Interview With Evan Harting After Maryland Deathfest XI

Maryland Deathfest XI ran from Thursday, May 23rd, 2013 through Sunday, May 26th in Baltimore and uncharacteristically there were some issues with the fest which left many people unhappy with the way things were run. I contacted Evan Harting, one of the two co-organizers of Maryland Deathfest, and he agreed to do an interview with me to address many of these issues. The following 30 minute interview was recorded in the evening of Tuesday, May 28th, 2013. My words are the ones in bold. You can listen to the interview by clicking the orange play button on the player below or you can download the 28mb mp3 of the interview by clicking here.

UPDATE: Ryan Taylor, the other MDF co-organizer, made a few clarifying comments about this interview on the MDF message board, which you can read here.

Hi, this is Metal Chris of DCHeavyMetal.com and it’s just a couple days after Maryland Deathfest XI. The four day festival in Baltimore, Maryland every Memorial Day weekend is the biggest underground metal festival in the United States and heavy metal fans come from all over the world to see dozens of metal bands play. For the most part I had a great time though there were a few bumps in the road. Maryland Deathfest has a reputation for being organized and run very well though this year there were some issues that came up. Attendees took to social media sites and there was a lot of anger and negativity towards the fest sometimes for things well beyond their control. I’ve seen rumors and misinformation along with some issues that I myself witnessed all being talked about on sites like Facebook at Twitter. I love Maryland Deathfest. It is one of the highlights of my year every year and so I reached out to Evan Harting, one of the two co-founders of the festival, to help clear up some of the issues and complaints about this year’s festival in his own words. So hello Evan, thanks for taking the time to do this interview.

No problem.

Now before we get into some of the heavier stuff I’d like to first thank you for bringing together such great bands year after year. Because of Maryland Deathfest I’ve gotten to see some bands perform live that I never thought I would see in my life and I’ve gotten the chance to check out some great up and coming bands as well. So my first question for you is: what were your favorite performances at Maryland Deathfest XI?

I didn’t get to watch any of them.

Alright, you were that busy.

Yeah. By far the busiest year for me.

Now ever since Sonar’s co-owner Daniel McIntosh was arrested and convicted on drug trafficking charges last year [details here] there’s been a lot of questions about where Maryland Deathfest XI would take place. It seemed like you and Ryan Taylor [the other co-organizer of Maryland Deathfest] kind of settled for Sonar this year, which is now rebranded as Paparazzi by their new owners, and the tent set up, which I don’t think many people were that happy about, seemed like you guys were just kind of trying to do the best you could with a bad situation. When exactly did you find out that Paparazzi did not have a suitable stage for Maryland Deathfest bands to play on?

We found out pretty late in the game. We were looking for new venue options and our head of security works with Paparazzi now and he came to us [and] said that the new owners would really like for us to have it there again and it seemed like some of the other options were kind of like falling apart and such. So we decided that we’d at least hear them out. Give them the chance to at least see what they had in mind. It seemed like it was going to work out fine [and we] might as well have it there another year. The biggest thing for us was just [that] we wanted to have an inside component and the proximity to the hotels is ideal for us. You know we want to have people near their hotels so they can just stumble home at the end of the night and not have to worry about it. Those are the biggest things for us so it worked out that way. And the new owners had lots of ideas of how we can expand and make it better and all this stuff so that’s what we decided to do. And they told us we can use the building the way we have in the past. Still have our inside stage and everything like that. So that’s what we were planning on and they did say that they were making renovations to the place and making it different but that was the extent of it. So we booked the entire festival and then we came down to the venue to check it out after the renovations had been made. And we walked into that room and were like, wow. We cannot use this at all. We are screwed.

Yeah. So how did the tent come up as a solution?

That was pretty much the only other option at that point. We couldn’t use the inside. We’d already sold a lot of tickets for Thursday’s [indoor only] show and the portion that was going to be inside and we didn’t want to have a completely outside thing. Certain bands count on having an inside show. That’s what they want. That’s a part of the agreement with them. Originally our first backup plan was [that] we were going to use part of the parking lot right there and kind of wall it in. So that would be kind of like a tented stage for us. But that did not come together and we didn’t know about that happening until kind of the last minute as well. So we, kind of at the last minute, decided we would have to put up an entire tent on the street.

Now was there any difference in regards to the fire code and noise curfew from the tent stage and the other outdoor stages?

No. It’s the same.

Are you considering holding the fest at the same location next year?

Absolutely not.

Many bands were cut off while still performing at the fest this year. Sometimes these were even the headliners. I saw Bolt Thrower, Kommandant, Pentagram, Venom, they all got cut off this year. What was the reason for this?

We have a very strict noise curfew. We have to abide by that. If we don’t then we get fined a lot of money. Venom knew about it and they continued to play so we literally had to pull the plug on them and it looked bad on our part but there’s nothing we could do about it. They knew they had to stop at that time but they decided to keep going. So when we pulled the plug, we’re the bad guys. So that sucked.

The one band I saw that didn’t get cut off was Sleep. They ran about ten minutes over so why weren’t they cut off?

I don’t really know to be honest. At that time I was in the middle of a million other things and I didn’t even know about that to be honest. But Venom also took their time setting up and I don’t remember exactly what the deal was but they should have gone on earlier.

I think everyone’s in agreement that the fest has really outgrown the streets outside of the Sonar/Paparazzi building. So what kind of options are you considering next year? Like maybe [the] Powerplant Live! area or a camp ground kind of set up or– I’m really hoping it’s not on a fucking cruise ship, that’s all.

