Q&A: 4 questions for ‘Still the Days’ music fest co-founder Joe Garrigan

Joe Garrigan is co-founder of the upcoming Still the Days music festival, which takes place at Gibbs Hundred Brewing Co. on Saturday from 1 p.m. to midnight. The festival features more than 20 bands that will play 30-minute sets and will also host vendors, foods trucks and more. Admission is free but organizers will be taking donations at the event and online here. For more info, visit the website or find the festival on social media.

How and why did the idea for the festival come together?

Eric [Mann] and I kind of came together and put a group
together to make this happen. I’ve been in bands since the ’90s in this town.
I’ve seen clubs come and go. Honestly, I don’t feel like we have a club that
really marries Greensboro bands with the North Carolina music scene that well. We
don’t have a venue like the Garage that brings regional acts that help you
build audience that way. We’re doing a big event, but this is the start of
different events we’re trying to do in different spaces. None of us have the
money to afford to buy a club to do what we wanna do but we can put on events like
this.

Editorial note: The
Garage closed in Winston-Salem at the end of 2017.

What makes Still the Days different from other music
festivals?

I think what really makes it different is the concise, short
sets. It’s kind of crazy to have more than 20 bands in one day. In this case,
we have three stages and every 30 minutes there’s a band playing. If you went
to Hopscotch, or Phuzz Phest, or I was even part of Greensboro Fest, they’re
different. This one, it’s one time, one day from one to midnight and you can
come at any time to catch whatever you want to catch. Some people were confused
by the model because of how many bands we have, but you can pop in and pop out
and a lot of people are excited about it. They think our town needs something
like this.

What’s one of the things you’re most looking forward to
for this festival?

I’m just excited to get all the different bands together.
It’s a pretty diverse group as far as style and I’m just excited about people
seeing that. I’m excited about the whole thing. I’m still chasing the dream of
playing rock and roll and trying to bring people together. I hope to see
everyone there. This is a perfect way to experience bands that you’ve never
been able to go see that play in your town. I just want to make people aware of
great music in North Carolina that they maybe haven’t seen before.

What do you hope for the future of Still the Days?

I’m hoping that not only do people come and have a good time
and think, Wow that was amazing, that has to happen again, but hoping
that we have smaller shows that lead to the next big event. All we want to do
is promote the next show and do the next thing. Because of the group of people
that I’ve been working with, the skillsets we have, we have made this come
together really easily. We have a strong group of people that we’ve been
working with that makes me think that there will be another event. I’m talking
about maybe doing a small event such as going into a coffee shop and it could
be any space but that Still the Days is promoting the event and promoting
events that you won’t see that often in Greensboro.