“Our idea was ‘build it and they will come’. We’d create the type of event that we’d want to go to, in the hope that other people would think, ‘hey, that looks like a good time’ and they’d come too.”
Katayoun Bahramian is talking about Conflux, the 12-hour party happening this Saturday in Limerick that she has helped to organise. The Ohio native has teamed up with local Limerick scene heads Damien Mullane (Iron Mountain, Sea Dog) and Martin Garcia-Martell (Three Hour Ceasefire) to put together an event that is bringing some of the finest, weirdest music Ireland has to offer to Limerick for one day and night. While names like Toby Kaar, Lemonada and Magic Pockets will be familiar to Dublin gig-goers, Conflux has a heavy concentration on artists who don’t often play the capital. United Bible Studies, My Name Is John, Sea Dog, Tarracóir and Íweríu are just some of the 21 names on the bill.
While the all-day event keeps getting called a festival, Kat says it is just for want of a better word. “We’re hesitant to use the word festival,” she says. “Out of ease, we do but it’s not a festival yet. That’s why it’s a day long thing. Festival brings to mind something like Electric Picnic or Oxegen I think, though Hunter’s Moon is now in their second year and there are other small ones like Indiependence and what used to be Cork By Southwest. We don’t have all that fanfare going so we’re hesitant to use the word festival but it just slips out. It’s a 12-hour party, it’s an endurance event.”
“I’m more of a small festival type of person and want to keep it affordable, to be honest. I’d say I go to festivals to hear stuff I haven’t heard before, new stuff to blow my mind. I know what I look for and all three of us do that. I’d say we’re trying to create something similar here, but on a much smaller scale because it’s our first time.”
It doesn’t get much more affordable than €8 for 20-odd bands across two venues over 12 hours. Having been in Ireland for about three years and in Limerick for “a year and change”, Kat feels the event couldn’t have happened anywhere but Shannonside.
“I’d say the reason I’ve stuck around Limerick is because it’s an exciting time to be here. You can have an idea and make it happen. I think it’s a really nurturing scene, there are a lot of good local bands. You’ve got Windings’ new album which is really good. The Siege Of Limerick, those guys put on consistently great stuff, that’s a free event twice a year. Then there’s Peter Delaney, he has this Wireless Folk series, he’s a really talented ukulele musician in his own right. Out On A Limb, that label, they put on gigs and bring bands, often in art spaces. Then there’s John Hennessy, who used to do the bookings for Whelan’s and now you’ve probably heard about the Thursday night at Bourke’s thing. Things are happening here and I’m really excited to be here. For me, it works here, it all comes together here.”
As you’d expect at that price though, there’s not exactly a lot of money to be made from doing this. If you’re not in it for the love, there’s no point being in it at all.
“If anything, we’re just going to break even,” says Kat. “We never went into this to make a profit. We just want to treat the bands well and not come out in debt.”
“We all just really like to have a good time. We hope that the people who are there come away hearing something new that really excited them. We want them to walk away inspired and excited and maybe in the future when they hear about these bands, they’ll go seek them out. That’s the most that we can hope for, just to have a good time.”
The experimental and diverse nature of the line-up is the ace Conflux’s hand, something of which Kat is well aware.
“I’d say, in terms of the bands that we chose, there some who are going to be more challenging,” she says. “They’re not going to be the club hits… But also in there are people like Lemonada and Toby and My Name Is John, it’s much more accessible. You can groove to it. With a few of the things in the basement, Íweríu out of Cork, a few of the noise outfits, I’ll be curious to hear how the crowd… I mean, I’m excited, we wouldn’t have invited them otherwise but they are what would be perceived as more challenging. It’s not so straightforward. They could push a few buttons. We’re button pushers, but also crowd-pleasers.”
This is the most exciting element of the event, the thing that makes it stand out from the hundreds of other small music festival that pepper Ireland during the year. It’s the mix of new and familiar, the strange and the accessible. Finding a balance between these two ends of the spectrum is what makes for the most enjoyable experiences. Again, Kat agrees.
“Between repulsion and attraction, exactly!”
Poster by Craig Carry – http://fracturedair.com/
Conflux takes place this Saturday, November 17th. You can find out more about it at the following links:
