As told by Iván Méndez, founder and director, to María Correonero
The first year we organized Resurrection Fest was in 2006. At the time, I saw that my favorite band, Sick Of It All, was touring Europe. I never set out to be a promoter, just wanted to book them a show in my hometown, Viveiro (Spain), and have my band, Twenty Fighters, open for them. I was only 18 years old at the time, but I reached out to the town hall and somehow convinced the mayor to support my project. The band also said yes and we got the ball rolling, until disaster struck two days before the show; we got a call from Sick Of It All letting us know that they were canceling the show because one of the band members had, ironically, gotten sick. You can imagine how everyone reacted; to put it nicely, I was called a liar and no one believed that Sick Of It All were ever actually going to play in Viveiro.
I couldn’t let my hard work go to waste, so I got in touch with the band and begged them to reschedule for their following European tour, which was happening three months later, in November. Not only did they agree, they also brought Walls of Jericho with them, so with those two bands and the local openers I had a total of five or six bands playing – a sort of mini festival. I decided to put it outdoors, and of course, come the day of the show, it poured like hell and expectations were dismal.
The fact that the show was free might have had something to do with it, but, to my surprise, 3,000 people showed up. I couldn’t believe the turnout; Viveiro has an important hardcore scene, but with a population of 15,000, this was beyond my wildest dreams. I got an itch to do it again and got a team and the town hall on board for future projects, despite the fact that the locals hated us because “we brought the dudes with the black shirts into town”. The town hall covered all of our expenses, which wouldn’t have happened if we had started nowadays with the state of the economy. We decided to take better advantage of the effort that went into building the infrastructure for the festival by making it two days long. We charged a symbolic price of five euros up until 2010.
By then, we realized that the festival had turned into a sort of meeting point, a family reunion, for all the punk, hardcore and metal music fans of Spain; kids were coming to Resurrection Fest to hang out with their friends from all over the country for the weekend. This dedication pushed us to take the plunge and quit our jobs to focus on the festival full time. We brought a bigger headliner, Down, along with other bands like Gallows, Lagwagon and No Use for a Name. By 2011 we moved the festival to a larger venue and expanded to three stages; that year we had more bands from overseas than we ever had before, such as Bullet for My Valentine, Comeback Kid, A Wilhelm Scream, Bouncing Souls, CIV and Gorilla Biscuits, among others. It was a bittersweet year for us; we came across more difficulties than we had ever expected to face. Some neighbors around the new site, unhappy about the noise, tried to undermine the entire festival, and they almost did. For example, two days before the festival, someone destroyed everything around the site; gates were torn down, car windows were smashed, tents were ripped apart. Just to give you an idea of how bad it was, on the morning of the festival, one of the neighbors was sitting at his window with a hunting rifle threatening to shoot at the feet of any organizers that got close to him.
Fortunately, the locals today have grown to love the festival, and they understand how beneficial it is to them; hotels and restaurants make more money during the festival weekend than throughout the rest of the summer. Our small town doubles its population during Resurrection Fest, so the festival has boosted our tourism over Spain and Europe and we have been covered on national television. 2012 was our largest edition to date, with the Descendents, Against Me!, Suicidal Tendencies and Hatebreed. This year is going to be even bigger, with headliners like Slayer, Lamb of God, Bad Religion, Black Flag and Millencolin.
The reason our almuni keep asking us to play Resurrection Fest again is because Viveiro is quite an unusual and special festival site. We have a gorgeous, welcoming beach town packed with great restaurants and wonderful resort hotels. Bands keep talking about the food, especially about the seafood and the octopus. It’s out of the way, but it’s also far from being the scorching pavement hell that city festivals in industrial parks are. Viveiro is cool during the day and our site is a grass field within walking distance of everything. Our shows start late in the afternoon, so you can go to the beach and enjoy the local attractions during the morning. The locals have warmed up to the festival and become involved to the point where it’s standard to see the mayor jumping in the front row, just like everybody else there.
Resurrection Fest doesn’t feel like a giant, impersonal festival organized by large corporations, and we are not; all of us putting it together are under 30 and we grew up doing this since we were teenagers. All we aim for is to treat everyone the best we can, keep the “family reunion” vibe and put on a festival that we ourselves would love to go to. We will never be a mainstream festival; we just want people to have so much fun here that they anticipate the following edition for the whole year. As far as the future goes, we can’t reveal anything until the first 2014 announcements in October, but I can tell you that we won’t be slowing down – we’re just getting started.
New Noise will be streaming Resurrection Fest live on August 1, 2 and 3 – keep your eyes peeled!
Check out the festival website and full line-up here.