Yeah it will be on a cruise ship actually… no. We don’t really know yet. You know we just wanted to get through this one before getting started on the next one. But we don’t give ourselves more than a week of rest before planning for the next one. Yeah we don’t really know yet. Powerplant area is unlikely just because there’s so many bars that have their own thing going on. It would be hard to work out a deal with that and also I know the people that are involved, the owners. I’m sure that they would want tons of money from us just to even have it there. I mean anything’s possible but I just don’t see that happening. And also it would be a lot smaller. Sometimes they do free shows in the outside area. It still doesn’t hold as many people as we would need. We could pretty much put it anywhere. A parking lot or park or something like that.

Maybe the parking lot between the two stadiums right there in downtown?

That’s one of the options we were looking at before deciding to have it at Paparazzi. So that’s also an option. We just have to weigh the options and decide which one will work out the best for us. Then we’ll have to deal with, are we getting shuttles to take people to and from the hotels because they won’t be able to walk to them any more? We really want to avoid that but I don’t really see any other way around it at this point.

Now I noticed that most of the security working the main festival grounds were some of the same team of guys who have been there, you know, the past several years. Many of them were wearing Sonar shirts which I thought was odd since Sonar doesn’t really exist any more. How exactly was the security team put in place for this year’s fest?

It’s the same security crew for the most part that we’ve worked with that worked for Sonar. The head of security, he’s awesome and he knows what he’s doing and his core group of guys, we’ve never had any problems with them. They know what they’re doing and they are, for the most part, very friendly to the people and everything. We enjoy having them. When he has to hire people from different venues and people that are not familiar with this at all, they are the ones we’ve had some issues with over the weekend.

OK so what happened with the no studded jackets or belts policy that suddenly arose early on Saturday? I had heard rumors that somehow Phil Anselmo of Down was involved in that or something. Is that true and if not how did that policy even get [put] in place?

It was basically a misunderstanding. It does have something to do with Down because they had a security rider that does enforce those things but I think that’s more for different types of concerts they’ve done. I have talked to their agent about it a while back and he said, “Don’t worry about it. We’re not going to enforce that at the fest it’ll be fine.” And then they get there and their security guy said that we need to enforce all of that and he didn’t know anything that I’ve worked out with the agent previously. So that’s why that was going on and we had to really talk to him about it and he eventually was like “It’s fine, at your discretion just do what you want” so we lifted that. But Phil himself didn’t seem to care about enforcing that at all so I’m not really sure exactly where that started.

Alright. Now one of the problems that affected almost everyone attending the fest at some point this weekend was the long lines, especially on Sunday. There seemed to be a lot of confusion about whether wrist bands got you into the venue without a wait, as they had previous years, or whether that did not happen. And this confusion wasn’t just among the attendees, it was also among the staff that were working the door. The security at the door seemed very under manned at many points throughout the weekend. I went to the SoundStage on Sunday to see Ilsa play and when I came back to the main grounds I walked over and there was this huge line wrapping beyond the parking lot down the street, and when I first walked up there were literally two people checking bags at the door, which I thought was probably the big bottle neck right there. Were there supposed to be more people searching bags and if so where were they?

Yeah there definitely should have been more people at the front handling that. There should have been people there earlier setting up a system and that did not happen. We seem to have an issue with that every year. As many times as we meet and reiterate how important it is that we get the line moving something always seems to go wrong and it just doesn’t happen when it’s supposed to. That’s just one of the issues that we know how we’re going to deal with it for the next year and that’s all we can really do with it at this point. Just learn from the mistakes and move on and know how to improve for the next [Deathfest].

Cause one of the things about these lines too is it made it very impractical to go back and forth between venues if you had the passes that let you. And it resulted in a lot of people missing a lot of bands because some of those bands were stacked very close to each other on that schedule. So you know you walk ten minutes and then you stand in line an hour and you’re missing stuff. I know you guys really trust, again, the security team but is it possible [that] like how Deathfest has outgrown Sonar that they’ve possibly outgrown the security team as well and is it time to bring in a new group of people that are used to bigger events like this?

Well one thing that we’ve briefly discussed even over the weekend and since the weekend is that we have to have a security company. We can’t just hire a bunch of our buddies to do it, there has to be a company. So we’re fine with having just a core group of guys that we’re used to. Just like, you know, even if it’s a very small number of them. We’re fine with that. But other than that, it’s likely that we actually are going to just hire our own people. People who actually know what’s going on and we know there won’t be any issues with.

OK have you considered maybe opening the doors earlier before the bands start? This year I think it was really underestimated how many people were going to be interested in seeing Speedwolf and they played very early on Sunday. They got that full page of worship, basically, written about them in the official MDF program and that probably got a lot more interest in them as well and it seemed like the door people were just not ready for that and with the door time being 1:15 and I think they went on about 35 minutes after that, there was just no way to get that many people into the venue that quickly so maybe earlier door times next year like before the first band?

Yeah, for sure.

OK cool. That’s sounds really good. One thing this year too, there seemed to be problems even just getting out of the venue, the main grounds at least, after the final bands played each night, especially after Venom played on Sunday. You heard people chanting, let em go, because they were just trying to leave. The way they had it set up was you could really only have two people standing next to each other, like a two person line, and people were trying to get out of there. This of course increased tensions and then this led to a lot of violence happening right outside the main gates as everyone was trying to leave. You’ve probably seen that video of the security guard choke slamming one guy out in the parking lot [see it here], it’s been going around. I’ve seen some other ones. You know it reminded me a lot of the pepper spray incident after Ghost closed the fest in 2011. So I’m wondering why didn’t security open up the gates and let as many people out as possible. Obviously nobody else was coming in at that point?

