The inaugural Four Chord Music Festival, taking place Sun., Aug. 31, will feature 13 bands playing two stages and will be headlined by a pretty big draw: The Wonder Years.
But that wasn't the initial plan.
The Philadelphia-based pop-punk outfit came on after a booking error left festival organizer Rishi Bahl without his initial top choice, a veteran ska band from Gainesville, Fla. Bahl had confirmed Less Than Jake for the festival while the band was in the process of switching booking agents. When the new agent came on, the band had already been booked elsewhere on the same date.
The agent apologized for the double booking, but offered a solution: Take The Wonder Years, another band he represented.
Bahl took the band without hesitation. The Wonder Years has been at the forefront of the pop-punk scene nationally in the past few years, with its last two albums, Suburbia I've Given You All And Now I'm Nothing and The Greatest Generation, charting at No. 73 and No. 20 on the Billboard 200, respectively. The band was the first puzzle piece for the festival's booking, and gave the first-time festival organizer momentum.
"I got the Wonder Years, then I got 50 emails from 50 legit agents saying, ‘You gotta put so-and-so on,'" Bahl says. "It's about getting that one band first. Then it's a domino effect. When you say, ‘Hey, I'm Rishi, I'm doing this festival,' [agents] think, ‘Oh, it's just some idiot kid.' When you say [you] have The Wonder Years, they're like, ‘OK, make an offer.'"
With The Wonder Years secured, Bahl continued to contact bands and make offers. But convincing people that he was legit proved to be the big challenge, he said.
He made an offer to Real Friends, a Fearless Records band that just came off playing its first year on Warped Tour. After some back and forth, the band got on board, but with one condition: Up-and-comers Turnover and Modern Baseball, bands represented by Real Friends' booking agent, would play too.
With the headliner switch, Four Chord Music Festival turned into a new pop-punk festival, when it was set to have "old-school bands" like Less Than Jake and New Found Glory. The festival even takes its name from an old Ataris song, "Four Chord Wonder," according to Bahl.
The idea for the festival arose from a conversation Bahl had with a friend last December. He was talking to Nate Dorough, who puts on Bled Fest, an all-ages, mixed-genre one-day music festival in Howell, Mich. Dorough asked if Pittsburgh had anything similar to Bled. Bahl said there wasn't; "You should just do it," replied Dorough.
Since preparations began in early April, Bahl says he has spent four to five hours a day planning, fielding emails, designing all festival media (website, program and so on) and teaching himself HTML code and Adobe Flash just for the event. While planning the 1,500-capacity festival, he is also juggling writing his Ph.D. dissertation in integrated marketing, and preparing his curriculum as a visiting professor of marketing at LaRoche College, where he was recently hired. Between all his commitments, professional and musical, he says he's been catching four hours of sleep a night since planning began.
"I'm a super control freak. So when I get my mind on something, I do it until there's nothing left to do," Bahl says. "It's fun. It seems stressful, and it is stressful, but it's actually really fun: taking something from the ground up and trying to make something of it."
Besides booking the festival, Bahl is playing it himself with his band The SpacePimps, one of the festival's top-billed acts. He and partner Greg Roscoe are taking on the cost of the festival.
The past three months have been "really crazy" for Bahl; he's received more than 170 emails from bands asking to play the festival. But he's been in those shoes before, and still is, with The SpacePimps.
"I'm that band. I email every festival that happens in the United States, saying, ‘You gotta put The SpacePimps on. You gotta put the SpacePimps on,'" Bahl says. "And I never understood until now that it's a total shit show. It's a crapshoot to get a band on there."
Brandon Lehman, guitarist in local pop-punk band Mace Ballard, says that Bahl approached his band and was very cryptic (which he sometimes is with the bigger things he plans), asking if they were available on the festival date and not offering much else.
"I think a big festival, sort of independently put on like that, is really cool," Lehman says. "I think it shows how strong the DIY music scene in Pittsburgh can be."
Bahl has known Mace Ballard and the majority of the bands playing the festival, local or not, for years. And booking his acquaintances isn't an accident, though.
"I'll be the first one to admit that a lot of the bands on the show I know. It's about being friends," Bahl says. "Being in a scene is about being friends with people and I think that's not around anymore. I think it's all a competition."
Pittsburgh needs more shows like Four Chord, Lehman says, with the music and the bands being the focus. He also thinks that bands need to support each other, the way Mace Ballard has been supported.
"More of the veteran bands need to step up and maybe take a few of the smaller local bands under their wing, sort of what Rishi and The SpacePimps have done for us," Lehman says. "I think that camaraderie really brings people together."
With the first Four Chord Music Festival ready to go, Bahl wants to make it an annual event, and would like to book bands like New Found Glory, Bayside or Reel Big Fish in the future —simply keeping the festival within the theme of punk rock.
"It's not gonna be Christina Aguilera. It's not gonna be Katy Perry — as much as I would love to have Katy Perry and hang out with her. I just don't think it's going to happen that way," Bahl says.
And first, he has to survive this year.
"My blood pressure is through the roof, let's be real here," Bahl says jokingly. "I'm probably gonna have a heart attack before this event happens."
