Suburbs Fest: Zoom gigs during the pandemic leads to Louisville gathering of musical friends
Louisville is famous for its festivals including Bourbon and Beyond and Louder Than Life, both coming up in September, and for the springtime Kentucky Derby Festival.
Now the city is welcoming a new, small music festival this weekend, Suburbs Fest South. And the event has a remarkable backstory.
A truly grassroots effort, the fest was sparked by a podcast "Rockin’ the Suburbs" and a some of the listeners who gathered on Zoom during the COVID-19 pandemic to chat and play music together.
For more than two years, this Friday night online hootenanny – shortened to just “The Hoot” – was "a way to get things off your chest. It was a way to kick back and listen to good tunes,” said Erik Didriksen, a software engineer in New York and a "Hoot" regular.
“Having what felt like a regular outlet of a place to go and show up to meet a community of welcoming friends really saved my sanity. It was such a necessary rescue from reality.”
Months of planning by "Rockin’ the Suburbs" podcast founders Jim Lenahan and Patrick Foster will culminate this weekend as attendees from across the country – most of whom have only seen each other online – will gather to play music and listen to other musicians.
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First, a podcast, then an online hootenanny
Lenahan and Foster started their first music podcast, Dad Rock, when they both worked for Gannett, which owns more than 200 outlets and USA TODAY within the USA TODAY Network. Both left Gannett in 2016 and in January 2017, they started their current podcast "Rockin’ the Suburbs." The name comes from a 2001 album and song from musician Ben Folds. (This reporter occasionally collaborated on that podcast, as well as the current one.)
The mission: talk about music — old and new — concerts and culture. They also let listeners appear on the show and pick discussion topics. “We always say our listeners are smarter than we are,” Lenahan says.
As a result, Rosen says, “we heard each other’s voices on the podcast and we felt like we knew each other.”
The podcast hit its 1000th episode in December 2020 during the pandemic and celebrated with an episode featuring Cheap Trick’s Rick Nielsen and posting a Spotify playlist of 1,000 songs.
Earlier that year, when the nation went into lockdown because of COVID-19, Lenahan came up with the idea of having the Friday night Zoom hangouts “and together we evolved it toward the idea of playing music,” said Foster, whose band Wingtip Sloat could no longer gather for Friday night practices because of the restrictions.
The initial vibe of a virtual campfire song session evolved when people who had never met in person began collaborating on live music performances on “the Hoot.”
Brittany Rees, a musician who co-founded the band Frank Muffin with husband Hans, found out about "the Hoot" from a friend. They became regulars on the Zoom gigs performing originals and cover songs. She says the online gatherings served as a support group for many, including herself, when her mother died during the pandemic.
The group was "one of the first groups of people that I shared that with when she first got sick," Brittany Rees said. "And in a way, I feel like I don't now how I could have gone through that without the support and love of the group of friends that I had in my life at that time."
Eventually, the discussion on “the Hoot” turned to "When this is over, we should all get together in person," Lenahan said.
Come together … not just on Zoom, but in the same room
Lenahan and Foster held the first Suburbs Fest in October 2021 in the Washington D.C. area, where they and many listeners live, as the COVID-19 pandemic lessened. Attendees took turns playing live music at Settle Down Easy Brewing in Falls Church, Virginia, and afterwards went to a nearby hotel where many out-of-towners were staying.
“We kept chatting at the hotel bar, and suddenly a guitar appeared. It became a big singalong with everyone joining in,” said Didriksen, who has written the book, Pop Sonnets: Shakespearean Spins on Your Favorite Songs. “It was the sort of thing we would've struggled to do on Zoom because of lag, but in person it came together so magically”
Subsequent meetups were held in July 2022 in Chicago and again in the Washington, D.C. area in October 2022. Niklas Nygårds, a regular listener and contributor in Sweden and Steven Routledge, who lives in Scotland, traveled across the Atlantic to attend that fall get-together and performed together live.
“What was it gonna be like, meeting all these people I had only seen on the screen and heard on the podcast? Well, it felt like I had known everyone for years,” Nygårds said. “The hospitality of everyone involved … meeting everyone was surreal, but still so natural. I don't think I've processed everything yet, 10 months later. I am so looking forward to the next time I get to see everyone.”
Suburbs Fest schedule
Most attendees will take in a Louisville Bats minor league baseball game Thursday night. Then there’s two days of activities:
Friday 7 p.m. - 11 p.m. ET: Open-mic night at Gravely Brewing in downtown Louisville, where people can perform or participate in live band karaoke with Lafayette, Indiana band Frank Muffin backing up wannabe Springsteens and Taylors. (Open to the public. No cover.)
Saturday 1-5 p.m. ET: Live podcast recording at The Whirling Tiger ($10 cover).
Saturday 7 p.m. ET: Dash Rip Rock and Louisville’s The Excuses will perform at 21st In Germantown (open to the public, $10 cover).
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Music festival Suburbs Fest borne out of pandemic comes to Louisville
