The Faux 8 Diaries

Have you ever seen that video of a guy dancing alone at a music festival? It’s broad daylight in a wide-open field. Some people sit scattered around on blankets, but there he stands, dancing all alone, waving his arms like a wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube man, grooving out in the truest sense of the word. Eventually, another guy wanders over and starts busting out his funkiest moves, and all of a sudden, this shirtless dude who was standing off by himself is now dancing with someone. Then another person joins in, and three is a crowd. Shortly after that, another couple of people come up, then a group of three. Soon, the mass is growing too fast to count. By the end of the video, people are running towards the crowd, eager to join the actively expanding dance floor. That’s what Fauxchella feels like.

For the uninitiated, Faux (fka Fauxchella) is a DIY/emo/punk music festival in Bowling Green, Ohio, organized by the now-defunct house venue The Summit Shack. While the first two incarnations were hosted at The Shack, all of the following Fauxchellas (plus a few seasonal offshoots) have taken place at Howard’s Club H, a 200-cap dive bar with two stages, $3 PBRs, and $2 shots. Hell yeah. Previous iterations of the fest have included the likes of Origami Angel, Ben Quad, saturdays at your place, Michael Cera Palin, and so many goddamn more. I’m not being hyperbolic at all when I say that it’s basically heaven on earth if you like fast music and guitar tapping. 

If you’re interested in learning more about the history of Fauxchella and The Summit Shack, a couple of years ago, I conducted a long-form interview with Conor Alan, which serves as a retrospective of the festival in all its iterations. There’s also a big recap I did on Fauxchella VI, complete with lots of video footage of different sets.

This June, I made the 12-hour drive up to Bowling Green for Faux 8, because this was one I could not miss. First and foremost, this was set to be the last Fauxchella at Howard’s, given that the fest has long outgrown the confines of the dive bar’s charming sticker-covered walls. Musically, I was excited to catch sets from old faves like Equipment, Summerbruise, and Kerosene Heights. There were also many bands on this year’s lineup I was ecstatic to catch for the first time, like Waving, 95COROLLA, Fend, red sun, and Keep for Cheap. On top of all this, the lineup for day two felt like a miniature sequel to Liberation Weekend, featuring the likes of Pretty Bitter, Ekko Astral, and Home Is Where

Home Is Where

Since I just published a big write-up on Liberation Weekend, I wanted to do something different for Faux and not just go through the lineup band by band. Swim was also tabling the event, slinging shirts, totes, lighters, and cool little zines, so I knew I’d be too busy to realistically catch every set. Instead, I brought my trusty digi cam and tried my best to snap pics of every set and merch spread, plus some cool portraits of band members. Esteemed members of the Swim Team, Josh Ejnes and Ben Parker, were also on-site, so you’ll find their thoughts on each day below, plus some other surprises. 

Thanks to Conor, Ellie, Jake, Mike, Sergei, Trey, Nick, Jacob, and all the people who make it possible to put an event like this together. It truly takes a village, and it’s been an absolute blessing to join in and be a part of it. Faux forever. 


Faux[DACTED]

Before we get any further into this article, we should address the name of the festival. While the previous seven iterations of the fest were named “Fauxchella,” this year’s iteration was unceremoniously re-titled “FAUX 8.” That’s because, back in April, The Summit Shack received a cease and desist from AEG, the second-largest ticketing company in the world, and, notably, the purveyors of the Coachella music festival. Despite the fact that Coachella is the name of a place, despite the fact that the fest is named after a joke from Workaholics, and despite the fact that “Fauxchella” is a 200-person music festival happening halfway across the country at a college town dive bar in Ohio, AEG still felt the need to sic the lawyers on ‘em. 

The Crowd for FinalBossFight!

In the end, Faux 8 played out exactly like any other Fauxchella would, and nothing sizable changed aside from a knowing gap in the posters that were amended to read “FAUX       8” with a big blank spot. A good handful of the bands poked fun at this from the stage between songs, calling attention to how absurd it is that the people running the $600-a-head Influencer Music Festival were getting litigious and using intimidation tactics on a defunct DIY venue. While I’m glad Faux continued unabated, to me, this just feels emblematic of the way that these giant companies will crush, mangle, and intimidate anyone they can if it means a few extra dollars. The fact that they seemed to take so much glee in threatening a zero-profit emo festival, it’s no wonder why live music is in such a bad spot. Fuck you and your $15 beers. 

Alright, that's enough preamble, let's get into it. 


Josh & Ben on Faux 8: Day One

In all honesty, my specific memories of Faux 8 are few and far between. Edibles are partially responsible for this, but a bigger factor is that—at least for me—enjoyment of an event like Faux comes from surrendering to the experience as a whole rather than latching on to any particular moment. When I try to file things away in my brain for later, I often miss other stuff that’s happening right in front of me, so I prefer instead to just let everything wash over me. One benefit of this approach is that when I do remember something distinct, it means a little more; the imprint a result of organic impact rather than personal diligence. 

The thing that stuck with me the most throughout the first day of Faux 8 was how good the sound was; it kind of didn’t make any sense. Over the two days of the festival, more than 40 bands played half-hour sets in rapid succession, a schedule that doesn’t accommodate typical load-ins or soundchecks. On paper, this should be a recipe for frequent technical issues and a poor mix, but everything sounded great. I’m not even grading on a curve here because of the circumstances; the average Faux set sounds better than what you’d expect to hear at your local venue’s regular shows. I think that this high-quality sound production is an underappreciated element of what makes Faux sets so special. Shout out to Jake Pachasa and Mike Seymour, absolute killers on the boards. 

Boyclothes

There are so many bands out there that I mean to listen to but don’t. I’ll see a band come across my feed, I’ll pull up Tidal to check them out, and then bang, the doorbell rings or my dog needs to go to the bathroom. By the time I come back to the computer, I've forgotten what I was doing, and suddenly I’m listening to the Menzingers for the thousandth time. FinalBossFight! were a frequent victim of this pattern for me; they just kept falling through the cracks. Watching their set on day one of Faux, I felt like an absolute fool for not checking them out sooner; they were so good and 100% in my wheelhouse. A few songs in, I was thinking about how their stripped-down approach to pop-punk kind of reminded me of Joyce Manor, a thought that was immediately followed by their killer cover of “Five Beer Plan.” It was very serendipitous. FBF! are now a band that will forever be in my regular listening rotation, thank you Faux for the introduction.

Another day one highlight for me was Bottom Bracket, a Chicago band I’d listened to a few times but had never managed to catch live. Their set was a way more arresting performance than I was expecting. I can't fathom how someone can play guitar like that and sing so well at the same time. Their set was at 7 pm, which is where I found myself starting to feel the fatigue of the day, but they snapped me right out of it. Good bands I enjoy; great bands send a jolt through me, and Bottom Bracket firmly sit in the latter camp—very cool stuff. 

One of the things I was most looking forward to at the fest was Carly Cosgrove’s performance. This was my first time seeing the band since the release of The Cleanest of Houses Are Empty, and I’ve so badly wanted to yell “You, old, dog, you old dog, you, old, dog, you old dog, you, you old dog, you old dog, you!” in a room full of people since first hearing the record. I finally got to do it at Faux, and it was just as magical as I imagined. Tough to beat seeing a band with a no-skip discography live—great way to cap off the night.
– Josh Ejnes

I am foolishly the kind of person who sees the opportunity to spend a total of 24 hours inside a small dive bar in Ohio and thinks, “How can I spend as much of my time as possible there without leaving?” On day one, I am proud to say I left only once, and that was during the much-earned hour-long break built into the schedule. Even then, I only went next door to a little deli for a chicken sandwich and some waffle fries that were better than they needed to be.  

The real reason I wanted to spend so much time at Faux was not just because of the incredible line-up of bands and absurdly cheap drink prices, but because Faux 8, much like all years prior, is really built on such a small and niche community that unites yearly to dance and drink $3 beers together. Nothing from the day stands out more to me than going around and seeing people from the internet who I have been aware of for a long time and was finally able to meet. 

There is also something really special about attending a festival and being able to get in a moshpit with the same people that you paid money to see. The band members are all running around and taking time to see the sets. It is very rare anymore that you go to a major show and get to actually talk to the folks who are the show. It is one of the things that makes Faux feel like a giant DIY family reunion. 

Bee’s Faux Bucket Hat

There are two bands that I want to take time to talk about, and the first is Later Gator. The Indianapolis emo outfit delivered an incredible side-stage set, despite being in a challenging position, immediately following Topiary Creatures and preceding Bottom Bracket. I was at the first-ever Later Gator show, and to have seen them grow from what they were to a band that can fill the room for a Faux set is incredible. Guitarist Jonathan Bayless and his ability to wield both a guitar and trumpet at the same time is nothing short of wizardry. There were two different covers that the band performed: one was “Higher” by Creed, and the other was a spontaneous, improvised cover of “We Are Young” by fun. that materialized after Bayless broke a string. This band kept the room moving, and it was incredible to see. 

