Folk Punk Archivist

Introduction:

This is a fact-driven account of the happenings of MoonRunners 11. I will go about this by weaving together a series of testimonials from attendees and performers. Before that, I will present my own viewpoint of the weekend, preceded by an explanation of my personal association with the event. Based on my account and those from others, I will then draw several conclusions.

Personal bias discussion:

I have attended this event and its two prior iterations. In all three instances, I assembled the official event compilation.

For the past three events, I’ve self-funded a run of cd’s (100-120, depending on the year) in coordination with the event. In exchange for creating this free event souvenir, I am given permission to sell enough copies online to collectors to cover those out-of-pocket costs. Additionally, I am given access to the event space similar to that of a performer. This entails being able to get in early, utilize the second floor lounge which has a cleaner bathroom, as well as free food, and access to the above-stage viewing areas on the larger side of the venue.

My contacts from the event are Josh Nutting (the organizer) when I have difficulty contacting an act, and Chandra Brill of Night Kite Design, who makes the variations to the logo every year. I go through them to secure that graphic for the CD covers.

Once the event is underway, my association with the event is like that of the photographers: I’m running around catching the acts and trying to “gather content”.

Personal Account:

Ten minutes prior to my arrival to Reggie’s Rock Club on 6 May, I messaged Josh to check that he had made it to the venue. My usual process is to check in with him when I get there so as to not seem presumptuous walking into the venue well before doors opened for the day. I got a brief response that he would not be there, and to just check in with the people running door/selling shirts.

If you have played/worked/attended MoonRunners, then you already know how strange this is. MoonRunners is an event normally put together via a herculean effort largely by Josh, who you will both see running themselves ragged throughout the weekend meanwhile still making sure to attend virtually every set, as at the end of the day, the event is booked based on acts that JN is personally excited about. This personal curation is what gives MoonRunners a splintered style to some, and a diverse selection to others.

Being the music fanatic that I am, I tend to lean towards the latter description; having several alternative folk subgenres mixed into a single event makes for a much easier all-day experience that listening to twenty+ similar acts in succession. This also means differing crowds gathering in the same place, a fact which also entails possible friction. Some of these crowds are more complacent towards certain types of beliefs, others not so much.

Important qualification:

I now want to take a moment to bring up two points that I believe are true:

1. If Josh had been on location, as he normally is, there would not have been the issues that brought forth this lengthy written analysis.
2. There were legitimate reasons why Josh needed to not be at Reggie’s, and he made the right decision for himself in not being there.

The former point I will get back to in the conclusions. The latter point, I will leave as it is; I have only been given the most basic information on that situation and it adds nothing to understanding the events of MoonRunners 11 to dig further into it.

Personal account, continued:

I caught bits and pieces of unsavory interactions between staff and the visibly queer folk punk community in and out front of the venue on Saturday and much of Sunday, often by my friends keeping me in the loop. One thing I did witness however was a pretty obvious division in the enforcement of ID policies. Musician Chloe Defector (who had purchased a ticket to the event) was turned away for lacking her ID. Similarly, Sabrena from Apes of the State (who headlined day one of the event), lost her wristband between then and Sunday and the staff similarly did not want to admit her because she wasn’t carrying an ID. This in and of itself is not noteworthy. You could say it’s daft for the venue to not recognize one of it’s headliners, but you could also commend them for following the laws they are supposed to enforce. That being said, I showed up both days, walked in while the venue was closed, showed no ID, and was given not only entry but artist access privileges even though none of them knew me. I just told them that was what I was supposed to get. This is of course anecdotal, as is the fact that through the series of people I asked about IDs, there was a general division in who the venue had required them from.

Going into my interactions with Reggie’s staff on Sunday night, it is important to have a visual idea of me in your head: I am a white bearded individual in their late twenties, frequently seen wearing a baseball cap. I tell you this (and this is one of the drawn conclusions I am allowing myself in all of this) because I firmly believe that the situation I was largely able to maneuver out of was the result of a not-insignificant flexing of privilege, based on reading as someone from a sector of the attendees with whom they were not in conflict.

My account, the confrontation:

The members of Pigeon Pit had begun a tour gag several days prior where they were using inconvenient/unwieldy objects as setlists (see for example the board of wood they used for this purpose in Indianapolis @ Healer). I am personally aware that what is to follow was done as a part of this joke, as I was in the second floor lounge Saturday night with the band and others when someone asked Lomes if she was going to continue the trend and, playing into it, she said, “yeah, go find me a sheet of metal!”.

