Fest For All, the annual festival celebrating food, music and dance, will be held May 1 and 2 in downtown Baton Rouge with the usual cajun and blues music, but this year the event will also showcase college and alternative rock bands.
Joel Phillips, in his first year of scheduling bands for the event, booked most of the college bands that will perform.
“It is my hope that Fest For All will be the beginning of people realizing that some kind of [college music] scene can start here,” Phillips said inside his home office, which is decorated with artful fliers of indie rock shows from the early ’90s.
The festival wants to give local college bands the opportunity to get exposure from a diverse crowd, according to Katherine Scherer, arts and programs director of the Arts Council of Greater Baton Rouge, which puts on the event.
The younger, more energetic bands on this year’s lineup will be Liquidrone, Always The Runner, Gangsta Folk, Common Stock, Reception is Suspected, Righteous Buddha, The Eames Era and The Benjy Davis Project.
Among the notable blues and cajun artists coming to the stage are Kenny Neal, George Porter, Jr., Us3, the Bluebirds and Henry Gray & the Cats.
The festival will feature two stages. The Galvez Plaza Stage, nicknamed the “Jambalaya” stage, is located at 200 North Blvd. The North Boulevard “Gumbo” stage is located along the 400 block of North Boulevard, according to Scherer and Noah Danos, keyboard player for the self-described “tech-rock” duo Reception Is Suspected.
Sam Anselmo, the other half of the band, said that the college rock acts will be dispersed between the two stages. They will also perform at different times so that the variety of bands playing, including rock, cajun and blues artists, will receive equal attention from a large crowd.
Phillips said that he wanted to create a third stage for the new additions to the lineup, but there was not enough money in Fest For All’s budget.
“I talked to Malcolm Robinson, who booked the blues and cajun acts, and he told me that if the new bands do well this year and attract a youthful crowd, then we can probably obtain the third stage for next year’s festival,” he said.
Another new feature of this year’s festival is a compilation CD of bands that perform at the event, which will feature three songs from the college bands and will be available at the festival, according to Phillips.
After he went to Austin, Texas last year and saw what he described as an awesome music scene, Phillips went to the promoters of Fest For All and told them that he wanted to bring young indie rock bands into the festival.
“I went to them because I wanted the event to truly be a festival for all people,” he said. “[Robinson] really wanted to do the same thing, but he’s in his 50s, so he just didn’t have the knowledge, so he went for my idea and let me find some acts to fill up the lineup.”
“[Phillips] really helped us a lot when we first started playing about eight months ago,” said Eric Dills, guitarist for Always The Runner. “He put us on bills with national touring acts that got us some good crowds.”
Dills describes his band as “triumphant instrumental rock” and explained that the music is mellow and feel-good and that most of the songs have no words.
“I love the idea of the new Fest For All,” he said. “We’ve never played a day show before and I love the festival atmosphere. I hope that people will be receptive.”