The other band I need to mention is Strelitzia, the Arizona-based math rock group who put on what had to be one of the most special performances of the entire Faux weekend. The band rarely gets out of their home state, let alone all the way to the Midwest, so getting to see them come out and play songs off their 2024 album Winter was nothing short of astounding. I sat there at the front, thrashing around and sobbing the entire set. All I can truly say is if you have the opportunity to see this band, take it, because they are better than anybody could ever tell you.
– Ben Parker


Merch Mayhem

Ever since my first Fauxchella six years ago, I’ve viewed merch as an essential part of this festival’s identity. Bands travel from all over for this fest, many already on tours routed to or from Bowling Green just for Faux. This means that almost every band has merch with them, and at this scale, you’ll never know what you’re gonna get. Free stickers? You bet your ass. Hooters logo rips? Sure, why not. Crocheted alligators? Obviously

Tucked in the back corner of Howard’s main room, spread across two pool tables and half a dozen other surfaces, you will find a packed corner of all the best emo finery you could want. Most bands had shirts and stickers, some of which were custom-made just for this fest. Others offered vinyl records, CDs, tapes, lighters, tapestries, friendship bracelets, and toothbrushes. Several of the bands provided free earplugs, Narcan, drug test kits, Plan B, leftist literature, and wallet-sized cards about how to talk to ICE, as well as other harm-reduction supplies. It was impressive to see all these merch spreads and the infinite ways that artists create beyond the music you hear on the record. Here is a gallery of merch spreads, all photos taken with permission from the bands.
– Taylor Grimes


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Caro’s Warped Tour Report: Day One

Hi Taylor, Josh, and Ben! It’s Caro, and I am on the ground and reporting not-live from that national embarrassment happening in D.C. You know, the first stop of the 30th Anniversary of the Vans Warped Tour. 

The first thing I did was follow a guy smoking a cigarette and wearing a Memphis May Fire hoodie because I thought he would know where the gates were. He didn’t. But, thanks to my bloodhound navigational skills and a giant sign that said “ENTRANCE HERE,” I found the doors. When I approached the security check, they were blasting “Can We Just Get High?” by Carpool. Honestly, I thought I was imagining it for a second, like a desert mirage, heat psychosis already setting in, but it was real and it rocked. It was finally time to take my first steps into the very big parking lot where this was all going down and start paying $18 per tall boy White Claw all weekend. 

The day started with D.C.’s own Origami Angel performing in the first hour slot on one of the main stages to a giant crowd. They played a fuck-this-shit-up version of “Dirty Mirror Selfie” and a “Love Sosa”-infused “Doctor Whomst”. I want to make it clear that people went off for our hometown heroes.

Photo by @realkayls

Publicly, I wrote an article last year about the ascent of saturdays at your place as one of the pillars of contemporary emo — you should read it — so I felt pretty clever when they were announced for Warped Tour. Privately, I’ve had a list on my phone for the past few years called “bands that deserve to have Warped Tour re-invented so they can play in a parking lot at 2 pm,” and saturdays has been on that list since 2023. Hang my byline in the rafters because guess where I was standing at 2:35 pm. Also, why did the founder of Emo Nite walk by me?

saturdays were playing on one of the smaller stages, not the one sponsored by Ghost Energy, not the one sponsored by Beatbox, not the one sponsored by Vans, and not the other one sponsored by Vans. This corner of the festival hosted smaller artists with looser genre affiliations (think local bands like Angel Du$t or legends like Fishbone) and rowdier crowds. In this slice of paradise, saturdays kept the audience locked in through fast jams like their Blink-182-ish “pourover” and the more anthemic songs like “it’s always cloudy in kalamazoo.” The founder of Emo Nite walked by me again. When the band launched into their Certified Emo Classic, “tarot cards,” the crowd reacted accordingly, launching crowdsurfers towards the stage

After saturdays, I walked over to the Vans Left Foot Stage to scope out the crowd and watch Chiodos. Taylor, Josh, and Ben, I am here to say that there were fewer Elder Emo shirts than you would think. I’m assuming that you picture everyone here wearing something like that, but honestly, of the annoying apparel, it’s pretty evenly divided between Elder Emo shirts, Make America Emo Again hats, and It Was Never a Phase patches, but overall, it just wasn’t a lot of people. Everyone else was wearing band shirts or getting a sunburn in tank tops. Also, Chiodos ruled.

Historically, the Vans Warped compilation CD has never cost more than $5, and Smartpunk collaborated with the festival to keep this tradition alive. They also worked with Warped to do a series of less-formal sets under a tent in the middle of an alley of vendors. On Saturday, they showcased local bands like American Television and The Dreaded Laramie, as well as the cannonball-ish local band Combat. Many reading this may remember Combat’s bombastic Faux performance last year, so imagine that, but at literal Warped Tour. They rocked the fuck out, took requests from audience members like Ryland Heagy and Esden Stafne, and started a thrashing moshpit with passerbys from the Sublime and Cartel crowds. 

Photo by Combat

I want to end with this begrudging Day 1 thought: I know it’s easy to be dismissive of the Warped Tour revival. Like I know the jokes write themselves and it’s easy to pick apart, but believe me, your field reporter, the crowd was consistently fucking hyped. For the most part, everyone here paid a lot of money to hear good ass music and good ass music is what they found. Minus Ice Nine Kills.
– Caro Alt


Josh & Ben on Faux 8: Day Two

Trading card trading floor

Went into day two of Faux more tired than I would have liked. I bought a Deal or No Deal DVD game for the trip, sort of as a gag, but my friends and I actually ended up getting quite addicted to it, and our sleep suffered as a result; despite this, I was able to power through and watch some great sets. An earlier-in-the-day favorite of mine was Palette Knife, a late addition to the fest, who had the side stage absolutely rocking. Felt similarly about them as I did Bottom Bracket: how can you play like that and sing like that simultaneously? Doesn’t feel like it should be possible. “Jelly Boi” is one of my favorite emo songs, and I loved hearing it live. Definitely going to be catching Palette Knife next time they’re in Chicago. 

Pretty Bitter’s set at Faux 7 was one of the best of the weekend, so I was super stoked to see that they were on the lineup again for Faux 8. I felt like last year the band didn’t fully get the hype they deserved (partially due to a tough mid day timeslot), so I was really happy to see so many people dancing and singing along as they played this year; it seems like they’re a band whose fanbase is growing exponentially, which I couldn’t be happier to see. Through their set, the band’s new stuff mixed in seamlessly with the old, culminating with an all-out performance of the incredibly hooky “The Damn Thing is Cursed,” which brought the house down. Everyone in Pretty Bitter is a great performer, but at Faux 8, I found myself particularly drawn to their drummer, who was smashing those things and doing all sorts of stick spins and tricks—rockstar stuff, love to see it. 

Pretty Bitter, Pretty much killin’ it

This brings us to my favorite set of the festival: Fend. I don’t think I’d even heard of Fend heading into Faux, and in all honesty, I had intended to skip their set to catch some fresh air before Summerbruise played. As I started to walk by the side stage, the band’s sound pulled me in like a tractor beam; they were unlike anyone else at Faux. I’ve been listening to their record, Disc, pretty much continuously since I got home, I just can’t get over their vocal melodies. Honestly, I wish I had more specific things to say here, but their set put me into a stupor of sorts; my reaction was visceral in a way I struggle to describe. I guess it was kind of like the first time I had Nerds Gummy Clusters and my brain was firing off in ways it hadn’t in years, the result of elements I’m familiar with being put together in a combination I can’t effectively deconstruct. They just sounded awesome. Listen to this band. 

The last day two act that I want to shout out is Leisure Hour, who closed things out on the festival’s side stage. It feels like Leisure Hour have been touring nonstop lately, and their reps on the road are paying off. The band was already great when I first saw them in Chicago last October, but since then, it seems they’ve leveled up even further. The crowd reaction during their closer “jenny” is probably the most hype I saw people get all night, they absolutely owned the space.
– Josh Ejnes

Smash is still a Faux tradition

Much like my peers, I went into day two with little to no sleep. I also overheated on the way in because my friend and I chose to walk the 20 minutes to Faux from the hotel. This was also one of the few times during any fest that I was willing to miss any of the sets, as I was down the road from Howard’s with many Faux attendees for the No King’s Day protest. It was powerful to be there with friends and band members as we all chanted and felt the spirit of protest. It was beautiful, as many Bowling Green locals were out and the streets were lined. I am certain that, of all the things that happened during the weekend, this had to be the most important.

Upon arriving at the festival, I chose to spend my day wandering around and taking time to meet people while passively viewing most of the sets. You kind of hit this realization that you are surrounded by people you won’t see for at least a year, and all you want to do is bask in that community. I took the time to meet the people I was terrified of, such as Mel Bleker from Pretty Bitter, with whom I have developed a friendship over the years on Twitter due to the nature of us both being poets. It led to a beautiful and surreal moment where we were both able to complement each other’s writing and connect as humans. I also got to go with my friend, who had never seen Summerbruise, over to their merch table and talk to Mike, who called me the “Michael Jordan of attending Summerbruise shows.” Being in moshpits and always having a group conversation to walk into is exactly what Faux is about. 

