NEPA SCENE PODCAST: Episode 34 – Defying genres and uniting the scene for the Scranton Music Festival
Professionally recorded every Monday at The Stude in TwentyFiveEight Studios in Scranton and released exclusively on nepascene.com every Tuesday, the NEPA Scene Podcast is a free supplement to the website, expanding on the arts and entertainment stories covered on the site and going beyond them to discuss other news and entertainment topics.
Each week, the unedited and uncensored podcast features Rich Howells, NEPA Scene founder and editor; Mark Dennebaum, president and owner of TwentyFiveEight Studios; and Lauren Quirolgico, commercial and content strategist at Lavelle Strategy Group and editor at TwentyFiveEight. Every episode streams on iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, and nepascene.com.
In Episode 34, we sit down with bassist Eric Ross, drummer CJ Krukowski, and vocalist Chris James of groove metal band Threatpoint to talk about organizing the first-ever Scranton Music Festival at Nay Aug Park, set for this Saturday, Aug. 8. We discuss how and why they chose to mix so many different genres of music – from blues to rap to country to punk rock – into one free festival, the difficulties in finding a location, the lack of all-ages venues in Northeastern Pennsylvania, the changing state of the local music scene, how technology has affected attendance and participation in live events, the benefit of wrapping up shows earlier in the night, judging people by their appearance and opening minds to new music, and the importance of everyone – bands and their fans – sticking together. There’s also a story in there about a very scary picture taken while on tour that involves a cowboy hat and possible nudity.
In The Last Word segment, we bring up the Steamtown Music Awards and the Electric City Music Conference and musicians’ negative and positive reactions to them on social media, concluding that everyone, whether they win an award or not, involved in music in NEPA benefits from events like these.
For more information on the Scranton Music Festival, read this previous article or visit the Facebook event page.
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Photo by Mark Dennebaum/TwentyFiveEight Studios
