[Content Warning: Brief mention of Alex Carpenter]
The NYC Wizard Rock Festival got its Hogwarts letter this year. Twelve years ago this month, on the 21st, we gathered for the first ever full-day wrock concert in New York City. For this installment of Into the Pensieve, we’ll pull back the curtains and glimpse the inner workings of the festival and relive the day. If you weren’t there, no worries. Hopefully through this post, chock full of pics and links to vids, you’ll feel like you wrocked out with us.
I remember discovering wizard rock for myself, shortly after finishing reading Deathly Hallows, in search of a way to connect with other Harry Potter fans. When I found out about Wrockstock Spooktacular, I was so excited to connect with bands and fans in person. Sadly, that show and Wrockstock II just weren’t in the cards for me. So I decided to host my own full day wrock event in New York.
That’s honestly how NYC Wizard Rock Festival was born, out of a serious case of FOMO. I hope Abby Hupp knows how much she inspired me.
I initially wanted to approach NYCWRF the way I’d gone about booking shows for my muggle band, Cookie Galore. John Pisani and I had been managing the band ourselves since 1995, and knew how to get gigs around the city.
But as I thought about it, I realized that my usual approach wasn’t going to work for the festival. One would typically send a band press kit to the venue’s booking person and then call them or email them for a gig. I couldn’t gather press kits for all the bands and ask the booking person to schedule all of these bands on one day.
Compounding the tricky nature of booking so many bands at one venue, there was the added challenge of finding a site for an all-ages show. Music venues, particularly the smaller ones, rely a great deal upon the revenue from bar sales to stay in business. Pitching a show that attracted (at the time) a largely underage audience would be a hard-sell to rock clubs and such.
The first venues I approached were places I knew Harry and the Potters had performed in the past. The Knitting Factory and Bohemian Beer Garden were contenders, but for various reasons (none of which I can remember) they didn’t work out. Wizard Rock had a home in NYC at Sidewalk Café, but the space was just too small for what I wanted to do.
I decided to change my approach and seek out a performance space to rent, rather than trying to book the bands at a music venue. I didn’t have much of a budget to rent a location, and I had no idea if I could even make back that money in ticket sales, so this approach still had its challenges.
Now that my own money was at stake, I was nervous about the success of this venture. So I recruited some friends from The Group That Shall Not Be Named (NYC’s Harry Potter Meetup group) to help me, and we became The Order of the Festival. Some Order members also voluntarily invested money into the festival. Our goal was to break even and donate any profits to First Book. Breaking even meant making enough money from ticket sales, sponsorships, and merch sales to cover the venue/equipment rental fees, overhead costs, and band compensation. I did very extensive accounting of every dollar spent and every dollar made.
After touring several performance spaces, we hesitantly booked Galapagos Art Space, which presented multi-media arts events. They were wary of hosting an all-ages show, and asked us to put down a deposit, plus a rental feel due on the day of the show. That was half of our entire budget, spent just on a deposit! But the location was decent, in the Hipster haven of Williamsburg Brooklyn, walking distance to a subway, and it had a stage and sound system. Oh, and it had a reflecting pool! Our very own Black Lake!
From the time we put down that deposit, the venue changed names, owners, and mission TWICE. By the day of the event, and until it shuttered it’s doors in 2014, it was known as the rock club/dance club Public Assembly. We were lucky that we remained on the schedule through all of that change-over.
The easy part was finding bands willing to perform in New York City. The tricky part was fitting all those bands into one day without going beyond our allotted time at the venue, so as not to incur an overtime fee. Because we didn’t have an official tech crew (other than John Pisani and the venue’s one tech person), and because I was well-versed in what it takes to set up band/sound equipment, I knew we’d have to hustle hard to prepare the stage between bands. The schedule was tight, right down to the minute.
Another difficulty was handling ticket presales, which we did entirely on our own, independent from Ticketmaster and the box office. My stomach was tied up in knots until the moment we reached the break-even threshold, which happened about four weeks before the show, two months after tickets went on sale.
