| Q & A: Paul Creager |
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| Written by Steve McPherson | |
| Friday, August 15, 2008 at 10:35 AM | |
 Story of the Sea at SLF '07 Hopefully the weather will be a little better this year, which can only improve the prospects for an already accomplished and exciting festival. This year's lineup is headed by Happy Apple, and will also feature a film score by Fort Wilson Riot. Taking an old movie and having a local act compose a new score to it has become a staple of the festival, and it never fails to produce some amazing moments. Also performing will be Black Blondie, The Owls, Spaghetti Western String Company, The Dad In Common, Ragassa, To Kill A Petty Bourgeoisie, and Lucy Michelle and the Velvet Lapelles. I got a chance to sit down with Paul recently and talk a little bit about the festival's history, this year's event, and where it's going in the future. So what in the world made you want to start doing a festival in the first place? Well, I really liked going to festivals. Until I started doing this one, that's what I would do in the summer. Not like I was touring with bands, but I'd try to go to all the little ones in the state and I lived in Japan for a couple years and I saw some strange varieties of festivals there, and it's such an industrialized country that the big huge festivals down in the Tokyo region were like Lollapalooza or something here, but in the northern part, there were these little organic events that I went to. I started this festival when I came back from living there, so I think it was a mixture of seeing a couple examples that I thought I could replicate and also it's a really powerful thing when a festival can come together. It's a great thing to invest your energy in because it has this community aspect. You also get to enjoy the short, short summers we have. And I love the music and film scene in this area and I'm a little part of both of them and I think you can really reap the benefits when you invest in a community. If you've got a day job at a business, all your efforts just evaporate into thin air or go to some CEO—well that's one way some people live. But with something like this, you can put a lot of energy into it and develop a network of people you know. So from the beginning did you envision it as something that would be more carefully curated than something like Lollapalooza? To make something that had a certain voice? Yeah, one event I went to in Japan comes to mind. We were at a music and film festival and there was a metal wire that went over the heads of the crowd and no one knew what it was there for. And then in the middle of the festival there was a trapeze artist who walked out over the crowd and did pirouetting on this wire. Everybody had this shared experience of being surprised and it caught people off-guard. I don't know that I've done anything like that yet, but it's a goal: To have something where somebody will leave it the next day and feel like they had an experience. I think that when you do it on a shoestring budget and you do it with a lot of volunteers, I think that people respond to it much differently than if they paid $50. So do you feel like you've been growing it, not in size necessarily, but in what you've been trying to accomplish? Yeah, I'm not where I want to be yet, but I think just by doing it each year [that's happening]. Just pulling it off each year, because people respond to repetition. They also respond to what I hope looks like integrity with the event. So our numbers don't double, and the location where we have the event wouldn't handle that if we did grow that much. The progress I'm seeing is with the bands—how they react to being invited to play. What are some of the things from years past that stick our in your mind as particularly successful? We did a film last year called "Bill's Big Pumpkins," and it was made by this younger guy who started filming his father, who was really obsessed with growing giant pumpkins. His father was on a two or three year quest to get the largest pumpkin in the Midwest. So his son made a very fine documentary, and I wanted something that would bring a film more to life for the viewers. So we had the filmmaker there, and he brought giant pumpkin seeds. His father had his pumpkin entered in the State Fair, and a lot of people who saw the film recognized it at the Fair. So that's really a goal: to take a local filmmaker and to help to bring their film a little bit more to life at this event. And then really the highlight of the film scores (and I don't want to diminish what any other performers have done—all the film scores have been great) was Spaghetti Western's. They did the first one and that came out of a coffeeshop meeting where I met with them and it was the first time where I had commissioned one, and we sat down and I gave them the idea and spent about four or five months looking for a silent film for them and we couldn't find the right one. We finally found "The Red Balloon," and they did an amazing job. Everybody still talks about that film score. I was also going to ask about Fort Wilson Riot and their film score for this year. Yeah, the first run of their musical Idigaragua was sold out almost every night, and I actually filmed it one night and just saw them play to no one in the room to make a music video, and then the next night, I saw it with the crowd, and I really felt like I was seeing something unique. I thought they could really wrap their heads around a great film score. They're approaching the film score in a really different way than any other group has. The film they're working with is a short film—it's ten minutes long—and from the scores I've seen locally, I think they're too long. I think giving a group a manageable piece of work that they can really make a dense, new musical score to is really important. Because a 70-minute film is a hell of a lot of music to write. So we used a ten-minute piece this year and because it's a little shorter. "The Devilish Tenant" is a film from 1909 about a guy who has this magic chest and he moves into an apartment and he doesn't have any possessions except this chest. He brings it in, but then everything he owns, including his family and friends, is in this chest. So he magically pulls it out and assembles the room to the dismay of the landlord—he changes things and he gets in trouble—then he has to pack it all up and get the hell out of there. So what they did, because they viewed it as a snapshot in this person's life, they've been composing songs that they're going to perform before the film starts, and those songs plant some of the ideas of this character. So all in all, their score might be 20 minutes, but the film is ten. And that's something that I haven't seen done—they took it to another level. So this year Happy Apple is headlining? Yup, and I just love what they do, and I've seen them collaborate with so many people, and I'm so happy to have them playing this year. And also, Dave [King, drummer] has done a score for a local animation and Eric Fratzke also did one. So Happy Apple is different than some other local groups because they're really embedded with some of the short film and animation community, and they've got a quirky, smart, and progressive kind of vibe and it's perfect for us. You know, the event is so quaint. Sometimes it can be kind of charming to have it small, and as long as the musicians value playing a new venue and the filmmakers value the exposure, it's gratifying for me even if it's small. COMING UP: The 7th Annual Square Lake Music & Film Festival with Happy Apple, a film score by Fort Wilson Riot, and live performances by Black Blondie, The Owls, Spaghetti Western String Company, The Dad In Common, Ragassa, To Kill A Petty Bourgeoisie, and Lucy Michelle and the Velvet Lapelles. Saturday, August 16. 1 pm. $20, $5 if you bike. Visit www.squarelakefestival.com for location and other info. |
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| Last Updated: Friday, August 15, 2008 at 10:36 AM |
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