Keep for Cheap

There were many sets from Day Two that I loved, and the first I wanted to touch on is Echo. This is a fascinating band as it is essentially just Summebruise flipped around with the drummer, Stanli, taking over vocals and leading the band. They began with a magical cover of “Shooting Stars” by B.o.B. This stood out to me because I had spent the time walking into the fest joking about the concept of a band playing this song on Twitter. The rest of the set was filled with some fun-filled, ass-throwing emo music that had the kids moving early in the morning, as it was many of the protest group’s first set. 

Another one of the sets I wanted to highlight is Tiny Voices. This set was always going to be different as their vocalist was unable to make the fest, and Luke Ferkovich (Kule, Endswell) was filling in on the mic. The crowd for this set was absolutely raucous and filled the main stage room. I was right at the front, and early on, I got forced onto the stage from the crowd pushing forward, and not once was I able to get off. It is a testament to this band that even without their vocalist, they were able to put on one hell of a show. Half of the vocals were provided by the crowd, as a beautiful cacophony of mic grabs took place repeatedly throughout the entire set. At one point, Luke even went into the crowd and got the whole room moving. It was the kind of set that jumpstarts a band’s momentum, à la Combat at Faux 7.

Jesus was in attendance

The pinnacle of the day for me was getting to see Summerbruise for the 12th time. They are a truly special Indiana band and one of the few things I feel pride for in my home state. This was a strong four-piece Summerbruise lineup, which couldn’t be a full-band set as Mitch Gulish was at Warped Tour playing with saturdays at your place. Summerbruise played all of the hits, and the first moment that stuck out was during “Dead Daddog 20/20” when the entire crowd overpowered vocalist Mike Newman, who broke down into tears on stage. It was a beautiful moment that was well-deserved by a band that has been a mainstay in the Faux lineup over the years. Outside of Equipment, Summerbruise is the Faux band. This group inspires community and supports each other in a way that not many others do. 

Summerbruise was also able to debut their recently released track “Never Bothered,” which really took off at the bridge as around six different band members rushed on stage to grab the mic for backup vocals through the end of the song. The set concluded as many Summerbruise sets do, with Mike introducing “Bury Me at Penn Station” as a song for the community and the people who make these shows worth it (despite it being about his wife). However, this performance was a little different, as Frederick Loeb of Dear Maryanne came onto stage to play guitar, allowing Mike to spend the end of the set in the crowd, connecting with people in a way he usually can’t due to his dual role as a guitarist and singer. Beautiful set from a fantastic band.
– Ben Parker

Summerbruise


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Caro’s Warped Tour Report: Day 2

Hi Taylor, Josh, and Ben! I respawned in Parking Lot 6 and am once again live from the Bam Margera Look-Alike Convention. The Hot Topic Conference on Reviving Wallet Chains. The Consortium of People Who Loved Illegally Drinking the Original Four Loko. Vans Warped Tour Day 2. And I am here to see motherfucking Carpool. This bit was sponsored by Ghost Energy. #DRINKGHOST

Warped Tour has an infamous no crowdsurfing rule. Obviously, it’s a joke rule that was historically ignored, but that didn’t stop Kevin Lyman and Co. from putting up the old “you mosh, you crowd surf, you get hurt, we get sued, no more Warped Tour" signs. What they didn’t have a sign against was bands jumping into the crowd. Enter Carpool.

Carpool - Photo by Alec Pugliese

Carpool ripped through heaters like “Come Thru Cool,” “I Hate Music,” and “Thom Yorke New City” (thank you again for playing that), but everything came to a boiling point for “The Salty Song” when Stoph Colasanto jumped the barricade to join the crowd, turning the pit into a party. It has long been the belief of this site that Carpool fucking rocks, but this was the pinnacle so far. The only way for Rochester’s rowdiest crew to go is up. (And if you haven’t checked out Pretty Rude’s new album — fix that.)

Now, Taylor, Josh, and Ben, I don’t think anyone I’ve ever bought old band merch off of has ever performed on a festival main stage, but then Eric Egan walked onto the Ghost stage, so I guess I can cross that one off. I know a lot of y’all have watched Heart Attack Man’s rise and might have even caught them at Faux last year, but did you know they also played in 2018 pre-Fake Blood? It’s all pretty cool and even cooler to see a lot of people came to Warped explicitly for Heart Attack Man. 

God bless the state of Oklahoma. That’s all I can think when Cliffdiver starts up. I’ve seen them a lot over the years, but every time I catch them, I can’t help but get completely lost in their positivity and zest for life, despite it all. Like a couple of bands this weekend, Cliffdiver discussed how monumental it felt to be performing at Warped, and it genuinely did feel like an event. After all, how could you not feel important and joyous when Cliffdiver is playing “goin’ for the garbage plate”?

Cliffdiver - Photo by Caitlyn McGonigal

Between Bri Wright’s stage banter and Joey Duffy’s FUCK ICE shirt, Cliffdiver spent a lot of time addressing the political state of things. If you missed the news, Trump held a military parade for his birthday in the city, flooding D.C. with violent dipshits and that tension made its way over to the Festival Grounds of RFK Stadium. All weekend, artists addressed the state of everything: The Wonder Years spoke about trans youth, ICE, and Palestine while Dan Campbell wore a FREE GAZA shirt, Big Ass Truck gave a speech about what they hate, Meredith Hurley from Millionaires wore a Protect Trans Folks shirt, and Buddy Nielsen from Senses Fail addressed the history of sexual assault this festival festered and used his time to advocate for Palestine. This doesn’t even include all the other artists, such as Origami Angel, Scene Queen, Pennywise, Motion City Soundtrack, The Suicide Machines, Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, Magnolia Park, Combat, sace6, and Fever333, and MORE who also dedicated time in their sets to using their voices to advocate for change. This also isn’t even including all of the political conversation happening in the crowds, which largely expressed similar sentiments to these bands and responded with support. 

The MVPs of the whole weekend are easily Leisure Hour, who played Fauxchella Saturday night and dipped down to D.C. to play the Smartpunk tent on Sunday evening. Not to mention that their load-in at Warped Tour was literally through the crowd since they weren’t playing a formal stage. Rock and fucking roll. And I concur with Josh, go listen to “jenny.”

Rain had threatened the entire weekend, and the storm was finally unleashed as Kerosene Heights was taking the stage after their drive from Bowling Green. That didn’t stop anyone from partying; in fact, it got everyone even more excited. I was stopped several times through the set by people passing by to ask who they were, all to which I replied, yelling, “KEROSENE HEIGHTS FROM ASHEVILLE.” It was just so fun. It’s kind of what this is all about, you know?

Kerosene Heights - Photo by Alec Pugliese

My final thoughts? I think there’s a temptation to get into an us (very cool music listeners) vs them (nostalgia-obsessed poser) mentality. Because yes, the whole Elder Emo thing is grating, but this was also the first music thing I’ve been to where someone was wearing a Pg. 99 shirt — which is objectively some of the most authentically Elder Emo you can get. My point is that on the ground, it didn’t matter; we were all already there, so there was nothing left to do but have fun. I’m immensely proud of all the new bands that got spots to play the festival and I would be lying if I said I didn’t love seeing the old shit too. I literally almost waited in line to meet Levi Benton from Miss May I.
– Caro Alt


Taylor’s Portraits

Grabbing portraits of bands was something I wanted to do at Liberation Weekend, but I never quite worked up the courage to commit to fully. Because I knew the bands and the space better at Faux, I was much less shy about asking band members for a quick picture whenever the opportunity presented itself. Most of the time, I was operating on a simple “one and done” philosophy, snapping one pic and saying “cute” or “sick” and thanking the band. I’m incredibly proud of how some of these came out, and I hope I can continue to take many more pictures of band members in this capacity.

If you haven’t seen it, we've just launched a Photography wing of this website, featuring photo recaps of concerts. I plan on doing a Faux 8 photo recap at a later date, so more of these to come.


Faux 8: Honorary Day 3

While Faux 8 was only a two-day fest, a daytime Sunday show at The Swarmyard, a local BG DIY institution, acted as an unofficial continuation of the festivities. The lineup consisted of Decatur, Illinois folk rocker Marble Teeth (who we profiled earlier this year) and Equipment. When I showed up at The Swarmyard a little before doors, a group was forming across the street already a few dozen strong. By the time they started letting people in, it was clear the basement would not fit everyone comfortably or safely. Instead, everyone poured back out into the street and assembled at the front of the house for two front porch acoustic sets. 

