8:30am | Last year’s Summer and Music concert series thrilled thousands with its hip, urban sensibilities, its refreshing embrace of Long Beach talent, and a recognition that, if you put on a really great show, people will show up to enjoy it. Co-sponsored by the Downtown Long Beach Associates (DLBA) and the Redevelopment Agency (RDA), the series drew happy throngs to BuskerFest, Funk Fest, the Battle of the Tribute Bands, and many other great events.
The organizers, Rand Foster and Justin Hectus, were brought in because they live and breathe music, both local and beyond. They’re fans and boosters. Foster is the owner of Fingerprints, a thriving independent CD/LP retail store in Belmont Shore. He’s been a tireless advocate for local artists, and has helped organize music for many a local festival.
Hectus helped create what many deem to be the best local music compilation ever made: Dope America. He’s been supporting local bands for as long as I can remember. More recently, he brought a diverse and talented group of music artists together for a fundraiser, Schooled In Song, which raised money for art programs in local schools. Through this effort, Rand and Hectus first collaborated.
Today, they officially launch this year’s SAM series with an event at Gladstone’s. They took some time to talk about what we can expect from the upcoming series.
Sander: Today is the official launch of the 2nd Summer and Music series. Can you share some of the highlights of this year’s performances?
Rand: I’m actually pretty excited about the kickoff. I’ve just recently discovered Korey Dane and he’s blowing my mind. There is a very timeless quality to his writing, and he writes about things that are much bigger than so many of the moleskin journalists that come across my desk. so, I guess I love that there is a worldliness to his songs, yet he still name-checks “Third & Promenade” and talks about other things that feel like home.
Musically he brings to mind some of my favorites like Josh Ritter, Damien Rice, and Jeff Buckley, with a stunning vocal counterpoint from Tess Shapiro, who sings with him.
Marika was one of our strongest finishers in last year’s b-fest (we didn’t release the results) but she was very close to winning.
Justin: She turned in almost 1400 wooden nickels.
Rand: Marika is a true hidden gem of Long Beach. She has a tremendous voice, yet has no MySpace or other virtual presence [Edit: Click here to visit Marika’s MySpace page]. Last I heard, she’s recording with Matt Wignal (who produces the Cold War Kids albums) and, when she steps onto a larger stage, it’s going to be a big deal.
Justin: I’m really excited about the Lightbulb-mouth Radio Hour component of the kick off. Derrick [Brown] and Mindy [Nettifee] do an amazing job of capturing snapshots of musicians, poets and informationists (sic). They give a platform for these artists to perform and then they ask thoughtful questions to really round out the experience. They are a cornerstone of all that is good in LB right now, and I’m thrilled to have them in the mix.
Rand: Also, moving down the calender, our official kick-off seems like a natural progression from Buskerfest. We’ve built a show based around our favorite local musicians, some who played at Busker and a couple that are just arriving on our radar. Even though Funkfest was our official close, Buskerfest felt like a huge mile-marker for me, probably because I was so much more hands-on with it. To have Future Legends pick up in the same place is very exciting for me.
Sander: You mentioned BuskerFest, which by all accounts was a smash success last year. The Cold War Kids closed the show, and a bunch of great local artists got some fantastic exposure. Lots of people came, and had a great time. You also had a huge success with FunkFest. Will you be repeating these, or adding new events, or both?
Rand: We are bringing back Funk Fest, it happens on August 7th. Busker is on the schedule, but since we had to turn in a balanced budget, we have a media hold on it until we close the financing gap.
Justin: In addition, we’re bringing back Battle of the Tribute Bands which, in 2010, features Fan Halen, INXS-ive, BLONDE-Day, Blasphemous Rumours and Pyromania. Blonde-Day is a reconfiguration of the 2009 winner No-Duh as a Blondie Tribute.
In addition to the few marquee, fan favorite, events from 2009, we have some new concepts that we’re really excited about. On August 13 and 14, we’re doing a show called “Classical Beats” which features a marriage of classical violin and hip hop beats, set to the backdrop of a temporary art installation by Greenmeme. That show is a collaboration with the Arts Council and the LA County Arts Commission.
Rand: It’s taking place across from the ‘beer can‘ on Ocean and Lime. We’re also working on something called the Church of Rock & Roll. It’s hard to go to into the details because I’m still working out the headliner but the gyst is a show that takes the celebratory vibe of The Last Waltz and marries it to the local (So. CA) scene. We both really loved the spontaneity of Pawn Shop Kings calling everyone up for their set closer at BuskerFest. It felt redemptive and we wanted to do a show that captured that energy. We are playing with a couple of formats, dependent on what we hear from our (hopeful) headliner, but both are exciting enough that we toyed with the idea of doing them independently of each other. so however it goes, it has the potential to be this year’s surprise dark horse favorite show.
