DAM, Baby
By day Eric Boucher is a typical DC office drone but by night he is a music impresario. The audiophile’s passion manifested itself first in the music site BigYawn.net (a site I occasionally contribute music reviews to) and now is the force behind the District's Awake Music Festival (DAM Fest). The event features more than 40 bands on four stages over three days (not counting the pre and post parties). As this is DC, there is a charitable side as well. Instrument and monetary donations will be present at every venue, benefiting CHIME, a local organization dedicating to supporting music in area schools. DCist caught Boucher during a rare, spare moment and talked with him about the upcoming event.
So, Eric, why DAM Fest? Why now?
Well, the idea came to me after the Six Points Festival, in the spring. It was basically a local festival— had a couple shows a night. All local venues, all local bands and people were just trashing it. And I kept thinking of how uneventful it was, to me. It was on the heels of reading about the Noise Pop Festival and looking at the Montreal Pop festival, stuff like that, I thought “You know, we can do better than this. We can have something that people in this city actually want to come to.” The ideas just came from there, thinking : I know people in DC and I’ve booked shows before and I‘ve made some connections with people all around the country. We can build our own, we can put something together that’s... cool.
My whole thing was, a lot of tours skip over D.C. People hit New York, then they hit Chicago, then L.A and they hit the cities in between but we get skipped, sometimes. Sometimes people go to Baltimore, sometimes people don’t come down here at all. That just doesn’t make any sense to me. There’s so much history here from Duke Ellington to go-go music to Minor Threat, Fugazi and the whole hardcore scene to right now with bands like Q and not U, there’s a lot of history here and it's silly not to have D.C. as a big stop on the national circuit. So I want to try and draw some exposure to the city so people think “On the way to CMJ, we’re going to hit this DAM Festival every year, because that’s what’s going on." So that’s why I thought “Why not, why not take a stab at it and see what happens?”
What have you done before with booking shows?
Well through the website, BigYawn.net, obviously. Last year we a did show about once a month, I think, from last June through February. We had bands like Brian Jonestown Massacre. We had bands that I liked, obviously, but we felt that people maybe didn’t know about, maybe needed the exposure. We mixed it with local bands, too, so we had a fair balance. By no means am I a pro, that showed on many an occasion when I was booking the festival, but I think you kind of learn as you go. That’s why this was very much a DC thing because it was sort of do it yourself. With this festival it happened or it didn’t happen because of my inexperience. We have a festival so I guess I did do something right.
How did you put together the line-up for the festival?
A combination of things. We wanted to keep it local, 50/50 if we could, but we wanted to bring in some national bands that people would be excited about seeing, too. And also highlight some bands that maybe everybody didn’t know about but that we thought were really cool. So, part of it was just reaching out to bands that I liked, part of it was reaching to local bands I felt would be good to be a part of this, reaching out to booking agents, saying “CMJ is coming up, we have a stop a week earlier in DC. We know you’re going to be on the east coast. What sort of tours do you have coming through here?” It was a combination of all those things. Then, when that all failed miserably, then we go back to the drawing board. Who can we talk to? Who do we know is touring and who do we know is definitely playing CMJ that hasn’t put anything together yet? Or, who is close enough that they want to come play a show here?
So are there any bands coming that you are really excited about?
There are a lot of bands that I’m really excited about because they wouldn’t be coming if we didn’t try really hard. DJ Spooky is playing, which is awesome, he and his camp have been really interested since the beginning.. We have Longwave, from New York, who I’ve loved forever. The Cold War Kids, which was a total surprise. I read one day, that The Futureheads tour canceled [which CWK were scheduled to open for] and I immediately wrote them, because they were going too be on that tour, and said “ Hey we’re doing a show that weekend, I know you’re supposed to play Baltimore why not play D.C?” and an hour later the show was booked.
But even some of the smaller bands playing. There’s a new band playing at the Velvet lounge on the 28th called Over the Atlantic. They’re on Carpark, which is a label closely tied with Paw Tracks, Animal Collective’s label. They’re this obscure band that not a lot of people know about but they’re so cool. And the fact that we were able to find a spot for them— it’s awesome.
How did you get venues involved?
Well, it helped that I’m good friends with Bryan Deily, who is part-owner three of the venues we’re working: DC9, Rock and Roll Hotel and The Red and The Black. When I approached him with this, in May, he was 100 percent all for it and quickly jumped on and became a part of this whole event. You know he had a lot going on, opening two new venues, so he left a lot of it to me — but the bottom line: he’s providing the financial backing for a lot of this, he’s making sure the bands get paid.
At the Velvet Lounge, we reached out to Rob who does the booking and was totally down. We tried to have 9:30 and we tried to have Black Cat and it didn’t work out — the 9:30, mostly because of scheduling. The Black Cat — whatever, they had their own feelings about doing festival stuff. The bottom line is, we’re very excited about the venues that we’re working with.
So how did you get into the DC music scene? Did you grow up here or read a book about it…
I did read a good book about it but… I discovered music really late — good music. I was Journey fan at five years old. Even coming to college here I wasn’t a huge fan of music — good music. I had a curiosity and that was fed by a person in my life who was really into music and that opened an opportunities for me to learn a ton about D.C. music and national, international — the whole nine yards. And, I’m on of those people, that when I throw myself into something I go 150 percent so I read everything that I could, I bought every magazine off the rack from NME to the indie black and white zines they have out here, websites. I read Dance of Days, which was really good.
What did putting together this event show you about the D.C. music scene?
I think that the D.C. scene is pretty segmented. There’s the Dischord scene that everybody talks about and romanticizes but there’s a hip hop community in this city. And there’s a DJ community in this city, and I don’t mean the ones that spin Blur and the Arcade Fire. I mean house DJs, drum and bass DJs. There’s obviously indie rock, a band like The Decemberist comes to town and the show sells out in like, two seconds. And there are a lot of bands who, I think, now are really trying to define what’s going on D.C. There are so many different artists, types of artists.
There are so many different types of bands that, even though D.C. is small enough that there should be just one community, it just doesn’t work. But I think a lot of people really want something to be here, really want to create something. I don’t know whether this festival is going to be able to do anything, other than just try — like everybody else, but I think there’s an underlying community that exists but there’s just so many different parts of it. That’s a horribly complex, fragmented answer to that question.
So what are your biggest hopes for DAM Fest?
My biggest is hope is that it’s successful enough that it can be done again next year.
DAM Fest is October 26-28th see the site for full details.