Marble Teeth beguiled with his talky acousti-folk setup, playing guitar, harmonica, and CRT TV. At the beginning of each track, Caleb Jefson would select a song off a custom-made DVD menu, which would provide the beat as he sang and played guitar. He wove through songs off his early LPs Cars and Park, 2023’s top 10 times i’ve cried, as well as some new material that Jefson teased as part of an EP coming out on July 4th. 

Marble Teeth

After Marble Teeth’s set, Nick Zander took the mantle of the front porch for an all-request Equipment set. Occasionally joined by Penny and Ellie, the group rocked through a one-of-a-kind three-hour set, playing everything from embarrassing cuts off their 2015 demo to the then-just-a-few-days-old “espresso lemonade.” It was a staggering thing to take in deep cuts from every era of this band as Zander shredded and sang with Springsteen-like endurance. The crowd sang along whenever words were forgotten, and Zander was more than happy to provide the crowd with fun backstory and lore about nearly every track. 

The afternoon set was a beautiful and unique experience that will sadly act as the last from the Swarmyard, as the venue was forced to shut down following this show. Much like the AEG C&D, this feels like an overreaction and overreach; the last drops of life being squeezed out of a passionate group of people putting on shows purely out of love. That said, if I know anything about Jacob and Beautiful Rat Records, it’s that this energy will not go away, merely be diverted to other projects. Plus, if there’s any way to close up your house venue, it’s hard to beat a massive, mega four-hour show headlined by hometown heroes like Equipment.
– Taylor Grimes

Equipment


Some Closing Thoughts

Six years ago, I attended my first Fauxchella because a few bands I liked were performing. I figured it was worth the 90-minute drive down from Detroit to see Origami Angel, Stars Hollow, and Charmer. It turns out that “worth it” doesn’t even begin to capture the experience. I came away from Fauxchella III more inspired and enthused about music than I’d ever been in my life. As I sat eating Rally’s on the hood of my car after the gig, I found myself in absolute awe at the type of communal experience that was possible outside the confines of a traditional music festival experience. To me, this realization goes part and parcel with my Pacific Northwestern ass experiencing authentic Midwest DIY culture for the first time, amazed that people could throw shows out of their living room or basement, not to mention the ability to support and interact with bands directly, as opposed to strictly over a merch table (if at all). 

After attending Fauxchella III, I came back to Bowling Green for DIY Prom, then (on two separate occasions) made a 12-hour drive up from North Carolina just for Fauxchella. It wasn’t lost on me how silly it was to travel so far and take time off work for a festival happening in a college town outside of Toledo, but the lineups were too specific and too tailored to my tastes. It was like someone took my last.fm charts and turned them into a festival lineup. How could I miss that?

This year at Faux 8, I spoke with a couple who had traveled up from Mexico specifically for this festival. I was pretty amazed and said, “You guys probably traveled further than anyone here.” These were words I wound up eating mere hours later when I was talking to another group who had traveled from Alaska for Faux 8. 

On the second day of the festival, I found myself out back chatting with members of Keep For Cheap and Fend when Autumn Vagle said, “Minnesota needs something like this,” referring to Fauxchella’s tight-knit sense of community and impressive artistic draw. Similarly, at one point in the night, I was catching up with Jael Holzman, frontwoman of Ekko Astral and one of the people who spearheaded Liberation Weekend. She cited Fauxchella directly as an inspiration for how a festival like this can and should run, saying that watching Faux over the years was proof of concept that they could do something similar in DC. The result of that inspiration was an incredible festival that raised nearly $40k for the trans rights advocacy collective Gender Liberation Movement. That’s inspiration in action.

With next year’s venue still an unknown, any future Faux will look undeniably different. There will be no more Fauxchella as we’ve known it, but hopefully, there will be Fauxchellas sprouting up everywhere as people take this energy and inspiration back to their home scenes. Fauxchella itself isn’t special. It’s not the venue, the lineup, or even the people running it; what makes Fauxchella special is the community. It’s all these people coming together for two days of music and friendship and $3 beers. What makes Fauxchella special is you.

It feels poetic that Conor Alan, the person organizing most everything related to Fauxchella and the Summit Shack, had a baby on the literal day before Faux 8. As Conor steps into the role of father, it feels as if his other baby is now finally old enough to go off and live on its own. The format of this festival is something that can (and should) be replicated in every music scene across the country. And hey, maybe the first version is just a bunch of local bands and comedians performing in a garage, but keep at it, and who knows how big it could become? Who knows how many people will travel from other states and countries to be a part of your scene? What I do know is that you won’t find out until you start.

Fauxchella, as it has existed for the last near-decade, is gone, but in its place will come another Fauxchella in a different place run by the same people. Then another Faux-like festival with a different name, run by a completely different group of people. Then maybe even one in your hometown. Faux is more than just a music festival; it’s an idea, and ideas can be replicated, shared, and built upon. This is yours now. 

Fauxchella Forever ∞

Fauxchella: The Only Music Festival That Matters – An Interview with Conor Alan of The Summit Shack

If you’re a big enough music geek, you probably have a favorite music festival. Maybe you long for the bygone days of Warped Tour and its sweaty Monster-scented mosh pits. Maybe you’re a Chicagoan who is lucky enough to take their pick from Lollapalooza, Pitchfork Music Festival, and Riot Fest. Maybe you just have an affinity for whatever happens to come close enough to you. For my money, there’s no better music festival on Earth than Fauxchella.

Fauxchella is DIY music’s response to California’s biggest and most insufferable music festival institution. It’s kinda like that infamous pic of the crowd surfer from Title Fight’s 2014 Coachella set, but if every attendee was that crowd surfer. Taking place in the exotic, 30k-population college town of Bowling Green, Ohio, Fauxchella is decidedly smaller and much more exciting than the quarter-million-attendee festival from which it gets its jokey name. Centered primarily around emo and indie rock bands based out of the Midwest, Fauxchella is organized by the Summit Shack, a DIY venue that bills itself on Twitter as a “premier, high-end, all-media entertainment conglomerate (aka friends with a garage).”

The Summit Shack first opened its doors in 2017 as a house venue run by several members of the emo band American Spirits. After putting out a couple of EPs and farewell singles, American Spirits called it quits in 2019, yet Summit Shack remained. Select members of the group went on to found the awesome (and far less emo) band Half Kidding whose 2022 album, Bonk, is both underrated and underappreciated in the larger DIY music scene. 

The Summit Shack has been hosting incredible shows out of their garage venue for over half a decade, but the festivals are a different beast entirely. The first Fauxchella took place in 2017, billing itself as a day of “cookouts, comedy, and live music,” boasting a modest 12 acts ranging from musicians and standups to DJ sets. The second iteration occurred in 2018 and doubled the lineup to 12 bands, four DJs, and seven comedy sets. While still mostly contained to Ohio, this sequel also boasted a more prominent lineup that included the likes of Heart Attack Man and Sonder Bombs, increasing the show’s draw and star power from its first hyper-local incarnation.

The third Fauxchella took place in 2019, and this is when things really started to get wild. This was also the first Summit Shack event that I attended, having just moved out to Detroit the year prior. Fauxchella III had a lineup of Charmer, Origami Angel, and Stars Hollow, just to name a few. Little did I know it at the time, but these were all bands that would go on to define the next few years of my life and eventually become synonymous with the “5th Wave Emo” sound. 

With a 21-band lineup, a two-stage setup, a pre-show celebration the night before, and a post-show afterparty, Fauxhella III was a genuine event. I crossed state lines and got an AirBnb just for this show, it was that unmissable. At the festival, the energy was infectious; every band cranked out one incredible set after the other, all attempting to keep the energy from the previous act going. Quite honestly, it blew my fucking mind. Coming from the West Coast, witnessing this kind of Midwestern camaraderie and do-it-yourself ethos felt revelatory. It affirmed that I was in the right place and that these were my people. 

Around the same time in 2019, Summit Shack joined forces with Loonbase Studios, a DIY video production company dedicated to filming and documenting these shows. As a result, several of the sets from Fauxhella III (and each subsequent fest) exist online for all to see. This kind of documentation is rare for music of this scale, and a beyond-worthy effort to capture a moment in a specific music scene.

2019 wound up being a banner year for the Shack. In June, the venue hosted Swordfest, featuring a nine-band bill including Pool Kids, Mover Shaker, and more. In September, they put on DIY Prom, a 24-band affair that encouraged Midwest emo kids to recreate the prom they never had. These bigger, more festival-like lineups became buzzy events for Summit Shack, acting as big, scene-wide celebrations that drew fans (and bands) from all over the Midwest and East Coast. These fests became tentpole events that existed between strings of ongoing local shows that Summit Shack continued to host out of their garage. For a while, Summit Shack almost single-handedly made it feel like Bowling Green was the Place To Be if you were tapped into the Michigan/Ohio music scene.

As you could imagine, 2020 wasn’t kind to touring music or the Summit Shack. Aside from “Snowchella,” which happened in January, Summit Shack essentially went into hibernation when it came to routing touring bands or hosting these larger fests. The Ill-fated “Fourchella” was set to happen in April 2020 and fell apart for reasons that should be obvious. Not content to let COVID ruin their efforts, Summit Shack instead conceived of “Minechella,” a Minecraft-based celebration featuring a smattering of bands, including one set immortalized on the Origami Angel Broke Minecraft EP.

By 2022 things were once again full-steam ahead as Fauchella V happened in July with a staggering 33 bands, including personal faves Ben Quad, Carpool, Summerbruise, Riley, Seaholm, and Equipment. As with lots of these lineups, I suppose your mileage may vary depending on how much you’re tapped into the Midwest emo scene, but for a hyper-online fifth-wave fuck like myself, these lineups are pulled straight out of my Spotify playlists and last.fm grids. Always a nice mix of bands I already love and a handful that I’m about to love, Summit Shack continues to kill it with stellar shows that showcase the best our DIY community has to offer. 

This brings us to 2023. 

If I could describe to you the joy I saw looking over an early iteration of the Fauchella VI lineup, you could bottle that up and sell it for millions on the internet. Honestly, I don’t even know where to start with this lineup.

First off, you’ve got the aforementioned Ben Quad, aka purveyors of the Emo Album of the Year for 2022. You’ve got Equipment and Saturdays at Your Place who have each released two of the most exciting EPs of 2023 so far. You’ve got kids pushing the boundaries in fun and exciting ways like Newgrounds Death Rugby, Hey, IlY, and Cheem. You’ve got the Minneapolis legends NATL PARK SRVC and Dad Bod. You’ve got some of my personal album-of-the-year regulars with Carpool, Summerbruise, and Short Fictions. You’ve got bands that weirdly feel like “legacy” acts in relation to some of these, with fifth-wave groups like Dikembe, Charmer, and Michael Cera Palin. There are tap-happy rippers like Riley, Kerosene Heights, and Aren’t We Amphibians. You’ve got some certified ass-beaters like California Cousins, Arcadia Grey, and Smoke Detector. You’ve got local legends like Teamonade, Ellie Hart, and Half Kidding (the band, for all intents and purposes, hosting the event). 

If that sounds a little overwhelming, that’s because it is. It’s a 60+ band bill stretched over an epic three-day weekend from Friday to Sunday, all crammed into Howards Club H, the local 200-cap dive bar. 

Practically all of these bands have released something over the past three years. Some of them focused on tightening their screws and honing in on the things that make them different from their peers, others took wildly exciting diversions into exciting new territories. It’s easy to make jokes about Fauxchella being “Emo Twitter Fest,” but the talent packed into this lineup is far too diverse and exciting to be summed up in such a diminutive way. 

While some of these bands are several albums or EPs deep into their career, others have only made their presence known within the last six months or have a few public songs to their name. Regardless, I’d say many of these bands released career-defining work over the past year or so. Lots of these bands could fit under the sweeping distinction of “Emo” or “5th Wave,” but those terms have been made flexible enough to fit almost all of these bands. 

It’s an exciting time to be an emo fan. Bands of this scale move quickly and can pivot on a dime, but as someone who’s had nothing better to do than sit inside his apartment and buy things on Bandcamp Fridays for the past few years, this feels like an explosively exciting synthesis of a moment-in-time, all caught in a room in Bowling Green Ohio. What the fuck. 

While this lineup might seem pulled straight out of Spotify’s The Sound of 5th Wave Emo playlist, there are very many people behind this. One of the key figures behind the Summit Shack is Conor Alan, the drummer for American Spirits, Half Kidding, and resident of the Summit Shack. I sat down with Conor over Zoom to get a better idea of the Shack's history and how Fauxchella has evolved each time since its first incarnation six years ago. 


SWIM: First off, I’m curious, when you meet someone in the music scene, how do you articulate the Summit Shack to people? What do you lead with? Because you’re also in a band, you organize this whole fest, but you’re also doing regular shows out of the Shack. So how do you describe all of that succinctly to anyone? 

SHACK: I guess it depends on the context, but if I’m just vaguely describing the Shack, I call it a fest and video crew. The Twitter bio, which is more of a bit than anything else, is from Parks and Recreation: Entertainment 720, “premier high-end all-media entertainment conglomerate,” which, all jokes aside, isn’t too far off. The “premier high end” is a little subjective, but “all-media entertainment conglomerate” seems pretty succinct.

SWIM: I think that’s part of what attracts me to all of this. For the scale you guys are working on, it one hundred percent is, right? There are very few people documenting this type of music with as much production as you guys do. 

I’m super eager to hear you describe the inception of all this because you guys first wound up on my radar in 2019, which was a couple years into this, and I think comparing every Fauxchella to each other is pretty fascinating. But going chronologically, we can lay out how everything has grown, so if you wanna go all the way back to the beginning in your own words, I’d love to hear that.

SHACK: So basically, it would’ve been March 2017 when the first idea for it all sprouted. I had graduated college in the winter and had qualms about what I wanted to do with either my job or my hobbies. 

I took a trip to Los Angeles to visit with my friend Izzy for four days, and then I spent four days in San Diego with some family members. Just something about being in LA… like there wasn’t even a pivotal thing that I saw. It was more just the energy of everyone there.

I just kind of walked around LA cause Izzy had to work all day, so I was just killing time on my own and got to explore the city. When I had gotten back home, I realized there are so many musicians, graphic designers, rappers, producers, and DJs in Bowling Green, but there’s no collective that catalogs them all. I wanted to make it so that if you need a graphic designer or a song for something, you can reach out to this group, and they’ll have access to somebody. Just trying to make it so everybody could collaborate easier.

Once I got back to BG, I went to a DJ show at my friend Ashley’s house and ended up talking with Trey and Bails, who I had recently been introduced to through Dillon, who was the guitarist for American Spirits. Dillon’s friend was working on a mockumentary project about a music group, and she didn’t have a band to do it on, so we started American Spirits as a bit.

So me talking to Trey and Bails at that DJ show combined with the fact that we were starting up the joke band and actually jamming and having fun. We didn’t have any real intentions behind it. Eventually, we conceptualized Same Co., which is the Same Collective. Our motto was, “We are all the same.” It was just a perfect example of too many cooks in the kitchen cause we had anywhere from eight to 20 people all directly contributing to the creative direction of things. None of us had any clue what we were doing. Eventually, we just thought, okay, how do we turn this into something similar with a more direct goal? 

We had done a few ciphers where we would put on beats and have groups of people freestyle over them. Just kind of hanging out. Eventually, we decided that we would start doing shows out of the garage. We had originally cleared out the garage for Same Co. as a collective space, but it ended up being turned into a venue, quote-unquote, cause I dunno if you could quite call it that at the beginning.

Dillon was really the person who spearheaded both American Spirits and Summit Shack in the beginning. The first show out of the Shack was August 2nd, 2017, it was Awesome Job!, an amazing band from Toledo that’s not playing anymore, but they’re all in other projects. Then the first Fauxchella happened on August 11th.

Fauxchella Poster

SWIM: I love that the first Fauxchella felt hyper-local, where it’s basically all Bowling Green people. The fact that you guys had DJs and comedians in there made it feel like the scope was already wider than just “DIY Music,” even if it was all just acts from nearby.

SHACK: I’m trying to find when we transitioned from Same Co. into the Summit Shack, which was originally gonna be called The Leaky Tarp, but then Ian talked us out of it and came up with Summit Shack. Way better. Leaky Tarp just says all sorts of negative connotations. Who wants to go to a place with a leaky tarp? But one of the first shows we had rained a lot, so we had set up tarps and stuff to try and keep people dry. 

SWIM: Humble beginnings. 

SHACK: Yeah, yeah, and then Ian changed it to the Summit Shack, which was the best decision anyone made cause I really do love the name.

But what started as an idea for a collective turned into an event space turned into us throwing a joke festival, you know… Fauxchella, we didn’t think we were ever gonna do another one. We were just kind of flying by the seat of our pants.

SWIM: So you had no expectations, but then you did all these shows where touring bands started routing through. Was it hard to convince people to come to Bowling Green? Because you’re between Detroit and Cleveland, and you’re kind of smack dab in the middle of all these other bigger cities. So what was the process like for getting bands to stop there?

SHACK: November 2017 was the first show we had with a band from more than an hour away. American Spirits had started playing out and doing more shows cause we realized it was less of a bit and more, “Hey, this is actually pretty fun being in a band and actually playing gigs.” So we started doing more gigs and then started meeting more bands from out of town and more musicians in general. 

The first real out-of-town band that we had play was The Sonder Bombs in November 2017. They came and played their first out-of-town show as well; that was the first time they played out of Cleveland. And then February 2018, we did the American Spirits EP release show. The Shack is definitely less American Spirits now than it was back then, but in the beginning they really were operating side by side.

In February 2018, we had some bands from Columbus come, and then just slowly started having more and more bands. We had Equipment play their first show at the Shack in March 2018 with a band from Michigan cause they had a tour that fell through.

