Organizers hosted the inaugural Riverwest Fest music festival last year to raise money for the all-ages basement venue the Eagle\'s Nest, which needs expensive renovations to meet city codes. Progress on that cause has been stalled—though the upstairs Jackpot Gallery is running strong, it will be a while before the venue downstairs host shows—but the Riverwest Fest\'s organizers heard enough requests for another festival that they brought it back for a second year on Friday, Dec. 16 and Saturday, Dec. 17. This time the money raised will go to the performing bands, and there are a lot of them: About 50 of them over two days, playing at eight venues (nine venues, if you count the bike shop Truly Spoken, where a dude who has tuned his bike spokes like guitar strings will perform).
“A lot of the bands on the lineup are from Riverwest, but it\'s not a prerequisite, so we have bands from all across the city playing,” promoter Kelsey Kaufmann says, explaining that she sees the festival more a celebration of the neighborhood\'s character than any single music scene. “The neighborhood is unique in that the longest distance between venues is six blocks, so it\'s very walkable. And there are so many corner pubs and taverns all over the neighborhood that are willing to host the arts, whether it\'s visual art or live music. It\'s a really supportive community.”
Riverwest also has the highest concentration of all-ages venues in the city, including Cream City Collectives, Ground Zero and the Jackpot Gallery, which will host festival performances.
“It was really important for us to include all-ages and 21-plus venues,” Kaufmann says. “We see this as a fun music festival first and foremost, but it\'s also an occasion to examine why Milwaukee doesn\'t have more all-ages spaces. So many people in the music scene grew up seeing all-ages shows; that\'s how we\'re introduced to music. There are so many cities with more opportunities for all-ages music, like Chicago, where the clubs host 18-plus shows, or D.C., where the bars use a wristband system. It\'d be great if we could see some of that in Milwaukee.”
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Fittingly, the Riverwest Fest lineup includes musicians spanning a wide range of ages, including some that are longtime veterans of the punk scene, and others that are barely voting age.
The festival will also mark several firsts, including the first live performances from Bedouins, Iron Cages and Hot Coffin (a group featuring ex-members of Red Knife Lottery and Death Dream). The rock \'n\' roll band Slow Walker will be making the release of a new tape with their Saturday night show at the Public House.
Tickets are cheap, just $5 per show or $15 for all-show access. For more information, and a complete lineup, visit the festival\'s Tumblr.
