When I first started planning the festival, I was hoping that the outcome will be something where all (very important, I’ll come back to that later) people who participate in one way or the other will go home and feel that it was worth the time spent. From what I heard, we managed to do that and that makes me extremely happy. Because for me it is the worst to just do something “average”, what is the point in repeating something others have already done and just use a different name?
Therefore, we already started in the beginning to think about how to differentiate ourselves from other festivals, most notably the legendary Howls of Winter. Especially in the beginning, I heard the aforementioned comparison a lot and therefore decided that our focus yes, naturally, will be on Underground bands. But instead of staying within one genre, I tried to rather look at the “mindset” of the bands, why musicians do music, how they perform and what interesting shows they could deliver. There were for example two bands that did not seem to fit the bill, Nahakiin and Time Immemorial to be more precise. Both of them got afterwards a lot of praise because they (and this is important!) surprised the visitors.
It was a joy to see that every band gave their best and created a special evening, crowned by the legendary Loits who, without any doubt, know exactly their art.
Huge thanks to Loits & Ahto because of course they played a huge part in our success story – you need one band that people know and want to see because then they get at least one great experience. That was maybe the riskiest part because most of the bands were quite unknown, at least in Estonia. The idea was to provide a stage for bands of high quality which most people have never heard of. So I thought it will be a disaster because… well, make a new festival, bring a bunch of no-names and let’s see what happens. Thus, thank you very much to everyone who trusted the bands and us!!
Aside from the musical perspective, I was furthermore thinking how to add “character” to the festival, so it’s not just like a big concert but actually worth of the name “festival”. In internal discussions with the organizing team I heard a comment that “there is no point in overdoing things, the most important is to break even”. Although this is partially true (I didn’t want to end up washing dishes for Rock&Roll until the end of my life) I also thought that even if only a handful of visitors come, they should have a great experience. So we made proper festival band wrists (and hand-made some for the bands), we made some deals with local producers so we can afford that the bands are happy, we invited some interesting merchants (there were more who unfortunately had to cancel last minute), and we created panels although no one knew what the hell a “panel” even was. And you know what the best thing is? It all worked out amazingly. Well, at least for me. Especially the panels were something that left a huge question mark on many faces but I did not want to explain too much, I rather wanted to let everyone discover what it means since where lies the joy if you know already everything?
Overall, I think the word that fits the best is “appreciation”. To appreciate that bands are coming to this place they never heard of before, to the photographers who spend hours in photographing, editing, to the visitors who support us and the bands financially… and I hope that we could provide this feeling to everyone. I know, you cannot please everyone and some people were rather unhappy when I asked them to not use their phone during the concerts but sorry – unfortunately it is impossible to please everyone. Oh, and not to forget the amazing volunteers! No festival survives without them and as organizer you get most of the praise. However, there has been a small but amazing team of enthusiasts who did all different kind of things before and during the festival – a huge round of applause to your dedication! Without you, the festival would be nothing! Sure, we left some room for improvement because it’d be scary to get everything right the first time but that’s where we will also need your input, just in case we feel like repeating this event. Let’s see.
We will add a questionnaire, so feel free to let us know.
Summing up, the goal was to create a time and place where you can meet amazing people and listen to some darn good music – and I think this was accomplished. Thank you all for coming and making this event truly special!