Because Public Assembly was small-ish, they had a very strict capacity of 300 people spread over its two rooms and vestibule. There were only a handful of tickets we could sell at the door on the day of the show before hitting capacity without violating the fire code.
I’m pretty sure we made it clear on our website and social media that day-of tickets were extremely limited, but we still ended up having to turn people away after tickets sold out, causing tears of disappointment. That was heartbreaking for me, for my volunteers working the door, and of course for the people who couldn’t get into the show. But our wizard rockers were awesome, and went outside to greet people that couldn’t get into the show.
The show itself was epic. Until the NYC Wizard Rock Festival, there had never been a showcase featuring 17 bands on one day. Besides featuring local New York wrock, we brought in wizard rockers from the New England scene, the Tri-State area, Pennsylvania, California, Canada, and the UK!
It was awesome to see the musicians collaborating on stage, sometimes quite literally making their performances a family effort. Tina Olson of DJ Luna Lovegood paired up with Ian Wilkins of The Cedric Diggorys to perform as The Greybacks, after their sons, Darius and Holden performed as The Hungarian Horntails. Brothers Brian Melenbacher and Brian Ross performed together as Draco and the Malfoys, which is a rare treat.
Also collaborating was Rayn Fianna of The Princess of Hogwarts, who invited Lauren Fairweather of The Moaning Myrtles on stage for a song. Lauren then teamed up with Lena Gabrielle of The Butterbeer Experience, and again with Alex Carpenter of The Remus Lupins for The Moaning Myrtles’ set.
Perhaps the most epic collaboration was when both The Whomping Willows and Justin Finch Fletchley and the Sugar Quills performed as Wizard Rock super groups with Matt Maggiacomo, Justin Michaelman, Bradley Melenbacher, and Brian Ross wrocking out together as a full band.
Wrock fans from far and wide traveled to New York City for the event and were treated to 8 hours of music and fandom fun. The Order of the Festival knocked this one out of the park, as did all of there performers! It went so well, we did it again in 2010, which will be featured in November’s installment of Into the Pensieve.
Were you at NYC Wizard Rock Festival 2008? Share a memory in the comments!
NYC Wizard Rock Festival 2008 Lineup:
The Princess of Hogwarts
The Hungarian Horntails
The Cedric Diggorys
Fred and George the Band
DJ Luna Lovegood
The Greybacks
Nagini
The Butterbeer Experience
Split Seven Ways
Justin Finch-Fletchley and the Sugar Quills
The Moaning Myrtles
Celestial Warmbottom
Oliver Boyd and the Rememberalls
Swish and Flick
The Remus Lupins
The Whomping Willows
Draco and the Malfoys
The Order of the Festival were…
Stacy Santiago Pisani, Head Coordinator
Deanna “Celestial Warmbottom” Benfante: Operations
Olivia Garcia: Graphic Design, Operations
Thom Kulesa: Finance, Operations
Jenna Lawrence: Operations
Liz Lewis: Web Design, Operations
Michelle Parlato: Finance, Operations
Mackenzie Reid: Operations
Jonathon Rosenthal: Graphic Design, Operations
Debbie Schneider: Operations
Joanne “Kath” McIntosh: Operations
Commissioned Art:
Paul Liaw: “Lady Liberty with Phoenix Patronus”
Jessica Mercado: “Wizard Rock Trio” backdrop
Playlist of videos from NYC Wizard Rock Festival 2008 by Jonathon Rosenthal
Playlist of videos from NYC Wizard Rock Festival 2008 by Julia Yocheved Weinstein
“Guacamole Ukelele Song” by Lena and Lauren at NYCWRF 2008
“Krum” performed by Justin Finch Fletchley and the Sugar Quills super group at NYCWRF 2008
“It’s Real for Us” by Split Seven Ways at NYCWRF 2008
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