I’m not really sure what happened there to be honest. I heard that there was some kind of an incident and they had to wait to clear that up before letting people out. I’m not really sure. Normally either myself or Ryan are able to come and address issues like that as they come up throughout the weekend but we were just completely overwhelmed with everything over the weekend. We had zero down time. We were multitasking the entire weekend and it was just extremely stressful for us so we were not able to address all of these issues as they happened. Which was really unfortunate because [when] people are upset, it upsets us and we obviously don’t want any issues to arise at all.

I spoke with an actual off duty police officer who was attending the festival just as a fan and he was trying to video tape some of this and the security they told him that they were going to beat him down if he did not stop recording. That’s really weird to me. I can’t imagine that’s something the festival would actually endorse, telling everyone to turn off their cameras. Is that really the policy, that people should not be allowed to video tape anything like that?

No it’s not.

OK, good. I think a lot of people would probably argue that the biggest problem this year with Deathfest was the security however I would actually say that the biggest problem was the lack of communication with attendees. There was no official map or directions on how to travel between the venues, not even in the official program. There was no address given for the pre-paid parking lot entrance. There was no list of items that were banned from the festival. Nobody knew the signing schedule, or the location of the signing area, for Sunday until it was posted that morning on your Facebook page. I don’t think Broken Hope‘s signing session was even mentioned anywhere. On Thursday evening Carpathian Forest announced [here] that they would not be playing Deathfest but there was no official statement from you guys until Saturday. And then I think even that Facebook post was deleted at some point. There were other Facebook posts that were removed as well such as the photo of Down performing. Why were those posts taken down?

Just because of all the backlash that people were posting as comments. We were just completely overwhelmed. I know some things definitely should have been handled differently and we were just completely overwhelmed. You know it’s just us two dealing with this festival and it can be very overwhelming and we just were not prepared for all of this. Security, that kind of stuff, at least now we know exactly what we need to do and what we need to change. And I know some people left with a bad taste in their mouth after some of these issues and that upsets us just as much as them. All we can do is try to convince people, and assure them, that the next fest will be nothing like this. We know what has to change and we will definitely make sure that happens.

That’s really good to hear. Now the Maryland Deathfest Twitter account was reactivated shortly before the fest this year and I really hoped there would be a lot of up to the minute information coming from that and the Facebook page. These are really powerful tools that could have answered a lot of the questions I’m asking now, and they could have been answered in real time. That didn’t really happen and so I was wondering have you considered hiring a social media expert to handle this next year? Like someone that could just run your accounts for you and get information out and answer people’s questions.

Yes. That will have to be the case. Normally we have a lot more down time during the fest so we can do stuff like that but that was not the case at all this year. I had zero downtime. And I had no time to log on to Twitter and send updates. So yeah we’ll definitely have to get someone to do that kind of stuff for us.

Alright now why exactly didn’t Carpathian Forest end up playing Sunday night?

Well their singer was denied visa and one of the other guys was going to do it. The guitar player was going to do vocals but he also was not allowed over so three of the guys were there just hanging out but unable to play.

OK so why was Evoken moved from Thursday to Friday?

Because of work related stuff. It was something relating to work like they thought that they’d be playing later than that so they didn’t prepare for that and so they either would have to cancel or be switched to a different day.

OK so why did Vinterland end up playing at 10pm on Saturday instead of 5pm?

Because a couple of the guys had their flights canceled and had to fly in the next day and they didn’t even arrive until 8pm.

Oh wow. So they basically came directly from BWI [airport] and got on stage.

Yeah. Actually, quite a few bands had their flights canceled or delayed by a lot. So that was like a whole nother thing that we were dealing with all weekend. Just as an example, because of that stuff the shuttles were no longer there picking them up from the airport because their times changed. The hotels canceled their rooms because they didn’t show up when they were supposed to. It was just a whole lot of crap that resulted from that.

Is that why Tinner did not play at the SoundStage on Sunday as well?

No. Their tour fell apart or something so they didn’t end up coming. We hadn’t even heard from them in a while. We assumed everything was fine but then they wrote and said that they couldn’t play at the last minute pretty much.

Although it wasn’t really announced anywhere I thought it was really cool that you gave Speedwolf another set cause the lines had been so long Sunday and a lot of people had wanted to see them and by the time they got in they’d already played. Although their second set was during Sleep’s set. Is there any reason you put them on during that time slot instead of any other time in the festival?

That’s just when it worked out. We figured the least we could do was have them play again since a lot of people were in line before when they were playing but that just happened to be when we had that kind of time that we could slide them in during. And it’s unfortunate that it was during Sleep but it was all we could really do given the situation.

Also what happened with Golden West not being at the festival after they had been listed as a food vendor? I really like the food there a lot and I was looking for them and I never found them.

Yeah actually the girl that we have helping us, I don’t even know what to call her title exactly but, she’s like just under us, like she’s the only one helping us during the festival. She’s a manager over there and she got that together but I guess at the last minute they ended up not being able to do it. People were looking forward to having them there so that was unfortunate but they weren’t prepared for it and didn’t make it. A couple of them came for a few hours and set up in the VIP lounge and just made some tacos and stuff for some of the VIP bands that were in there but that’s it.