Justin: We also have James Intveld and Miguel Garcia and the Vaquetones on a closed block of Pine on June 19. That show is going to bring out all of those of us who have been crying in our beer ever since Blue Cafe closed. We have a Swing Saturday event with Eddie Nichols of Royal Crowne Review fame, and a waterfront show with Delta Nove and OO Soul (both in July). All of these shows, by the way, are taking place on self-contained solar-powered stages provided by Sustainable Waves. We’re also bringing back the free bike vault program, through LB Cyclists, which was a huge success for SAM 2009.
Sander: Did your funding partners set any specific goals for you this year?
Justin: The RDA and DLBA have been great partners. When we go out and talk with producers who are doing similar events in other communities, they are always struck by the uniqueness of the partnership we have.
Rand: There was a lot of excitement to recreate the successes of last year, with very little pressure to change things.
Justin: We’re all interested in broadening the support base for SAM in year two, and significantly so in year three and beyond. In addition to looking for a successful sophomore year, our partners in the DLBA/RDA are looking for us to grow the event through additional community partners.
Rand: One of our goals last year was to develop relationships with sponsors, and that is something we’re focused on now. It’s not really a directive we’ve been given, but there are financial realities we all have to deal with and, as we try to grow, it can’t all be done with their checkbook. This year we’re trying to cover approx 10-15% of costs through sponsorships.
Justin: We’re also looking for in-kind sponsorships, and continuing to work with media partners.
Sander: What is the target market for the series? Do you see these events as drawing from the local community, or reaching further into the regional population?
Rand: Both. We see SAM as a very LB-centric endeavor, especially from a talent side, but one of our objectives with the series is to bring some fresh faces to our town. I’m pretty happy with how well we balanced the two last year. It seemed we brought a lot of folks in and, together, we celebrated the LB scene.
Justin: One of the best things about Long Beach is the richness of our music scene. These folks play all of the country, some play all of the world. Then, the worst thing is that they come home and have no where to play. So, we’re really trying to make a place for them to showcase in our own backyard. Both so their neighbors and friends and families and community can come out and experience the joy of their performances, and so that the folks from just North and just South of here can come down and see what an amazing scene we have.
Sander: Can you talk a bit about how the two of you got started with this? How did you get tapped to do this rather ambitious job?
Justin: Rand had been kind enough to help Jay Buchanan and me with Schooled in Song events in 2007 and 2008 and, around that time, we spent a lot of time commiserating about the lack of performance venue infrastructure in town. We have a few great places (Alex’s, The Prospector, DiPiazza’s and others) but there are not nearly enough places to perform. We thought the idea of creating venues in the streets of downtown seemed like a pretty cool fix.
We were able to make that happen in a big way in 2008 with 30 bands and six DJ’s on three stages in one day at University by the Sea. In early 2009, John Morris suggested that we approach the DLBA about taking on their summer music series. We started the conversation in May of 2009 and we were in full swing by June 1. Last year we did 40 concerts, some as small as a street corner performance, and the largest was 15,000 people.
(At Left) Photo of Rand Foster, Bobby Easton and Justin Hectus courtesy of Daniel DeBoom.
I should make a quick plug for Funk Fest, and the return of Bobby Easton as the King of Long Beach Funk. The lineup isn’t ready to announce quite yet, but I can tell you that this event has already earned a reputation in the Funk community for its authenticity, and Funk Fest 2010 is going to break records. We had about 15,000 people attend FF 2009 and 2010 should be even bigger and badder.
Sander: One of the goals, as I understand it, was to help revitalize the now historic Pine Avenue, and the other businesses served by the DLBA in the Downtown area. Have you had much interaction with them since the end of the last series? What kind of feedback did you get from them?
Justin: Both immediately after the series and regularly since the 2009 event concluded, we did a lot of informal polling of the business owners. We have received a ton of feedback, and almost all of it has been positive. We have received some good suggestions for improvements as well, and we’re going to be incorporating those in the current series.
The most significant example is that the businesses didn’t feel enough impact from the small concerts last Summer, so we’ve collapsed the series into 13 shows that are all of relatively significant size. We’re continuing to talk with businesses and hope to strengthen the support that SAM provides. Without their support, there would be no Summer and Music.
This whole thing has been a labor of love for us. I think I can speak for Rand as well when I say that this community of musicians means the world to us, and we’re incredibly proud to play a supporting role in the scene.