Then in April 2018, Dillon had planned this gigantic show, essentially a reprisal of Fauxchella. We had the Sonder Bombs and Heart Attack Man come and play. If you look at the poster for it, I believe it says, “Melted Purple,” which dissolved but was basically the first Teamonade set that ever happened. 

SWIM: Oh, whoa, that’s cool.

SHACK: Dolphin Coffin is the band Secret Space. They were unable to advertise cuz they were still signed and touring at the time, so they played a secret set. They were kind of like the Toledo sweethearts that were a step below Citizen in a way. They did a bunch of tours with Turnover and bands like that. 

But Fauxchella II happened at the Shack. We fenced off the whole yard cause we knew Heart Attack Man was a big band, and I had no idea. At this point, I was not necessarily out of the loop (because everything was still happening at my house), but I was mainly spearheading the DJs and the comedians. 

Fauxchella II Poster

Dillon and Bails were really into Microwave, Prince Daddy, Oso Oso, those kinds of bands, so they were the ones who were super into that genre of music. I was coming out of being super into electronica, so I was still spearheading that side of things.

Fauxchella II was the last one we did at the house, and it was pretty much Dillon still kind of leading everything. Dillon was doing the Spirits booking and the Shack booking. I was just more like, ‘Yeah, I’m cool with this happening at my house, and I’m cool with being in a band.’

SWIM: You had told me that before Fauxchella II, you had kinda gone around the neighborhood warning people, “Hey, we’re going to play this show.” What was the response to that? What was that process like?

SHACK: I wrote a page-long letter that I handed out to each house in every direction three houses out. So the next-door neighbors, the next-door neighbors to them, and the next-door neighbors to them all got a letter saying, “Hey, we’re hosting this little mini-festival that we’re doing at the house on this date.” At this point, we’d also been kind of ramping up and doing more shows throughout the week. But we gave everyone this paper saying here’s all of our contact information, here are all of our phone numbers, here’s all our names and everything like that. Then said if there are ever any issues, please call or text one of us.

SWIM: Not 911. 

SHACK: Yeah, exactly. It was a one-page letter that essentially boiled down to, “Please don’t call the cops.” But the neighbors were all super cool, besides a few sound complaints here and there throughout the years. I got a civil citation for “rambunctious behavior,” a noise complaint, what have you. I was in the blotter. I screenshotted it and posted it on Twitter, people thought it was funny. 

Various noise complaints

SHACK: Fauxchella II was really where we got on the map for a lot of people because of Heart Attack Man.

SWIM: Looking at it now, even just them and Sonder Bombs, that is already huge. And then with Fauxchella III, it just feels like it’s always been exponential. The first one was so local, then you guys stayed Ohio-based but got these bigger bands that were about to release really significant albums onto stuff like Gami and all that, which is like its own world. It’s pretty crazy to look back on a lot of those lineups. So you guys had, what, a year between that and Fauxchella III? So what was the intervening year like from April to April?

SHACK: Looking back at the Facebook Events, we were doing one, maybe two shows a month, and then Fauxchella hit, and then in May 2018, we did three shows, all out-of-town bands. June 2018, we only did two, but multiple Michigan and farther-out Ohio bands. July 2018, we only did one show, but it was kind of like a pivotal moment. We hadn’t really been taking donations super well at these shows because we didn’t know DIY ethos.

July 2018, Taking Meds and Expert Timing played the Shack on a Tuesday. I had no idea what I was getting into with either band, and now I am absolutely infatuated with both. They were from Florida and like New York, and it was really the first time that we booked bands from not in our region. And not only did we book them, but they reached out to us.

They played with American Spirits cause we’re putting ourselves on shows just cause it’s our house. There was also this band Mecha G, which was like a live-action Godzilla roleplay band. They played songs and did sketches that told the story of Godzilla. They had a fight, and one of the dudes got his face busted open and was bleeding everywhere cause they were wrestling. It was a fever dream in the best possible way. That was definitely a turning point for working with out-of-town bands.

At this point, Dillon had kind of taken a step back from doing Shack stuff and American Spirits booking. But I was just like, “This is fun. I like doing shows at my house. I like being in a band. I wouldn’t mind continuing to do this.” So I was like if Dillon’s not gonna do the booking, I guess I will. The summer of 2018 and fall of 2018 is when I started to weasel my way into the booking world.

I immediately booked a DJ show for my birthday and had a cool band called Hello Luna come through and Two Hand Fools, which is members of Heart Attack Man. We did like a huge benefit show at the house. We did a rap show. Then November 2018, we did Short Fictions and Equipment with Outside and American Spirits. That was my first time meeting Alex Martin, who gave me a whole blast into what it means to be doing shit like that.

SWIM: I love Alex, I’m sure that’s a good inflection point, too. Sounds like that meeting imparted a lot of knowledge about how this booking stuff works.

SHACK: Yeah. Alex was doing it a lot at the time. Then Alex started sending me bands. December 2018, a month after Short Fictions, Origami Angel played their first show at the Shack, and it ended up being in the living room. It was Saturday, December 29th, and it was -10° outside, so we couldn’t do the show in the garage. We ended up doing it in the living room, and the PA system broke, which created the never-ending self-fulfilling prophecy that something will go wrong at a Gami Shack show.

Around the same time, in December of 2018 is when the Shack got on Twitter.

SWIM: …And that’s its own world of emo bands and interactions. It’s kinda self-contained in a weird way, but also a networking thing too. Is that when you guys started to conceive of doing Fauxchella again? 

SHACK: Yeah, it was basically just like, okay, well, what if we did another Fauxchella? How would we do this? This is when I started going to a lot of shows. I went to go see Charmer perform, and I was looking at the bands that Origami Angel was doing stuff with, and I was made privy to Stars Hollow. We had done some shows in Michigan, so I became privy to the Seaholm folks and started getting my feet wet in the Michigan scene meeting all the people up there.

February 2019 has one of my favorite stacked bills, Future Teens, World’s Greatest Dad, Teamonade, Spirits, and Kiddo. Just kind of solidifying that we’re working with like actual good touring bands. 

Fauxchella III Poster

SHACK: April 2019, we did Fauxchella III. We did a pre-party the day before that was kind of keeping the tradition of Ohio bands; it had Waving back when they were still called Waving & Waving Goodbye. Shitty Neighbors, which is the Little Elephant people. Biiitchseat, that’s when we first met Biitchseat. Discount Nostalgia who are like a classic BG band. Ship & Sail from Michigan.

The following day was when we had Shortly, Charmer, Stars Hollow, Forest Green, Sonder Bombs, Origami Angel, Teamonade, Snarls, Equipment, American Spirits, Absinthe Father, Seaholm, Baseball Dad like…

SWIM: Crazy.

SHACK: Yeah. I’m actually taking it in cause I’m establishing the timeline for myself too, and I don’t understand how I got all these bands to play. 

SWIM: Well, partly it’s probably just messaging people and being like, “Hey, this is happening on this day, do you wanna play?” At a certain point, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of people that then are like, “Oh, all these other bands are playing? Yes.” I’m sure that it’s just shooting your shot a lot-

SHACK: That’s literally all it’s ever been. It’s funny because, on the E Word podcast when American Spirits were on the Freshman Class, they referred to Fauxchella as “Emo Twitter Fest,” and by God, how right they were because I’m pretty sure I DM’d all these bands on Twitter. I’m pretty sure that’s how I handled most of the booking, and still do a lot of the booking, is through Twitter, which I’m sure some people fucking hate.

SWIM: I remember talking to Haley Butters from Absinthe Father after their set at Fauxchella III, and at that point, This Band Fucks was still a thing on Twitter. And I was like, “Yo, love the music, love This Band Fucks,” and Haley told me, ‘If I were to make a fest, this would be the lineup of the This Band Fucks-approved bands.’”

It’s interesting to see how that stuff solidifies over time too, and what sticks around long enough, like Gami where they’ve put out multiple EPs and albums and then become symbolic of a larger thing like fifth-wave or whatever. 

SHACK: Crazy ass lineup. Yeah, it was Twitter Fest through and through, and there are tons of Easter eggs on the poster. Like there are members of every single band from the Summit Stage hidden in the background.

SWIM: Who does the posters? Because it looks the same as Fauxchella II. 

SHACK: Taylor Wilkes did a lot of the OG Fauxchella posters. When we did Fauxchella II, we had the people from Lord Whorfin and No Culture, who were doing their own music documentation live session kind of thing down in Columbus, come up and film Fauxchella II. We didn’t even do that in-house at all at the beginning.

LOONBASE LOGO BY Taylor Wilkes

SWIM: Was that what led to Loonbase then? Were you guys like, “Oh, we could buy some video equipment and do this”?

SHACK: ​​Trey (vocalist for American Spirits) and Kate (vocalist for Half Kidding) had always been into photography and videography and, through Bowling Green, had made really good friends with Matthew Rao, Chance Duffy, and Taylor Wilkes, funnily enough, who I met seven years prior when I was working in Insomnia Cookies. It's just really weird. BG’s a small town.

