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Music

There's a Music Party in Kentucky

How to start your own music festival.

Illustrations by Mikie Poland

James and Ryan are hanging on a couch in the back of Astro Black Records - a combination thrift store and record label in their hometown of Louisville, Kentucky. Their homegrown three day music festival Cropped Out is set to happen this weekend for the fourth year in a row and it sounds like the two of them are just beginning to relax into the idea that all the details are set and the show is ready to go off. This summer I've covered a few music festivals that have considered the question of what a good festival is and should be today, and James and Ryan's answer to that really begins at the roots. Cropped Out started as a completely DIY (if not borderline accidental) idea between two guys returning from the Big City to their hometown, but has grown to include not only more established acts and higher IBU beer scores, but a growing reputation and nationwide draw as a strong independent and truly regional festival. Do successful music festivals have to start out as these big value-engineered and fully sponsored business proposals? Or can they still sort of just… happen? Looks like they can in Kentucky.

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Noisey: Tell me about how Cropped Out began.

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James Ardery: I guess the idea started about four and half years ago when Ryan and I were back in Louisville for the holidays. It was just an idea at first and then eight months later all of the sudden we had this festival forming - and now four years later we’re here. Ryan Davis: I knew all these great bands I met touring and all these bands I met through being in with Drag City and James knew all these people from doing show promotion stuff around New York. We were in town one year on Christmas in a bar and just starting thinking–maybe we should just do something to have it all culminate? Noisey: I like the name of it a lot, "Cropped Out". It seems like that sort of represents part of your motivation for organizing the festival…
James: Yeah, I don’t really know which one of us came up with it. Ultimately, we were trying to get the idea of doing a D.I.Y. festival to provide a platform for small bands that typically get omitted, or bands that don’t get the spotlight that they deserve. Ryan: We were saying, hey, there are all these huge festivals with these bands that are already signed and already large and already have a shitload, PR and people behind them. We are more familiar, close with, involved and interested in bands that are just smaller and typically in a local scene or city. And we wanted to find a way to put a festival on for them. The point we’re getting at with the name is that they’re omitted or overlooked or cropped out of the main picture. I think we’ve kind of grown into the name over the years, for sure. Noisey: So, how do you actually start a music festival?
James: Well, I mean there was a need here. Ryan and I grew up going to hardcore shows and stuff since we were about 10 and 11. Even at that young of an age there were multiple places we could go to that were all age venues. And they all basically disappeared. And while I’ve been living in New York over the past years and booking shows there, there are plenty of D.I.Y. venues but none were that great. And doing a festival in New York really doesn’t make any sense because New York has everything they could possibly want at their fingertips. So what’s the point? Ryan and I have a pretty strong allegiance to Louisville. Ryan’s living here and there’s a chance that I’m going to be moving back in the near future. We saw Louisville was needing a music festival because the city has such a rad and long music history and background. It was just a matter of doing it and making it happen here, you know?
Ryan: For me the last thing I really had an interest in was becoming a “promoter,” you know? I mean, I don’t even really like music festivals but I was living here and there was this thing I really wanted to see happen. Nowadays I guess I never think twice about calling it a music festival. That's just kind of what it is. But there was no real conscious effort to determine if Louisville had a "market" or all this other music business jargon. We basically said: we’re going to do this, and the next thing you know we had 50 bands playing. It was knee-jerk maybe to a fault. We had no fucking clue what we were doing. Jim and I are both in our own bands and have done a lot of touring and I feel like that is really the heart and soul of it. You go to these towns and play with the local band that don't really get out much and they don’t have a record on a big label or much money to tour and they have a day job. And you’re like: holy shit this band exists in fucking Ohio or wherever? And so we invite them to come play in Kentucky and then it becomes this dialogue that you can continue and it grows into this big network.
James: The first year was hilarious. There were so many people there and they were all only in bands. That's kind of how it started. Noisey: It sounds like Kentucky and the scene there is a really big part of what made it all work.
Ryan: I mean it’s like THE part. It’s huge. It’s crazy to think about how there’s people we’ve asked every year, and thought “There’s no way in hell.” And they’ll say, “Yeah, sure I’ll come do it.” Once that happens it just opened the gates to feeling like we can do anything we want as long as we stay true to that original vision of making it about the local scene and the friends from all around the country that come to visit and check it out. Noisey: Do you think you’ve tapped into a market that seeks out and travels to these types of regional DIY festivals that have a real local feel?
Ryan: The community in Louisville is still really small. Probably like microscopic in comparison to New York but still a really really good scene. St. Louis has a great scene and Indianapolis has a great scene and Cincinnati and Nashville and Lexington. There are a bunch of towns all around here that have good bands with the kids who run the local skate shops and local record shops. We want the Nashville kids to come up and we want you to go back to St. Louis and start your own little fest. It just creates this really cool regional dialogue.