One other thing that I noticed about pretty much all three of the stages at the main grounds was there was a poor mix for a lot of the bands. The bass was often very high in the mix, particularly the kick drums for many of the bands playing. I actually left in the middle of Glorior Belli‘s set, a band that I was actually really excited to see, because it was pretty much unlistenable. I know some bands had their own sound guys like Pelican, who sounded great. Some of the bands due to their own sound could deal with the extra bass alright kind of like [how] Anhedonist did but you know when I’m watching a black metal band and all I hear is the bass there’s something wrong with the mix. Is there a reason so many bands were getting a mix that you’d expect of somebody like Obituary? Were there simply not enough high range speakers to counter the large amounts of bass coming out or was this something that was the sound engineer’s preference?

I don’t really know what happened there. They’re some of the same guys that have done it in past years. I don’t know what was wrong with the mix. I’ve heard conflicting stories regarding the sound as well, you know some people said that all of the bands sounded amazing and other people say that it was horrible so it goes back and forth but even any of the negative feedback, you know, we want to work to change it for the next one. So we definitely are taking all of that feedback under consideration. I mean we definitely want to make sure that bands get the best sound that they can. So even if some people thought that it wasn’t good that’s enough.

I think the main problem was it seemed like a lot of the bands were all getting the same mix regardless of what kind of band they were and that’s why [for] some of these bassier doom bands it wasn’t as much of a problem and then you see this black metal band and it should sound like a beehive or something not all kick drums and bass you know?

Right.

But these are people that have worked with you before and stuff, alright. Now this is something that actually kind of bothers me every year although this year I really noticed it a lot. Shots of the audience from the stage while major bands are playing at Deathfest. During many of the bands’ sets this year I saw photographer Aaron Pepelis of Return To The Pit shooting while standing on the stage itself with a professional camera flash repeatedly going off while the bands were playing. As a photographer myself I found this very distracting and also very unprofessional. Now I understand if you guys want a couple shots of the crowd like that during some of the bigger bands, whatever not a big deal. But I saw this going on throughout the fest at both venues. It was really frustrating and I’m wondering is it really worth the detriment to the show to be able to post a picture of Matt Pike’s coin slot on Facebook? Is this something we’re going to see more of in the future?

I’ve never heard anything about that so if it’s an issue it can definitely be addressed. That’s the first time I’ve heard someone express an issue with that to be honest.

Alright. Like I said there have been a lot of changes this year and we know that some people will bitch and moan about any change but some of them were actually very good. Which changes did you think worked the best this year at the fest?

It was great to have food there for one. I think a lot of people were happy just having more food options then there were in the past. Having a few less bands at the Sonar part made it easier for scheduling and stuff like that. Every little thing is planned you know, every little detail, so the things that come together and work out great and it’s awesome. But things that don’t are really hard for us to take.

One of the changes that I really liked was that you included the Baltimore SoundStage. I thought the venue had the best sound of all the stages at Deathfest this year and I don’t think I really heard any complaints about their security. Are there any plans to possibly work with them again or are you going to try to keep everything at one location next year so that people don’t have to go back in lines?

I think the line stuff and going back and forth could have been arranged a little better and that’s something that we definitely will work on but the whole concept behind it seemed to work out well and I did hear awesome things about the venue. The sound and everything. I wasn’t able to make it over there myself for anything but I’d be totally down to include them next year.

The biggest problem I actually had with the Baltimore SoundStage this year was the schedule. There were often several multiple hour long gaps between bands playing at the venue. And for people who had only purchased a ticket to one or multiple of the days at the SoundStage but not the main grounds, that must have been pretty frustrating. And it also would kill any momentum that say an opener band had started to build up with an audience because then you’re sitting around for two hours waiting for the next band. Why were there such large gaps in the schedule at the Baltimore SoundStage?

We just didn’t want to have certain bands playing during certain other bands’ sets at Sonar. There are some people that had tickets to only the SoundStage but not that many. Most people had both so we just were trying to avoid as much clash as possible especially with bands that are more likely for people to be into both that would hypothetically be playing at the same time.

Alright, while some of the food vendors this year were not that high quality there definitely were some great food options this year. The Zombie Barbeque was great. There was a half smoke sausage cart that was really good. Are you planning on getting more food vendors like this in the future?

Yeah, for sure.

Cool.

Yeah this was like the first time that we’ve really expanded to that whole thing. In the past couple years we’ve only had one because it was the owner of Sonar that owns a restaurant and we just kind of worked it out, a deal with him, that he would be the only food vendor to set up. They were there as well this year but obviously not the only one and I think it worked out much better that way.

OK now fans of DC Heavy Metal will know that I’m also a big fan of craft beer and instead of drinking these corporate Millers and Budweisers and whatever. I saw Flying Dog IPAs were available this year, but they were two dollars more than the corporate brands, and for a fan of dark beer like myself, I like stouts and porters, there was nothing available inside the venue, anything like that. Now Maryland actually has some great craft breweries like Heavy Seas, DuClaw, Union and even Baltimore’s own Brewer’s Art makes an actual Ozzy Osbourne beer which I’m sure would have sold well at Deathfest. Are there any plans to get some more local craft beers into the fest next year and possibly at a more competitive price point?

The reason why only those options were available is because the alcohol is completely up to the venue. We gave them suggestions many times, we should have this and this and this, but they don’t listen, they’re just going to do their own thing. We’ve had huge issues with these venue owners all weekend and that is really the icing on the cake that determines that we are definitely not doing it there again. Therefor, we’ll be pretty much doing all of this ourselves from now on. So we will have complete control over what kind of drinks will be served. So yes.

That’s great to hear. At a festival with so many of these just small, underground and independent bands it just kind of sucks to see all this corporate stuff going around when you’re looking at the beer you know when there’s so many small, underground and independent beers also in this area that could also be served there. So that’s good to hear. There were several bands that played Deathfest this year that also played shows in Baltimore during the festival such as Glorior Belli and Tragedy. Are you OK with bands doing this or are you considering having bands in the future maybe sign a contract prohibiting this or something?

