Muncie MusicFest 2015
Phase One
Where: Cornerstone Center for the Arts, 520 E. Main St.
When: 5 p.m., Oct. 10
Phase Two
Where: Be Here Now, 505 N. Dill St.; The Acoustic Room, 1501 W. Kilgore Ave; The Fickle Peach, 117 E. Charles St.; The Ballroom, 2150 White River Boulevard
When: 10 p.m.
All 10 p.m. shows require attendees to be at least 21 and have a picture I.D.
Music genres of all types come together at Muncie MusicFest, and no one knows that better than Andrew Hesik, who is performing at the festival as an electronic dance musician and a member of a band who label themselves as acoustic jibber-jabber.
Muncie MusicFest, an event that’s reemerging after a one-year hiatus, will include more than 30 bands playing at six different locations around town on Oct. 10.
Hesik, a Ball State alumnus and MusicFest program coordinator, is performing first as Mephysto, his three-year old EDM brainchild.
"[Mephysto has] been a huge learning process," Hesik said. "Of course, I'm focused on producing electronic dance music, but the center piece of the development has been the custom apparatus I've been developing to perform it on, which doubled as my senior project."
The “custom apparatus," called Naraka, is an aggregate of several digital instruments including a Dance Dance Revolution pad and an electronic drumset. Hesik positions Naraka at shoulder height, allowing him to mix movement and music composition into "a unique performance by choreographing the motions to look like dancing."
Getting the device to function perfectly and "in a way that's streamlined" has been a three-year process that included doing research in textbooks and engineering the device.
Hesik said he looks forward to giving it its first real-world play-through at MusicFest.
He’ll be performing later in the night as part of Dr. Boldylocks & the Twitter All-Stars, a band he drums and produces for. Working on a project by himself versus working with a group of people has been vastly different, he said. Building Naraka was an introverted experience, but one that he hopes will transmit what he’s feeling to his audience.
“On the flip side, I've learned just as much working with all my bandmates in Dr. Boldylocks, but with an extroverted tone,” he said. “You get to watch how they interact and see both the greatest and worst qualities of their personalities. Musically, we perform a genre that I've never studied or practiced before and it's taught me a lot of new tricks and techniques that I'm thoroughly enjoying applying to all my other endeavors; it can just be so surprising."
The festival will be divided into two phases, the first starting at 5 p.m. and occupying six rooms on all three floors of the Cornerstone Center for the Arts in downtown Muncie.
Different rooms will contain musicians with genres ranging from folk, reggae, hip-hop, rock and EDM.
Hesik said a diverse board of organizers had a hand in the artists appearing at the festival and the variety between them.
“We wanted to open this up for the greater community and there's something for everyone," Hesik said.
The MusicFest acts and their styles are different, but many performers still know someone in the other bands or have worked with them before.
Artists performing at MusicFest including SPACExLION, Phlank, Re:Born and Mephysto are all apart of the EDM Collective started by Hesik several years ago.
Hesik said he is also friends with several members of SmileEatingJesus, Steve Robert and the Jazzmanian Devils and The Indigos, whose drummer is a member of EDMC as well.
"Every musician knows other musicians, so it's virtually impossible to escape that social circle once you've immersed yourself," Hesik said, although he admitted that it can be hard to initially get involved with the network.
After the festivities at Cornerstone are finished, several local venues will initiate the festival's second phase, keeping the party going for 21-plus concert-goers. Each host venue will begin their respective shows at 10 p.m. That’s where the similarities end, however. The style of music at each location will vary.
Be Here Now will be showing several lighter style bands, including Hesik’s Dr. Boldylocks & the Twitter All-Stars. The Fickle Peach will host The Bashville Boys, a bluegrass quartet from Muncie.
The Acoustic Room will start by showing Middletown Funk, an R&B and fusion group that will open for jam band Rattleuce and Motion Theatre.The Ballroom will host a heavier sound with post-grunge band Where-We-Are and power groove metal band Hell Came Home. Awaiting Sacrifice goes on at midnight.
The festival is free to attend thanks to funding by the Community Foundation of Muncie Delaware County Inc and the Ball Brothers Foundation.
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