When the band took the stage for their set on Sunday evening, it was a brick that bore their setlist. It’s reasonable to assume that someone from the band went into the alley behind Reggie’s and grabbed the first thing they saw that was industrial and easily movable. I found out later that night from Audrey Plath that there was a confrontation with security over them bringing it into the building for their set.

Many of you know me, but for those that do not, here’s a few fun facts: I run an archive of releases/ephemera/etc. pertaining to the folk punk community. I am an avid collector of setlists from all shows I attend. I am a long-standing fan of Pigeon Pit both solo and full-band, and after many shows attended in both formations, this was the first setlist I’d seen.

Consequently, it should surprise no one that at the culmination of the set, I put my hand over the brick and looked to Lomes for permission to grab it as a souvenir. She nodded her approval and I walked away from the stage with it as the room cleared. I continued outside of the venue, and as I was beginning to take off my backpack to stow away this ridiculous item, a guy swooped in and grabbed the brick out of my hand.

This is the point where privilege plays a heavy role. This staff member wasn’t looking to engage with me at all, instead walking away with the confiscated object. I initiated a confrontation in my mental panic of “That’s mine. That’s important to me. I need that back”.

What followed was a flurry of him explaining that, “we were told to be on high alert for a brick because a transgender woman made a threat that she was going to bash one of the security guards over the head with a brick” (note: I have yet to find a confirmation of this claim, but it is the employee’s direct words so I wanted to include it).

I rapidly begin 1) explaining that it is a setlist, 2) explaining my project and how this object is important in its oddity and marking of a moment, 3) sweet-talking them about the band printed on their sweatshirt (they were wearing a Black Dahlia Murder zip-up, and had spoken to me the day prior because I was wearing a memorial shirt for that band’s singer, who passed away last year) in an attempt to get them out of the instantaneous conformation stance they’d assumed when I followed them. This was important because, as you will see in the testimonials that follow, the staff had been high-strung all weekend, particularly with visibly queer individuals. I 100% leaned into the fact that I look more like a metalhead than anything else, assuming he’d treat me better and I was not wrong.

After five or so minutes of discussion, we settled on a surprisingly in-my-favor outcome: he agreed to leave the setlist at the front of the venue with security (this hand-off happened before I got to him). I agreed to leave for the night whenever he told me to (there were several hours of acts left at this point), with the stipulation that when he wanted me out, he would go to security with me, put the brick in my bag, and watch me leave.

After this, I promptly went up to the viewing area above the large stage; it’s a space used by bands/family/etc. to watch the show without having to jump in the main crowd. More to the point, it’s a space with stage visibility that staff never seems to go to.

I came down after Days n’ Daze closed out the large stage for the night, the guard was at this point working that room, and told me it was time to go. As agreed, we went up front, the setlist was placed in my bag, and he proceeded to aggressively grab my hand. He squeezed it harshly, and explained he had better not see me again, and if he did, it would be very bad for me.

Given the situation, this was a wildly good result. Many of the people I was with at the event would have likely just been tackled on sight if caught in my position with such an object.

Testimonials:

Belladonna Ciao: Hey howdy! I was the one who first confronted confederate flag fuck and almost got kicked out for it. After that, I was also the one who jumped to conclusions about the SHARP security guard with an iron cross on his shirt and wound up causing Audrey to get kicked out because I spread rumors and anger instead of asking honest questions. I’m also the one who confederate flag guy sieg heiled at on the second day, after which I went to security and was told it was a “he said she said” situation so they couldn’t do anything.

Audrey Plath: They kicked me out after confronting a dude that was wearing an iron cross shirt.

Maxwell Dausch: seeing multiple folks walking around displaying hate symbols while not being asked to leave left us wondering how much of the negative things we’ve heard were true. when we approached the staff about one of the men wearing the confederate flag shirts and seeing if there was a diplomatic way we could bring this up without escalating the situation, The staff told us that they did not want people whipping out their phone to film them attempting to handle this conflict and causing more drama just for five people not liking this persons shirt and feeling like they don’t belong. This person was hanging around with staff quite a bit, and socializing with people that had Reggie’s tattoos. On Sunday was when we had first heard of the situation with staff wearing a shirt that appeared to have the iron cross, who then kicked out an attendee for even questioning what that symbology meant. I did not see this, but here is what the some of the staff had to say about it. Early in the day one of the staff members came up to us wanting to gloat about how they kicked a trans person out for being “a major asshole yesterday” (making sure they stated it was not because they were trans) while then launching into a rant about how “everyone in this crowd wants a participation trophy for policing other people’s behavior”.

