
Tell us a little bit about the bands on this year’s bill.
The groups that are playing this year are phenomenal, and people don’t really know most of them too well. Saintseneca (Columbus) is on Tom Waits’ label with Neko Case and Bright Eyes. You’ve got Mimicking Birds (Portland, OR) who are sort of protégés of Modest Mouse. And then some of the other groups are coming up right now. They’re not on labels but they have a lot of potential — Chrome Pony (Nashville), Ona (West Virginia) and Varsity (Chicago). Also, we have local bands Village Bicycle, Whiskey Hollow, Meridian and Sweetgrass, which is a side project for members of Honeybucket. I’m really excited about having them. Any good music festival has to have an element of new music discovery. Still, I’m envisioning this to be a traditional summer music festival that long-term will have larger headliners.
In terms of the future, is there an existing festival that provides a blueprint of what people can expect?
Bunbury in Cincinnati is what I’m thinking. It started in 2012, and in 2011 the founder of that festival did a small teaser while he was working on fundraising, which is exactly what I’ve been doing as well as having a little bit of market presence. I’d like people to know that there is support in the community for a national music festival. Because Cleveland is more and more becoming known as a waterfront city, I’m thinking we’ll hopefully be at Whiskey Island or Edgewater.
Invariably, it just feels as though this year’s festival will act as an appetizer to next year’s full buffet?
Hopefully. We got to take one step at a time and this is the step we’re on right now. I’ve been working on this idea trying to raise money. To make a big giant festival it requires a significant amount of capital but they can be profitable for the city and the region. We’re just taking one step at a time.