We definitely do try to avoid that. The Tragedy thing was a last minute thing at the end. They asked me if it was OK and I was like “go ahead, it’s fine.” But the Glorior Belli thing was kind of a surprise. We knew about it before the fest happened but we were not very happy about it because we paid for their flights to play the fest exclusively. And then I saw they were not only doing a tour but also playing right around the corner from the fest on the same day as the fest. So yeah, we were not too stoked about that. We don’t care if bands do other shows and stuff but we just have to arrange that in the beginning. With bands playing the fest and then playing another venue in Baltimore that weekend is definitely is definitely something that we try to avoid.

The one thing from this interview that I’ve kind of heard over and over is that you and Ryan were both very overwhelmed all weekend. Do you have any ideas yet of what you’re going to do so maybe it’s a more manageable process next year so you guys aren’t just constantly overwhelmed?

Yes. A lot of it had to do with, we put too much faith in the new guys being able to help us out. They told us all along that they’d be able to like get us this and help us get this and etcetera. And they didn’t. All of that fell through so we were just not prepared for that. We put too much trust in them being able to make that stuff happen. So now we know that we cannot do that at all. We just have to take all the matters in our own hands and do things our way and not rely on anyone else to get things done. The specifics are yet to be determined because we’re still in full recovery mode right now but very soon we will start getting the gears in motion to plan for a better fest next year.

That’s great. Well thanks for answering all my questions here Evan. I really do appreciate you and Ryan Taylor bringing so many great bands to the area every Memorial Day weekend. So my last question for you is: when will you start announcing bands and a new location for next year’s fest?

Pretty much as soon as we have it confirmed. We don’t know. We’re going to start working on it pretty much immediately but we won’t announce anything until something is set in stone and we’re completely sure about it, and happy with it, so I don’t know when that will be. Regarding the bands, as many people know, we start booking pretty much immediately after this year’s fest so we definitely will start booking bands very shortly here and probably make our first group of announcements within a few months or so.

Alright cool, sounds good. Well thanks a lot for answering these questions. I know a lot of them weren’t the easiest and you’ve been really honest here and that’s awesome. I hope that you and Ryan do have a good little bit of time off. Actually relax and maybe get off your feet and have a couple beers or something you know?

Yes. That would be nice.

Alright well thanks a lot and I’ll be at the fest next year. Can’t wait for MDF XII.

Cool. We’re just stoked to basically now completely separate ourselves from a venue and everything and just doing… SoundStage thing is one thing but for the main festival grounds we’re just going to do it our own way and this will give us the freedom to do things exactly the way that we want. Every little thing can be premeditated and we can follow up on it and make sure that that’s the way it goes. I’m stoked to start a new chapter and I think it’ll be much better.

That’s great. Alright well thanks a lot and I’ll talk to you sometime soon.

Bye.

Take it easy.

May 30, 2013
Categories: Baltimore Soundstage, Interviews, Maryland Deathfest, Sonar . Tags: , , , , , . Author: Metal Chris . Comments: 34 Comments

Interview with Evan Harting of Maryland Deathfest

Evan Harting is one of the two co-founders and organizers of the annual Maryland Deathfest, the biggest heavy metal festival not only in this area but in all of North America. I thought he would be a great subject for the first interview on DCHeavyMetal.com and he was cool enough to speak with me on the phone for a bit on Tuesday the 24th of April 2012. You can download and listen to an mp3 of our 20 minute conversation (here) or you can simply read the transcription below (my words are in bold, Evan’s are not). Extra fun if you read along as you listen! We covered a lot of subjects like which bands he is most excited to see this year, what the food options will be like, what he thinks about people downloading music online, what happened with the pepper spray at last year’s fest, what the future holds for the event after this year and even what Morbid Angel might play during their performance. I hope you all enjoy it and if it is received well I want to do more interviews in the future.

Hey what’s up? This is Metal Chris from DC Heavy Metal and I’ve got Evan Harting here on the phone. He’s one of the promoters and creators of the Maryland Deathfest which is coming into its tenth year and is starting Thursday, May 24th over Memorial Day weekend up in Baltimore, Maryland at Sonar and I’ve got him here to ask him some questions for DC Heavy Metal.

First I wanted to ask, how did you and Ryan Taylor get to start up the Deathfest? How did you guys come up with the idea and how did you guys meet each other and just how did it get going?

We actually met in high school. We became friends through just being into the same kind of music and going to the same shows. Then eventually we started working in the same places. We were both cooks at the time. We were working at this place in Perry Hall, Maryland, when the blue prints for the fest came up and it just started from there. In 2001 we went to the Ohio Deathfest. I think that kind of got the gears moving a little bit and got us thinking about doing something similar on the East Coast.

Do you guys have any other day jobs you’re doing or are you just kind of doing this full time or are you doing promotions or what do you guys do otherwise when you’re not doing the Deathfest?

Well the Deathfest is definitely our main job, definitely our main focus throughout the year, but we do have other jobs sometimes. It really depends on the part of the year and how busy we are during the fest. Every once in a while I’ll do other shows and stuff but definitely the fest is the main thing and other jobs kind of we’ll work a few months out of the year but that’s basically it.

Cool cool, so Deathfest is definitely the main priority. That’s cool man. So as far as this year’s line up, you know this is the tenth show so it’s sort of like the big anniversary and I know you guys have an awesome line up. I mean you guys always have really good line ups but this year you guys really pulled out all the stops. Which band, personally, are you most excited to be seeing this year at the fest?

