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Midwest acts will take the mic at Forward Music Fest here

Katjusa Cisar  —  8/23/2008 5:24 pm

Bands out of the Midwest will take a lead at the Forward Music Fest, a multiple-genre event slated for venues throughout Madison on Sept. 19 and 20.

Tickets go on sale Saturday, June 21 at 10 a.m., with headliners including Neko Case, Killdozer, Bob Mould, Leslie and the LYs, Dan Deacon and the Dillinger Four.

The fest (www.forwardmusicfest.com) comes out of a yearlong collaborative planning process between local venues and promoters, often in their spare time.

"It's been floating around for a long time. It's just us jumping in and willing to be the spark," said Kyle Pfister, a festival co-founder who battles Big Tobacco with the Wisconsin Department of Public Health during the day and writes the local music blog Just Sayin' Is All (www.justsayinisall.com) in his spare time. "I'm excited for some do-it-yourself promoting with the people who are promoting for fun,"

Venues include the High Noon Saloon (Killdozer), the Frequency, Project Lodge, Cafe Montmartre, Loft, Majestic Theatre, Corral Room and Orpheum Theatre (Neko Case).

At first, Pfister said, the organizers thought focusing on Midwestern music would be a constraint, but ended up being very surprised at how much the Midwest has to offer.

Co-founder Bessie Cherry said the Midwest scene is thriving. But it has an inferiority complex fueled by people on the coasts who "don't think of the Midwest as a cultural destination, they think of it as a grocery store -- that's where the corn comes from."

Cherry now works at a full-time job in broadcasting. But when she was booking shows at Cafe Montmartre a couple years ago, she noticed that some bands were afraid to take risks on Madison, instead doing two back-to-back shows in Chicago.

"It's that 'Midwestern nice,' you know, 'Go play Chicago, you don't have to come here. We'll drive down,'" she said.

She ticks off bands that formed in Madison but then left -- Rainer Maria and Locksley moved to Brooklyn, and Butch Vig of Garbage relocated to Los Angeles: "Why is the scene not supportive of their own?"

Forward Music Fest seeks to "highlight the Midwest as a destination," she said, and bring out multi-generational audiences, not just college kids.

Nabbing Neko Case as a headliner excites Cherry. "She's precious, she's a gem," she said of Case, who was supposed to appear in Madison in April with her band the New Pornographers but dropped out of the tour after she fractured her ankle.

Jake Shut, co-owner of local label Crustacean Records, got involved in the planning process when he found out Madison punk band Killdozer would reunite for the second time in more than 10 years at the fest.

"Killdozer is one of the most influential rock bands to come out of Wisconsin in the last 30 years," said Shut, who remembers going to Killdozer shows back in the '80s. "Even though the music was sonically brutal, there's a definite sense of humor and community at their shows. It brought broad grins to people's faces."

Because most of Madison's main venues are clustered around the isthmus, Madison is an ideal place for audiences to venue-hop. He hopes the Forward Music Fest becomes an annual event in the spirit of the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas.

"This has the potential to elevate the music scene," he said.

Cathy Dethmers, High Noon Saloon owner, said she can't remember a festival "of this scope" with so many venues since she moved here in 1990. "I think this sounds really exciting. I'm impressed that they've stuck with it this long."

Core organizers of the fest also include Jesse Russell (editor of local news and culture Web site Dane101.com), Jamie Hanson (UW grad student and co-founder of the Madison Pop Fest) and Wyndham Manning (Dane County Board supervisor and former director of the Wisconsin Union Directorate Music Committee).

"We're a collaborative effort, and we need help. We don't just want to be the five of us," said Cherry.

Anyone interested in getting involved with promoting or planning can e-mail forward.collaborative@gmail.com.

In terms of booking, "we haven't even scratched the surface of the local bands," added Cherry.

Katjusa Cisar  —  8/23/2008 5:24 pm