Music, Style & Culture

Foburg: A Music Festival

Foburg is a festival that spans 3 days and 7 venues all along Frenchman street in New Orleans.

Foburg is a festival that spans 3 days and 7 venues all along Frenchman street in New Orleans. Run by the New Orleans Indie Rock Collective, a group of 5 people who really love Indie Rock (who'd have thought it - Ed), the music spans genres from Indie to Experimental to Rock, and bands that hail from the Gulf South to Chicago and Brooklyn. Most of who are on their way to SXSW. And that is by design.

We met up with the New Orleans Indie Rock Collective while they were setting up the Info tent on a patch of gravel at the intersection of Frenchman and Chartres right in the heart of Frenchman Street. We spoke with Rachel Puckett, Nick Thomas, Michael Girardot and Mark Heck.

Foburg a music festival is new is it not?
Rachel: This is our first year, but we started throwing mini festivals - 3 night festivals, one venue a night, about a year and a half ago. We’ve done three of them. We had our first one in October 2008, and the Spring one this time last year and then we did another this past Fall. Last spring, when we were planning our second mini indie rock fest we got a bunch of emails from a bunch of bands who were travelling through New Orleans on their way to Austin and they wanted shows, but it was just too much to handle and we didn’t have a good platform for them. So we were like, this year, were going to be ready, we are going to be prepared and instead of doing our spring mini festival we are just going to do this big thing.

So it’s like a stop on the route to SXSW?
Rachel: Our hope is in the future that it becomes the road to South By. Not only will we do it but Atlanta will do it. Or all these other cities will have their own version of the Foburg, and all these bands will be paraded into South By, money in their pockets, having had a really good time, and then go big in Austin.

So the timing was intentional…
Rachel: Yes, absolutely.

You’ve not tackled something this big before?
Rachel: No, I mean, Nicks worked with Voodoo Fest as their volunteer coordinator, he is super familiar with big festivals and how they are run, and Michael has played in tons of festivals as a band…
Michael: and I do IT at festivals…
Rachel: and Mark’s a manager, so he definitely knows the ins and outs.

So you’re prepared?
Rachel: Yeah, you know from a different perspective, rather than like the powers that be.

Who are your favourite bands that are playing at the festival?
Rachel: Bears of Blue River for sure, they came down from Chicago, which is awesome. The Givers is a huge favourite that should be packed. There’s this one band on the Daltrey Showcase which is Jack the Brotherhood and they were just in Spin Magazine last month, and they have a 2 page huge spread article, so they are going to be awesome. The dance party that is happening Sunday night at R Bar with John Eric and DJ Bees Knees is going to be really cool. No Correct Way has a showcase at Dragons Den tonight and No Correct way is this music promotion company in Brooklyn who came down to do a showcase at Foburg and brought a lot of bands with them, Black Taxi, Dinosaur Feathers, Frontier Brothers.
Michael: - The Show is The Rainbow is going to be completely ridiculous. If you’ve never seen The Show Is The Rainbow, it’s hilarious and almost embarrassing.
Nick: More than that, that lady that just walked up was like Oh my God, Peelander Z!
Rachel: Peelander Z, is like Teletubbies meets power rangers.
Michael: Yeah, The Show is The Rainbow is really awkward.
Mark: He’s like Dan Deacon but not famous.
Rachel: yeah that’s exactly it.

Why did you choose Frenchman street?
Rachel: Frenchman Street because it’s the closest thing we could really think of in comparison to 6th street in Austin. Michael started talking to Jesse at Blue Nile to try to get him to start playing more rock shows and not Jazz shows, and it’s a predominantly traditionally Jazz….
Michael: There have been a lot more rock bands playing on Frenchman street and it’s like the heart and the soul, I feel like it’s the heart and the soul of the music scene here. So you get a lot of the traditional stuff, you get a lot of the modern Jazz stuff, you get Rock stuff, you get Reggae, you get Hip Hop, everything on this street and its all within walking distance. You can see down the street, and so it’s the hangout for the town. The locals come here you hang out in the street, you walk around...
Nick: It’s the local’s version of Bourbon Street.
Michael: Yeah, it’s like the real local place.
Nick: Here’s an important distinction that you just said, its really important. Frenchman really has been known as a traditional music destination since its inception hundreds of years ago. There has always been crazy shit that happens, music changes over time, but the point is, it’s never been a progressive location. It’s always been more traditional. So in the last 5 years, 4 years, 3 years even, its started to shift, and you’ve already seen more rock/indie rock shows and a lot of it, we shouldn’t take credit for it, but a lot of its been the collective booking shows at other venues that wouldn’t normally do this kind of music. This is the first full scale like almost every venue has a set up for indie rock on this street. So its really flipping things on its head. Really its changing things up.

So it’s the obvious choice, without being the obvious choice.
Nick: Yeah, exactly, there is no geographic location with a bunch of venues close to each other but at the same time there are plenty of other areas that have more rock clubs. So it is, it’s obvious, but really not.