Well it’s kind of hard to say because part of how I book bands is also bands that I want to see. I would say most of them but if I had to pick out a few of the top ones I would say Electric Wizard, Sargeist, Church Of Misery, Bethlehem, Tsjuder, Confessor, Godflesh and Napalm Death. I mean I’ve seen them a few times before but they’re definitely one of my favorite live bands so they’re always good.

They’re playing the same day as the Nasum reunion thing or whatever is going on and I know Nasum announced that they were going to have guest vocalists on some of their sets that they were playing at different fests around the areas this year so I was wondering do you have any idea if Barney [Greenway, vocalist of Napalm Death] is going to be doing some songs with Nasum because that would be kind of awesome.

I don’t know if it’s… I thought I read something about a guest vocalist as well. I don’t remember who it was. I don’t think it’s Barney but don’t quote me on that I’m not sure.

Well I know they’re going to have different surprise guests come out so I was like, they’re playing right around the same time. I know you haven’t announced the times yet. What day do you plan on announcing the times for the actual running order?

We’re working on it now. Within the next couple of weeks we’ll announce it. It’s just that stuff changes at the last minute so we just tend to wait until kind of late to announce the set times.

Is it going to be the same kind of set up as it’s been the last couple years where you have the two outdoor stages facing each other in the middle of Saratoga Street or do you have another set up this year for the stages?

Yeah, it’ll be the same. Yeah that seemed to work out the best the same way we did it last year. We thought that worked out pretty well.

Now one thing I wanted to ask is, you know the big parking lot that everyone parks in, that’s now a metered lot. Baltimore City has changed that this year and you’ve got to pay to park there now. So do you know if that’s going to be lifted at all for the Deathfest or what people are going to have to do to park there?

I’m not quite sure yet. We’ve been trying to see what we can do it’s just that that’s completely separate from our operations. You know that’s the city and what they do. I’ve talked to the head of security at Sonar who is in close with the city and he’s trying to see if something can be done but it’s not going to be easy. But also I figure they’re going to have a hard time coming in to the parking lot and towing cars and giving tickets anyway. All the meters I think it’s until 6 or 7 you have to put a certain amount in, but after that it’s a flat rate of $7 or something like that.

Now usually Sonar has a small garage that you can park in for free now. That’s something they’ve been advertising on other nights when they have shows. But I’m going to guess that’s probably going to be blocked off as part of the back stage area for the Deathfest.

If it’s what I’m thinking of they have been advertising the parking lot that’s kind of on top of the venue…

Yeah, yep.

…when there’s like other shows going on but during the fest we kind of use that mainly as the staff parking lot because there’s so much staff that even including myself I park up there. Usually it’s pretty full.

Another thing I was going to ask you know last year after Ghost‘s set there was that big incident with the pepper spray or mace. I know somebody tried to start a fight with one of the security guards or something. So I was wondering are they going to be walking around with pepper spray and stuff again this year or is it the same security guards or what’s going to go on with that stuff this year? I’m assuming something has changed.

I mean that definitely never should have happened. I just heard kind of through the grapevine what happened from different people. From what I understand this guy was picking a fight with one of the bouncers and attacked him or something and then the bouncer used the pepper spray on him but since it was outside the pepper spray kind of floated around and got some other people at the same time. And they definitely should not be using that at all unless completely necessary. And that’s never happened before so, I certainly would not expect that to happen again.

What’s going to go on with food this year? I know they had vegetarian options last year and so is there going to be more of that kind of stuff cause you know a couple of years ago I had gone and there were a few different food vendors. And that last year I think, or maybe two, there was only like one actual in the fest vendor selling food. Now is it going to be the same kind of thing set up this year or are there going to be more options or what’s up?

Well in the past when we had a few different ones, that was when it was up to me and Ryan to hire food vendors from outside. And now the owner of Sonar, he owns a restaurant in Hampden, and he has wanted to work out a deal with us regarding the rental and everything so he would be the only food vendor. So that’s why it’s been that way for the past year or two. But we definitely have gotten like a lot of feedback regarding the limited options that were available and we talked to him for a while about it and it’s going to be his stuff again but there’s going be at least three different sections, like three different types of food.

Different kinds of menu styles or something right?

Right. He’s supposed to be able to give me some menus that we can post online but I don’t know we’ll see about that. Either way he knows that we need a much more extensive list of options for people.

There’s a few places you can walk to around that area too. So that’s one thing too is that it’s in a nice part of the city where you can actually walk to a couple places and get some food too. Now I wanted to ask, what’s the official photo/video policy of Maryland Deathfest this year?

People can bring in cameras and do whatever they want but if someone’s bringing in a huge professional video camera then that’s when we’ll tell them they gotta relax but otherwise we don’t care. Regarding press passes we don’t give them out to anyone. Obviously there’s a couple that we work with and we give it to them but other than that we do not. People ask us constantly like oh we have this web blog or whatever this little magazine can we have a press pass and we always say no because otherwise we’d have thousands of people in the press pit and back stage and stuff and that’s just ridiculous. So yeah we have our movie crew and maybe a couple of others that we have every year that are shooting pictures from the photo pit but that’s it.

So there is going to be a Maryland Deathfest: The Movie shot again this year also?

Yeah, this will be the final one.

Ok. Because I know there was an issue with some of the footage last year or something.

Yeah, it was a bunch of drama that I didn’t quite understand or have the time to try to comprehend but having something to do with one of the guys stealing some of the footage or a laptop with a lot of the footage on it so a lot of it wasn’t recovered. I don’t know. But it’s part of the same crew that’s coming this time and [we] decided it would be worth it since this is the tenth year to do a final one from those guys.