And on the same question, it’s pretty humbling how many people from Chicago that were there when this whole thing first started. I left Chicago in 2008/2009 and it’s seriously insane how many of those people will still call and say "hey man can I come down a week early and help, what do you need?" Every year, they’ll say let me come down, let me help, or fucking move tables or paint signs or serve beer, just do anything. I just think we created this thing that people are really excited to be a part of. James: But on the reverse side too, the trickle up effect to is that bands who have played the festival have gone on to play Death by Audio or some of these hotspots in New York. A lot of New York kids are coming down this year. I always try to keep at least one or two local bands that have been on my radar in New York to get onto the festival lineup because it’s important to have a dialogue between these bigger cities.
Ryan: The volume of emails we get every year asking to play is crazy. The first year were begging everyone and now it’s like we have to say no. There's no PlayStation bus or Red Bull tent, it’s literally like you come to see Scratch Acid and my mom’s pouring you a beer and my dad’s taking your ticket. It just kind of shitty in a really charming way. Noisey: I think that that really comes through in the way you present it.
Ryan: Yeah, we really try to not take it too seriously. As far as the presentation of it online. You know, I think all of our press releases for the past two years were in comic sans. Noisey: You could say that the festival has a mission statement of sort of "keeping it in the family" or at least local. But do you feel like that has to crop out the more established acts? I mean last year you had Lil'B up there next to R. Stevie Moore, not exactly small nor local acts…
James: There's an aesthetic that Cropped Out shares with Lil'B and R. Stevie Moore to tell you the truth. They were both putting out music before anyone even cared about them at all. We’re not going to try to grow to a point where all the sudden we can afford to book The National. We don’t want to book them. Nothing against them it’s just that we’re trying to provide a platform for all the artists and people that we feel are important to us and to the region.
Ryan: We’re not trying to have like a "noise rock" festival, or a "psych" festival or…I don’t know. I don’t really know what to say about that I guess. I don’t want it to be just an anything goes approach, but in my mind everyone we’ve picked makes sense. More than it might appear to someone just looking at it on paper, I guess. Noisey: If there is some way you would like to see the festival grow in the coming years, what would that be? Are their specific goals that you have?
James: I mean I want the festival to stay small. I don’t want us to reach a point where all the sudden we have to expand because there is so much demand. And then we have bigger stages and crazier lighting fixtures and we’re all out in some field where there’s no vibe or space or anything like that. No matter how successful we get I want it to stay at a small manageable size that Ryan and I can deal with, envision and work around. But it would be nice to sell out the shows. I think last year was a huge milestone for use where all the stages were just fucking packed at the end of the night and our two outdoor stages had this 360 degree vibe so everyone who was playing outside was literally surrounded. And that felt really good. Noisey: I saw this is the first year you guys are doing camping. It’s near the Ohio River is that right?
Ryan: Yeah it's seriously 10 feet from the Ohio River. The area the camping zone's in is really just on the banks of the Ohio. You could literally run out of your tent into the river, it's five feet away. You wouldn’t want to get in the river though. Noisey: I see you guys have comedy as well. This year it's Tony Clifton which seems like a natural follow up to Neil Hamburger last year.
James: It was something Ryan proposed. He was like: I know we only have so much money, but we should throw some at Neil Hamburger. And so he headlined one of the stages one of the nights right before Lil'B, and he killed it. Later on that night I’m sitting back there with Lil'B and Neil, just hanging out shooting the shit in this horseshoe pit in the pitch black dark along the Ohio River. I think that was one of my favorite moments. Noisey: Clicking through your lineup page I’m now pretty obsessed with the band Shit and Shine.
Ryan: They played the second year too - one of the few repeat bands we've had. It’s funny you bring that up because of all the bands that have played (and it’s a lot of our friends) Craig is maybe the number one Cropped Out supporter of anyone. The way it came about is that James and I were into this band that used to be called TODD - this British noise rock band that had this drunken rugby looking player front man that would pour beer on his crotch. The first bands we thought we asked to play the first Cropped Out was TODD and we got ahold of them and they told us they aren’t really playing anymore be they he recommended we have a Shite and Shine set. They ended up playing with King Coffey from the Butthole Surfers on the drums. It was pretty surreal.

Cropped Out

Noisey: How much does a beer cost at Cropped Out?
Ryan: Good question.
James: I think it’s like two bucks. Maybe for a High Life. They also have two dollar Vodka slushes - they are disgusting. Really don’t drink more than one of them.Really the only financial commitment is just getting in the car and finding people to split the gas money with. Maybe throwing down $10 for camping. It’s not expensive.
Ryan: I know a lot of people and press think of music festivals as lame and our answer to that is just come and see what this is. The first two years, we didn’t even call it a "music festival", thats like a four letter word. Noisey: Maybe you guys should just call it a music party.
James: That’s not a bad idea, maybe one of the better ones I’ve heard.
Ryan: A music party. I like that. -----

Follow Kevin on twitter and help him get to Kentucky. Check out more work by artist Mikie Poland