The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Heating up indoors, too
A little music fest that could, Spring Fling at Agora, ready to rock this weekend
Cory Hajde grew up in Cleveland during a time when the Rock Hall City lacked a music festival. That’s no longer the case a decade later, with numerous events taking place during the summertime. ¶One such festival is Spring Fling, which Hajde’s concert and promotion company, BravoArtist, successfully has grown over the last five years. The 2018 affair takes place June 2 and 3 at the Agora Theatre and Ballroom. The Front Bottoms headline the former date; Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness headlines the latter. because we get to see these bands in terms of their record cycle maybe once or twice coming through the market.
“For example, we booked this year’s Spring Fling headliner The Front Bottoms at Mahall’s (20 Lanes in Lakewood) three or four years ago. Then they came back and sold out the Agora. It’s cool to watch and develop a lot of these acts and see them crawl up the ladder from being an opener on our festival to being someone who could potentially headline in a couple of years.”
The pop-punk The Front Bottoms, which features Brian Sella (vocals, guitars) and Mathew Uychich (drums), has enjoyed a growing Northeast Ohio audience.
“It’s amazing, Cleveland was one of the first places we’d go, and it would be like, ‘Wow, there are 100 people here,’” said Sella, calling from Raleigh, North Carolina. “We’re excited to get back over there to rock ’n’ roll.”
The Front Bottoms’ latest full-length album is 2017’s “Going Grey.” Sella said the project found the band, which over the years has explored folk and synth motifs, going more experimental.
The prolific act returned this year with new EP “Ann.” The release is part of its “Grandma” series where the New Jersey group re-imagines songs from a decade ago when as unknown musicians they posted tunes on YouTube.
Sella said going back to the material was surreal, with some songs truly showcasing The Front Bottoms’ songwriting magic while others were cringeworthy.
As for the “Grandma” series, each EP is named after a band member’s recently deceased grandmother: “Rose” for Uychich; Anne for Sella.
“It’s nice because when my grandmother passed away, my mom made a bunch of collages, just, like, for therapeutic reasons,” Sella said. “The album cover for ‘Ann’ is actually one of those collages that my mother made.”
So what would Grandma Ann think about having an EP named after her?
“I think she’d love it, although I was a little bit embarrassed because the last song on the EP is about doing LSD,” Sella laughed. “She wouldn’t like that, but I think she’d like the art.”
“We just wanted to originally put together a club festival for a bunch of bands that toured through the springtime,” Hajde said. “We wanted to do something indoors, make it more of an intimate environment and not have to worry about the weather screwing us up.
“It’s nice to be able to develop some of these acts, put them in a festival environment, see how they kind of draw from each other and learn a little bit about it.”
Throughout the year, BravoArtist produces shows in Northeast Ohio and Columbus. Hajde said these are mostly underground bands touring the small-club circuit, which caters directly to the “Spring Fling” motif. Specifically, this is a niche festival for music lovers.
“These are bands (who) aren’t receiving a ton of radio,” Hajde said. “It’s cool