SWIM: I remember going to Fauxchella III and seeing the cameras and stuff, and this already felt very established. You guys are filming all of this stuff, and in my mind, that was synonymous, just because that was my first Fauxchella, too. I was like, “Oh, okay, obviously this is a longstanding thing. They’re on the third one, and they’ve got this whole video thing going on.” So just coming from the outside, it felt like this was a legit operation.

SHACK: I guess that might be how we fooled people, that it looked official. The first Shack video that came out of Summit Shack and Loonbase Studios was Cliff Notes Episode One with Former Critics. This got put out on June 1st, 2019. So we must have done the Fest filming first and then forayed into doing video stuff for touring bands. Cuz we originally started with like the interview sessions, and then the Fauxchella III videos started coming out right after that. So, yeah, Fauxchella III was really when we merged with them fully.

SHACK: When we made the switch from II to III and all these bands started saying yes, I was like, ‘We can’t do this at the house.’ That’s when we made the switch to Howard’s and started that relationship.

SWIM: So Fauxchella III is kind of this huge point where it was a lot bigger bands, and you guys realized you had to go somewhere else. What was that process like for getting to Howard’s?

SHACK: There are really only two or three venues in BG that ever really had a history of doing shows besides the random house spots; it was Howard’s and Clazel. Clazel was more of a nightclub kind of vibe, same with Liquid. But it just made the most sense to do Howard’s because it was a dive bar. We’re fresh outta college, throwing house shows, you know what I mean? So, yeah, a dingy dive bar is fucking perfect.

SWIM: Yeah. You got pizza right across the street, it’s the best.

SHACK: Yeah, it was close to the house; it just made the most sense, given the limited options we had. We reached out to Steve, who’s the owner and the sound person usually, and he was super down for the idea. The weirdest part about Fauxchella III is that even being at Howard’s and having all these up-and-coming bands on it — the whole thing was still free admission. Fauxchella III didn’t cost anything.

There was a whole discussion about the switch cause we loved doing shows at the house. We hadn’t done any shows at Howard’s yet. It was tough for all of us to kind of reconcile losing that because it was all we knew. Moving the festival to Howard’s was, in a way, losing some of what made Fauxchella Fauxchella.

The garage can realistically only fit 60 people max, and that’s sardines. That’s why I got really good at listening to bands from outside the garage. If the show was small enough that I could go watch the band, I would, but in a lot of cases, I’d open the door, look inside, see hell, and just be like, “I’m cool out here.”

It's kind of wild ‘cause the Shack is so small; it’s just a two-car garage. That’s it. We’re really not working with any space. But, man, it didn’t take much for the shows to feel huge. I think that’s what played into a lot of the notoriety of the Shack and the crazy shows, it’s ‘cause the space was so small. If those shows had taken place at Howard’s, they wouldn’t feel packed at all.

We had some of the best people come into the gigs, you know what I mean? The first era of the Shack as it evolved was just mint. And it was honestly mint up until COVID. I’m sure you’ve seen PUG Fest, right? 

SWIM: Yes, yes. I’m hoping to be there this summer!

SHACK: I guess PUG Fest is essentially DIY Burning Man 3. Mica from Something Missing came down and played a Shack show when they were still a teenager. They recently graduated college and apparently started DIY Burning Man because of the Shack.

SWIM: Oh, that’s so cool.

SHACK: PUG Fest is working with a way bigger venue that’s 800-900-cap and can work with way bigger bands. The fact that something like that started because of what the Shack did is mind-blowing. Cause again, I still have no fucking clue what I’m doing. I find bands I think are cool, I find people that I think are cool, and I smash ’em together and see what happens.

SWIM: It’s something you can really only see in retrospect, too. Who would’ve guessed that mashing those random people and bands together led to so many fucking cool shows and music? 

You don’t really see all that shit until years down the line, and you’re looking back. Looking at all these shows, even on the Facebook Events page, you can kind of see how one thing led to the next. Speaking of which, what came after Fauxchella III?

SHACK: Oh God. Yeah. We went fucking ham after Fauxchella III. Holy shit. I can’t believe my roommates were cool with all this. So, yeah, after Fauxchella III, I was jazzed. We made the switch to Howard’s, and we were really sour about it, but it really came to fruition pretty well. So I decided to book eight shows in May. The skyrocket is insane, and they were all at the house, which is wacky to think about.

There were seven shows in June, and then there was Sword Fest. Jack (of Mover Shaker) called me and was just like, “Hey, I’ve got Pool Kids, Mover Shaker, and ****** for this random Wednesday in June,” and I was like, I already have four touring bands, but I would do it if you can convince everyone else to do it. For some god-forsaken reason, everybody was down. 

SWORDFEST POSTER

We booked and promoted it relatively quickly; we had like a month, I think. Probably still our coolest promotional thing that we did was the video with the fake Final Fantasy RPG, but putting stupid DIY jokes as the moves and stuff like that. I still think that we peaked in terms of promotional ability right there.

So Fauxchella III hits, and I start booking a stupid volume of shows at the house. Then Sword Fest hits, which just kind of fell into our lap. Then right after Sword Fest, we took the Shack team with Equipment and American Spirits to New Jersey and helped L.E.A.D. DIY throw Strobeless

Ellie Hart was like, “What if we did a fest in Jersey?” And I was like, “Okay, hell yeah.” And then Ellie and Hannah did most of the work. They had a dope team of people in New Jersey that I had the pleasure of meeting and liked working alongside to help throw the show. Yeah, the lineup was actually kind of crazy as well. 

L.E.A.D. DIY Strobeless POSTER

Then, from Sword Fest and Strobleless, I was just like, ‘Well, we might as well do a fest in the fall.’ You know? We did one in the spring, and we did one in the summer, what if we did Fallchella?

We joke tweeted about DIY prom, and people really latched onto it for some reason. So I was like, fuck it, I guess it’s DIY Prom — fuck Fallchella.

SWIM: It’s hard to describe from my perspective. I keep coming back to 2019 because I just went to this random festival in April, cause I was like, “Oh, I like Origami Angel.” And then to follow Summit Shack over the course of that year, and, holy shit, you guys just keep doing all of these gatherings. I was like, damn, the Midwest is fucking cool. 

SHACK: Somewhere in the middle of that, we did our two-year anniversary show with Barely Civil, The Weak Days, Teamonade, American Spirits, and Mess

Then in September, we didn’t do any shows except for DIY Prom, which was 24 bands and six comedians. And this was also American Spirits’ last show.

SWIM: Oh yeah, you guys capped it off! I just remember everyone chanting your name cause it was like, “You fucking did this Conor.” You guys had just finished playing your last set, and it was just very heartwarming.

SHACK: I’m pretty sure I visibly broke down on stage. It was very touching.

DIY Prom Poster

SWIM: So that gets us up to Snowchella almost. 

SHACK: We had DIY Prom in September 2019, and then this is a very pivotal moment. Friday, October 4th, Summerbruise played the shack for the first time… And then played the Summit Shack way more times after.

SWIM: Aside from American Spirits and Half Kidding, is there a definitive “Summit Shack Band”? Could you even boil it down to one?

SHACK: There are four bands that I would consider Shack bands who aren’t members of the Shack. I think it’s Equipment, Teamonade, Discount Nostalgia, and Summerbruise. Discount Nostalgia was our first local band that really played the Shack a lot. They were just really good homies of ours and an amazing band. Then Teamonade because they got their start at the Shack. Equipment became a Bowling Green local after they played the Shack for the first time. Then Summerbruise essentially became a Bowling Green local from multiple hours away. 

[The two of us digress, discussing mostly-defunct Midwest bands, then get back to the timeline]

[We had] DIY Prom in September, then all of October did a bunch of shows. November did a bunch of shows. Oh, that’s when Cliffdiver played the Shack in November 2019. Jess, a friend of ours from Cleveland who had come to many Shack shows over the years, messaged me and was just like, “Hey, there’s this band from Oklahoma. I really want to play at your house. Can I book a show there?” And it turned out to be fucking Cliffdiver, pre-pop-off, and they just played to like 30 people in the Shack.

Capo Fest and Sled Fest both happened in the summer 2019 and winter of 2019. Those were both fests in Chicago that we didn’t really help out with, but we were very good friends with the people running it, and Half Kidding played. I remember Addie asking for tips and stuff like that. They didn’t need any help. Addie had that shit on lock.

SWIM: And that was what led to “Bella,” right? Again, another example of a domino effect.

SHACK: Yeah, that’s where the Half Kidding song “Bella” came from. It was Capo or Sled, I can’t remember which one.

Saturday, December 21st. Equipment EP release show, Invite The Neighbor’s 50th podcast with Gami, Cheem, Parkway & Columbia, and In A Daydream. Jesus. There are some wild videos of the Shack going bonkers for Gami cuz that was post-Somewhere City. Quippy was really just starting to catch cause Madrigal had done really well, so people went bonkers for both bands. That was also my first exposure to Cheem, who I just booked a tour for.

