Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Requests to play nearly doubled for VexFest 5

By Sarah Poulton

YOUNGSTOWN — When the planning stages of VexFest 5 began, organizers envisioned a bigger festival than VexFest IV.

Fred Rafidi, the original mind behind VexFest, says he wanted to invite more than 50 bands to play four stages on West Federal Street. With the closing of The Core, and arrangements not working out with other Federal Street businesses, VexFest 5 will feature 41 bands ­— one more than VexFest IV — on three stages.

Rafidi says they’ll make it work.

“We’re left with more bands than last year and fewer stages,” Rafidi said. “We were hoping to grow.”

Growing in one way and shrinking in another left the organizing body, Youngstown Local Music, in a bind. Their spirits are up, though, and they’re confident they’ve found adequate solutions.

Jim DeCapua of YLM says that in order to accommodate the bands they had already accepted, they had to stack the Barleys stage, leaving between 10 and 15 minutes between sets, and limit most bands to half-hour sets. They also decided to put all the out-of-town bands on the inside stage.

“Being fair, this is a showcase of Youngstown bands,” DeCapua says. “Instead of kicking bands off we already invited, we worked with it.”

DeCapua says this year’s decision of which bands to showcase was much harder than VexFest IV. Last year, he says they had requests to play from about 100 bands.

John Jones of YLM says this year, requests nearly doubled and included 30 to 40 bands from out-of-state.

“This has created a buzz outside the Youngstown area,” Jones says. “This city’s coming back around.”

Jason Tibolla of Third Arm Promotions and 93.3 The Wolf’s Homegrown Show says not only are they fortunate enough to have four bands on the bill that have played every VexFest since it started in 2001; Via Sahara, Kitchen Knife Conspiracy, Mystic WIP Hustler and Tilt 360, but this year will also feature the reunion of Cyrus, the band that founded the original VexFest with Rafidi.

“You’re getting pretty much the best of everything,” Tibolla says. “It really is a celebration. It’s a celebration of Youngstown; it’s a celebration of the Youngstown local music scene.”

The rest of the organizers agree that Cyrus was the perfect choice to headline the all-day, outdoor, multi-genre show.

“I am looking forward to seeing Cyrus,” Rafidi says. “I was a fan back then and I enjoy their music. It makes the most sense, at least for this year.”

Jones adds: “I’m glad to have them back. I’m looking forward to seeing what they can bring to the table.”

As well as increasing the number of bands, they also added more vendors, and brought back corn hole and the mechanical bull from their last endeavour, JonesFest.

“We’re just creating an environment of fun games and a carnival atmosphere,” Jones says.

Despite unforeseen issues, Rafidi and the rest of YLM say that they do this for the fans and music, but most importantly, for the city.

We do this for Youngstown,” Rafidi says. “We all believe in our area and we think it’s on the upswing. We believe it’s a good thing and we’re going to continue to do VexFest and similar things.”

Author’s note: The style change from Roman to Arabic numerals was not intentional by organizers, but merely a font choice.