Yeah the line up is pretty incredible this year too.

Yeah. Hopefully it’ll end up looking pretty good.

Here’s one thing I wanted to know, now you’ve got Morbid Angel headlining I believe Saturday and that’s going to be with David Vincent. Now I saw them when they first got back together with David Vincent back in, I don’t know, 2004 or somewhere around there. All the songs they played were from Domination and earlier. Now do you know if they’re going to be doing that kind of thing again, or are they going to play some of their songs in the years he was gone or do you know if it’s going to be a heavy focus on the new album because, heh, because I know a lot of people were not impressed with their new album, heh, to say the least.

Yeah, heh, I’ve gotten a lot of comments about that too. Actually, when I’m out at shows and stuff like that a lot of people ask me, they say that they’ve heard that we have a contract with Morbid Angel to where, they can’t play any new songs and, heh, I don’t know where that started but that’s definitely not true. However, from what I understand, they only play one or two songs off of the new album and then mostly old stuff.

So probably Domination era and earlier.

Yeah. I ran into Dave Witte last night actually and he said he saw them not long ago and he said he was very impressed with their live show now and he thinks people will be stoked.

Now do you know who is drumming for them when they’re going to be at Deathfest?

It will be Tim Yeung.

Ok. Do you have any idea who’s going to be drumming for Suffocation?

Um… Oh I’m drawing a blank on his name right now. Um… Dave Culross I think.

Now here’s another one that I thought was kind of weird on the Fest this year was Anvil. I mean I know they’re a pretty big band they just don’t seem to fit with the other bands on the bill. So how did you guys decide to put them on because they seem kind of out of left field.

Kind of, but not really. They’re just an old school, legendary band. They’re not quite to Metallica status or anything but they’ve been around for a long time and have influenced tons of bands. There’s some people that think that it’s crazy that they’re on this but I think there’s also a lot of people, a lot of old school heads especially, that will appreciate seeing them.

And they’ll be playing on one of the bigger outdoor stages right?

Yeah.

I remember last year when Neurosis was getting ready to play a thunder storm started to roll in. Is there going to be kind any of preparation for that or what happens when we get another thunder storm like that this year or if there’s a longer one? Are we just going to have to just push stuff back because I’m sure there’s noise issues at a certain point where you just can’t keep having the outdoor stages play.

Our outside stages are going to be slightly different. They’ll have a slightly more boxed in feel to them but that doesn’t affect a whole lot as far as that’s concerned. It can rain all night long and that’s fine but if there’s lightning then that’s when we can’t because it becomes an issue.

Yeah, a safety issue there.

So basically we just have to hope for the best, really, and the noise curfew goes until 11 o’clock so we cannot run any bands past that point.

Outdoors at least.

Outdoors, yeah.

Cool, now one thing I always thought was really cool is every year you guys seem to get a few of the local bands from sort of the DC, Baltimore and Philly area and even just the Mid Atlantic region in general and I thought that’s kind of cool how you guys get these big bands coming from all over the world and doing these exclusive appearances and you still have some local bands. You’ve got like Coke Bust on there this year, Extermination Angel, Dying Fetus, they’re pretty big but they’re a Maryland band too. Is that something that you guys really try to keep is some of the local bands coming in too?

We don’t want to lose that feel completely you know? Even if the fest continues to grow we kind of want to look out for some of the local acts and some of the little guys. There’s tons of bands from around the area that are awesome and there’s no reason why we shouldn’t help showcase that.

It’s really cool that you guys do that and I’ve always noticed that every year. Now last year Sonar had some sort of snafu where they lost their liquor license and were closing and that happened about three weeks before the fest was supposed to take place last year. I know you guys were kind of scrambling at the time to try to find another venue and I was thinking it was going to be Bourbon Street, which is just across the street from Sonar. Well that venue is closed now so I was wondering do you guys have any other kind of back up plan in case something ridiculous like that happens again or they lose their liquor license or something?

Well last year it was an issue with the liquor license because the liquor license was still in another guy’s name and there’s just a lot of drama regarding that but this year it’s not going to be an issue. In the long run of what’s going to really happen with Sonar I don’t really know. I can’t say but I know for sure it will be around during the fest and even after for a while at least.

Have you been to some of those festivals over in Europe like say Wacken or Hole In The Sky or any of these big festivals they have over there. Has that influenced the way you guys try to run Deathfest at all if you have?

The only kind of bigger festival I’ve been to, overseas, has been the Obscene Extreme fest in the Czech Republic. I’ve been to that a few times. It’s all outdoors in the middle of the woods. I’m actually pretty good friends with the guy who organizes that and he’s now coming to Maryland every year for the fest. Ryan has been to a couple of others because you know over the years he’s been traveling to Europe a lot more than I have. At least the past few years he has so I think he’s been to a couple more but I don’t think it really affects too much how we do this because I would say that Deathfest is probably most similar to those in the States but in Europe I think it’s not that similar. Most of those fests are all outdoors and there’s camping and all that stuff going on and it’s pretty different.

Have you ever thought about trying to make Maryland Deathfest bigger like something like that? Maybe move to a larger location or a field or something where you could do that?

Well it’s not so much try to, but it would be like, well this is happening because there’s so many people trying to come. We definitely have been looking into those options. We don’t have anything set in stone yet but we realize that it may happen actually pretty soon here so we’re exploring what kind of options we can use. But we also don’t want to have it lose the indoor deal as well because the good thing of having it at Sonar is we have a stage inside and there’s the lounge area, stuff like that. [I] think that having part of it inside is really cool and certain bands in that kind of setting is just perfect. So if we were to move it somewhere else I think it would be important to have an indoor… at least like tents or something to give more of an indoor kind of feel.