Alex: This was my first year and I had a mix between a fantastic time and an awful time bc I loved seeing so many of my favorite bands but I got physically assaulted during the Apes [of the State] set last night. We had complained to the staff on Saturday night and pointed the person out to them the next day, but they let them stay so the person who did it came back to try and assault me & my partner again during Days n Daze when we were at the front.

Josh (Pigeon Pit): As a first-timer and also not really a folk punk kid, but a DIY punk lifer, I was very unimpressed. Positives – several bands/artists from what I know of as the folk punk scene played great and were great to meet/see again. I also enjoyed most of the kinda atypical acts. Beyond that, the general vibe was overwhelmingly white, toxic masculinity, disregard for folks’ bodily autonomy, just plain aggressive/mean vibes. I didn’t realize we would be playing with so many standard-ass rock dudes, and frankly I feel embarrassed to have subjected our fans and friends to the experience. I guess I assumed based on my understanding of folk punk (and just diy in general) was that we have evolved past like Dwarves shirts and confederate imagery. Honestly the fest felt like any rock man drinking convention, which I do DIY to stay away from/create alternatives to. I have no idea why security dudes always confide in me about how it’s annoying they can’t assume folks’ gender. [the security guard I, FPA, had my confrontation with] was the one who is annoyed by trans kids.

Conclusions:

#1: Having attended several installments of MoonRunners now (and talking to those who have been to many more than myself), it is apparent that Josh’s absence from Reggie’s was the key difference. This was the seed from which everything else bloomed. Without Josh there to execute everything, the staff had his myriad tasks added to their normal workload. It is apparent that this started the weekend off with everyone at Reggie’s with a higher stress level than any MoonRunners before. Cracks in the last-second planning showed throughout the weekend, from gaffs in the scheduling (I was later told this resulted from the venue’s original plan of having 15-minute changeovers on the large stage, which they had to be talked down from and reschedule the whole thing), to there being no point man to pay the bands on the small stage, leading to confusion over many acts that played the joint picking up their money after their set. None of this is particularly special, but rather it shows the importance of the promoter as point man and what happens when there’s no singularity to resort to for answers.

#2: Reggie’s lived up to their non-MoonRunners reputation for (at the very least) tolerance towards white supremacy, hate imagery, and a baseline annoyance of anything they would put under the catch-all “woke”. I received far more accounts from the weekend than what I’ve printed above, some that were omitted included people from the same crowds who were present for the same interactions. Another common account that I omitted was: “I had a really great time! I’m sorry to hear that some people had bad experiences with venue staff”. I omitted this not for its seeming unimportance (it’s quite the opposite), but because it’s general enough to summarize the trend and bring it into conversation here.
The people who I got those kinds of messages from tended to look a lot like me: bearded white dudes. Which is a significant portion of the crowd on any given year. People can of course present many ways, but when navigating security, how you visually read plays a significant factor, which is why I keep harping on it. Fittingly, I’d never had a negative experience with the staff there prior to forcing a confrontation. I had to be told about issues by my friends. I had to learn about Reggie’s reputation from locals.
The people I got the accounts of harassment by the staff from were almost exclusively visibly queer.
This sort of split happens all the time so I don’t feel out of place drawing the conclusion that queer kids and vocal allies are far more likely to notice/become involved with the bad things happening in situations like these. When things like white supremacist/nazi tendencies start popping up, it’s the queer kids who are at risk. This gives them an incentive to push back, to ask questions of the staff over why people with these dangerous beliefs are being welcomed into their venue. Questioning authority, per usual, leads to conflict, which I believe boosted tensions over the weekend and created an “us vs. them” situation between visibly queer attendees/performers, and venue security. Add this to the heightened starting tensions of the staff that we discussed above and it’s unsurprising to see how things ended up as they did.

The stark difference in treatment during disagreements between the staff and one group, vs the staff and the other group draws a damning picture of their feelings towards the visibly queer audiences who did the most work this year in packing their venue for the weekend.

Outro:

There is so much missing from this report/in-depth look/whateverthefuck, but continuing to  nexpand it was getting unwieldy, and I think I’ve done an adequate job of poking at some of the most pivotal events/interactions of the weekend.

A couple interesting notes to leave y’all with:

1. Josh has not been paid for this event by Reggie’s and as of 12 May was informed that he would not be.
2. MoonRunners will no longer be associated with Reggie’s and Josh’s current intension is to continue the event in a new location.
3. You generally cannot fly with a brick in your carry-on luggage. I was too cheap to check my bags, so I had to ship the setlist to myself. It arrived undamaged on 11 May and is now safely at the archive.