Madrigal EP Release Show Poster

We did the New Year’s show. Bunch of shows in January. We did Showchella on January 25th, 2020, and it went fucking awesome. Really crazy lineup again. Sonder Bombs, Mover Shaker, Short Fictions, Plans, Teamonade, Gray Matter. She/Her/Hers, Snarls, Weak Days, Sweet Peach, Punch Drunk, Summerbruise. Former Critics- Yeah. Holy shit. Yeah. 

Snowchella Poster

So this was, this was definitely in the primo era where I had started filling in for bands. So right after DIY Prom is when I filled in for World’s Greatest Dad at Fest. Which, again, just catapulted me into like, “Yeah, this is sick, I wanna keep doing this, this is awesome.”

Then the Teamonade, Summerbruise, Half Kidding Tour, which was one of the only things Half Kidding did before COVID. There was Equipment, String Machine, Biitchseat, Summerbruise, for the Scratchy Blanket album release at Leapfest. So it’s like oozing Shack vibes with some of the bands that they got on it. Leapfest in Pittsburgh was on February 29th, literally 12 days before everything shut down, so I guess that is technically the last fest we helped out with.

SWIM: Yeah. I remember you guys had announced Fourchella, And at that point, I had moved to Denver, but I bought a ticket. I was like, “I’m coming back for this!” and was all stoked. You guys had announced it, and then the rest of the world happened and had to pull the plug. I feel like you guys did make lemons into lemonade with all the Minecraft stuff a little bit.

Fourchella Poster

SHACK: Yeah, prior to when things shut down in early to mid-March, we had been playing like a bunch of Minecraft, just on a realm in the Discord. The Discord was Ian (who lived at the Shack), Kate (who also lived at the Shack), Trey, Matt, Chance, Joey, and Serg. Marco from Kiss Your Friends and a number of other people from Michigan all hopped on to help us build everything. In less than a month, we made Minechella, and we did it on the same day that Fourchella was supposed to be: April 17th and April 18th. 

We literally had a chat called “minechella lol” because, at that point, it was just such a goofy concept. The process that we went through to record everything was streaming to Twitch, but also streaming in Discord so that we could have Chance flipping between Discord screens of the people that were the “cameras” for the fest.

So we essentially made it so the festival could be multi-camera, and we could switch between different shots. We had some people who were working on aesthetic shots and some people who were documenting people jumping around and the music playing and stuff like that. 

I’m sure if I went back and watched, it would be incredibly clunky, but we had a month, and none of us had ever done anything quite like that before. That was just an enormous team effort: 30–40 people all chipped in to make that happen.

Fourchella Minecraft Poster

SWIM: And at the time, no one knew when we were gonna be able to see shit again. So it was a godsend really to have something that communal translated digitally. And I do think all that effort showed in the end product.

SHACK: I’m looking at the Facebook event, and the description literally says, “We doin’ it big on Minecraft. 4/17 to 4/18, 1:00 PM to midnight.” That’s all it says.

SWIM: Say no more.

SHACK: Doing it big on Minecraft, that’s so goofy. Then that extended into the Shack Craft Monthlies. Beach Bunny submitted an acoustic set for one of ’em. It was Beach Bunny, Save Face, Sonder Bombs, and Short Fictions.

We did Origami Angel Broke Minecraft. I’m assuming that was in either late April or early May. The server went down, again, continuing the tradition that something will go wrong at a Gami Shack show. Oh yeah, at the Equipment Madrigal release show, the soundboard crapped out. So Origami Angel was already two for two breaking Shack shit, and then the server goes down for Minecraft.

Ryland, I think a day or two before Minechella, decided to completely revamp the set they were gonna do and did the kind of like lo-fi remixes.

SWIM: Yeah, I remember you posted the text, and they were just like, “Yo, can I, can I do a dubstep set?” And you were like, “Yeah, sure.”

SHACK: At that point, I was like, literally whatever anybody wants to do, we’ll showcase it. In a weird way, it’s kind of returning to the Same Co. roots of just whatever you have to showcase, this is a platform for it.

SWIM: And now it’s cool that set is documented on that EP basically as it was presented. And that’s such a cool document of a terrible time in the world, but it’s at least something good. 

SHACK: A silver lining. 

SWIM: You pulled all that out of 2020 and got back to it by last year, which is so fucking cool. After burnout and COVID just wreaking havoc on everyone’s mental health, then it’s just like, “Okay, at what point is it safe to start planning something like this again?”

SHACK: October 2021 was our first show back, and it was with Summerbruise, Carpool, Equipment, and Half Kidding at Howard’s. At this point, everybody had moved out; Lisa and I live here alone now, so we did all of our shows at Howard’s from that point on. 

SWIM: Keep your space.

SHACK: December 2021 through April 2022 were very sparse. We did so few shows, and most of these were Ellie's shows. This is when Ellie started working at Howard’s cause at some point over COVID, we all drove to pick up Ellie from Jersey and moved them to Bowling Green, and now Ellie is more of a local than I am. 

June 2022, Ellie booked the Weatherday, Michael Cera Palin, Oolong, Summerbruise, Waving, and Brown Maple show. And then Fauxchella V. I’m trying to figure out when we were just, “Yeah, we’re back.”

Fauxchella V Poster

I wanna say we probably started booking Fauxchella V like six months out, so realistically it was probably January 2022 when I started. I remember I sat down with everybody and I was like, “Okay, we have to decide if we just wanna say fuck it.” Like yeah, there’s still COVID, tours are still getting canceled, all of this stuff is still happening… But if we’re gonna get back into it, we need to do it now, or I’m gonna move.

Not necessarily holding everything ransom, but I was just, I can’t live in Bowling Green anymore if I’m not gonna do Bowling Green stuff. You know what I mean? Lisa and I were considering moving somewhere else, and I was considering just sucking it up and getting a job job and actually just being a career person. But that’s not fulfilling. I was gonna be depressed as shit doing that, and I knew that. And since getting back into the swing of things, I’ve definitely kind of reconfirmed for myself that I wanna expand on this in one way or another.

We did Fauxchella V once again, just like DMing bands on Twitter. But at this point, like almost everybody that I had reached out to is at least somewhat aware of the Shack.

SWIM: And it feels like the reach is farther than ever for Fauxchella VI. You’ve leaked various incarnations of that lineup to me, and this is probably the biggest one yet.

SHACK: We’re doing three days: Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. It’s like a 10-hour day, a 13-hour day, and a 9-hour day. We’re having Damb come out, and kind of help be an organizer with Ellie and me, along with JJ from JJ’s Bar and Grill and X-Ray Arcade. 

SWIM: And it’s still at Howard’s too, right?

SHACK: Yep. Still at Howard’s.

SWIM: Paid now. 

SHACK: Yeah. Fauxchella III was free, and then Sword Fest was $5. DIY Prom was, I wanna say $10 or $20. Snowchella was $10 or $20, and then Fauxchella V was $30 presale, $40 at the door. 

SWIM: Man, inflation for real. 

SHACK: True. 

SWIM: But, also like an incredibly small price to pay to see like 30 bands really.

SHACK: I mean, we’re really keeping the whole dollar-per-band guarantee alive. I think we’ve got 60-something bands and we’re gonna do $60 for a full weekend pass.

SWIM: Okay. Last I had was like 45 on the list that you sent me, so I, yeah, I need a new lineup.

SHACK: Yeah, I love to do stupid shit. I go in assuming that they’re all gonna say no, and then they all say yes, and then I have way more bands than I anticipated.

SWIM: I think that’s the theme of this whole interview, really.

SHACK: I like shooting shots just for the sake of shooting shots. And every party was interested, and I was just like, okay, this was like a goofy pipe dream. 

Michael Cera Palin and Dikembe are doing three days around Fauxchella. The Riley!/Ben Quad tour that just happened mainly happened because of them both being on Fauxchella V last year. Just so many little things that all domino effect into these crazy ideas that I now have for the future. 

You know, all in all, the past month and a half, it just feels good to be back. Fauxchella V really kicked me back into gear a little bit. It kind of kicked me in the butt, and then starting booking with Fauxchella VI.

Cheem posted about needing a tour booked, and I was just like, ah, I’d book a tour for Cheem. And it was like their most successful one yet! The leg Seaholm did with Riley was their most successful tour yet. And it’s just kind of blowing my mind that it’s working.

Cause, again, the theme of it all is I have no fucking clue what I’m doing. Like, I am like flying by the seat of my pants at all times and just learning in the process. I’ve been very lucky to have a team of people with the Shack and a team of people doing this all across the Midwest that have offered all sorts of tips and advice and knowledge to help make these things not only feasible but productive and run well.

And, you know, even since we started charging for the fests, all of the money after covering overhead goes back into the bands. So it is like truly what people put in is what bands get out of it.