Like a club kind of setting.

Right.

Now here’s something I’ve always wanted to ask you. What do you think about a lot of this, you know the peer-to-peer bit torrents and the other mp3 downloading because I know on one hand a lot of the bands and the labels obviously they don’t like a lot of that. They don’t want people downloading their music for free. However on the other hand, a lot of these bands at Deathfest nobody in America would even know some of these bands if it wasn’t for the availability of their music online.

Right.

So where do you fall on that line because I’d imagine lots of bands on Deathfest probably wouldn’t even be able to come over here and play that just because people wouldn’t even know who they are. But now we’ve got like Electric Wizard headlining and stuff so what’s your take on all of that?

I don’t know I kind of fall in the middle. I can see both sides of it. I think having at least some of your music available online for free is great and it gets your word out there. If you’re in metal to make money then you’re doing something wrong anyway. But that’s kind of the way it’s becoming now. More and more people are just downloading for free so if you want to make some money off of your releases it’s going to be more difficult. When I talk to bands they say that most of the money they make is made off merch now. There’s only so much you can really do about that because one way or another people will find a way to download your music free. I personally like to do both. I like to check out a band first by like downloading it and if I’m really into it I’ll go out and buy it next time I see it at a store or something like that.

Yeah you’re starting to see a bit of a resurgence in vinyl from some of that too because you can’t really download the vinyl experience you know whereas a CD is kind of easily copied.

Oh yeah, I definitely see vinyl coming back big time.

Anyways, speaking of free stuff, I know that you just put out the list of all the vendors and who are going to have tables and booths so I was wondering, what if you’re not one of the vendors? Are you allowed to hand out flyers, stickers, CDs of your band if you’re just walking around? Is that ok or is that not cool or what are people allowed to do as far as that goes?

Yeah that’s fine. People can feel free to promote their band and show or whatever. There’s nothing we can do about that and it’s no big deal. Every once in a while someone will come and set up a little table and try to like sell stuff and that’s when we’ve crossed the line. If you’re going to sell something then that needs to be worked out in advance. If you want to give stuff away, feel free.

One thing I’ve noticed over the years too is back when you guys started the fest it was mostly a bunch of grindcore bands and you’d have a few bigger death metal headliners like say a Suffocation or Zyklon or something like that. And now it definitely covers a lot more genres. You’ve got black metal and sludge bands and doom bands and there’s still some death and there’s thrash and there’s old school bands coming back and so like you were saying earlier a lot of the bands are just the stuff you like. Now is some of the line up changes just how you and Ryan’s tastes have evolved over the years to maybe expand more or is it just you’re now a bigger fest and you can get different genres or maybe you’re getting out of some of the death and grind metal some and you’re just more into some of these other genres now? How has that progressed and why?

It’s actually all of those things. The first couple years, actually a lot of it was brutal death metal and then some grindcore and goregrind and stuff. That’s what we were mainly into at the time and that’s just what we decided to book. But as the fest has matured over the years I feel so have we and our musical tastes as well so we’ve decided to expand not only our tastes but the bands that we get, the genres that we get at the fest. The more that we do that the more that we realize that no one wants to see one genre of metal all day long. You know you gotta mix it up. Even from a fan’s perspective I wouldn’t want to go to a fest and see all brutal death metal or all doom or something it gets boring.

Yeah well even one day is one thing. You start making it four days, that’s a lot. Haha. That’s a lot to take in.

Oh yeah, definitely. So I think people definitely appreciate the mix of genres as do we.

I think it’s kind of cool that some of these bands get to play on a bigger stage that they wouldn’t necessarily get to if they were just touring around the area you know.

Yeah definitely.

So that’s always something that’s really nice too. Not only do you get to see Electric Wizard this year but you get to see them on a big outdoor stage so that’s pretty cool. Is there anything big you’ve got planned for say, the next year? I know you guys are working on this stuff always pretty early and you start announcing bands usually about a month after the fest for the next year. So do you have any kind of stuff in the works already yet you might want to leak or anything? Maybe you’re adding an extra day or add an extra stage or I don’t know, change the venue, anything like that?

We have a little bit in the works and a little bit that we’re brainstorming on right now but it’s nothing that we can really say at this point. Basically we’re going to have to decide, you know after this one we’re going to have to decide if it’s too big to hold at Sonar first of all and then just kind of take it from there.

You guys want to keep it in Maryland though or…? Like you wouldn’t have any plans to move it somewhere else is what I’m asking.

Everyone knows it as the Maryland Deathfest so we definitely would not plan on moving it.

Alright well thanks man. Thanks for your time. It’s been cool getting to chat for a little bit here and thanks a lot. Have you ever checked out my site DCHeavyMetal.com?

I have a couple times briefly, yeah.

Ah cool man. I’m trying to cover everything in the area from Baltimore to Northern Virginia you know and get the word out. Deathfest is definitely one of the biggest metal events every year as far as festival things it’s pretty much the only one in this area. This was the first interview I’ve done for the site. I thought it would be really cool to talk to one of you guys as the first interview. Thanks a lot for doing this man and I guess I’ll see you in about a month.

Alright, I appreciate it man. I’ll see you soon.

Ok take it easy.

Bye.

April 26, 2012
Categories: Interviews, Maryland Deathfest, Sonar . Tags: , , , , , . Author: Metal Chris . Comments: 1 Comment