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THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2016
Photo by Chris Burk/TMN
Evan Bird (left) and Jordan Smith (right) of Diarrhea Planet rock out during their set. The Maha Music Festival featured indie rock bands throughout the day.
Sound Opinions
BY CHRIS BURK
Contributing Writer
Photos by Chris Burk/TMN
Top: Evan Bird of Diarrhea Planet plays guitar during the festival. The Maha
Music Festival took place in Omaha, Nebraska.
Middle: Alex Luciano of Diet Cig leaps while playing. The energy of the festival
remained high throughout the entirety of the performances.
Bottom: Will Toledo of Car Seat Headrest sings to the audience. Although the
location was damp from rain, performers improvised to put on a great show.
VOLUME 108
ISSUE 2
tmn.truman.edu
On August 20, Truman State University’s student-run radio station, KTRM-FM,
found itself in a predicament not experienced by disc jockeys in the history of the
radio station before — covering a large music festival in the name of college radio. Maha Music Festival, located in Omaha, Nebraska, was the destination, and
it was a long trip across unvaried Iowa highways to get there.
We headed to Omaha without a real idea of what we were in for, armed with
some cameras, a backpack full of granola bars and a rough framework of objectives we wanted to accomplish. Maha Music Festival was working on its 8th
annual iteration in the largest city of Nebraska, but among the three of us, it
would be our first experience covering a music festival. With junior Matt Ragsdale, senior Mike Menkhus and myself all crammed into Mike’s luxurious 2006
Honda Accord, we spent four and a half hours contemplating if we had made a
large mistake by driving out into the middle of nowhere with only a tiny sense of
direction and no cell service throughout the entirety of Iowa. To be completely
honest, Matt and Mike spent quite a while contemplating. I dozed in the backseat
and only woke up to confirm our itinerary every so often.
We had no trouble finding the festival in the Omaha downtown area. Fit snugly
within the confines of Aksarben Village, the festival grounds were nothing more
than a local amphitheater and a scaffolding stage butted up next to each other.
We picked up our press passes before entering the grounds to find many milling
about among the vendor booths and grassy knoll.
We stopped in front of an area where two pop-up tents were close together.
Folding tables were set up in a row, with extension cords leading to God-knowswhere snaking their way through the grass and connecting to many kickable
power strips. A pair of Omahan grandparents sat at the table and smiled at us
upon our arrival. “Are you press?” the grandmother asked. They were tasked with
watching gear and treating us like long-lost grandchildren. Our own press tent
was Spartan. It was clear we were not Very Important People in the grand scheme
of things. I dropped my bags and went searching for subjects to shoot, a camera
on each shoulder. Matt and Mike went searching for B-roll footage and interviews
with festival organizers.
The day’s festivities were running behind schedule — Omaha had gotten three
inches of rain the previous evening, so none of the technical aspects of the main
stage had been checked. As they ran through lighting rigs and PA systems looking for bugs and electrical shorts, all the early afternoon acts found themselves
confined to the amphitheater, a large brick shelter with a hip-high stage I found
comfortable enough to lean against as musicians confidently stuck their faces
right in front of me, knowing I was looking for a Pulitzer in feature photography.
It’s always good to dream big.
The main stage was less indulging — with the stage floor being approximately
10 feet off the ground, a lack of good lenses, and the struggle of shooting with
both a Canon and a Nikon body, I found most of the pictures I took from main
stage to be lackluster. The intimacy of the amphitheater allowed me to take gem
after gem during afternoon acts like Diarrhea Planet, Diet Cig and Car Seat Headrest. Main stage acts like The Joy Formidable did not end so well, with poor
enough results that staying for the headlining acts like Grimes and Passion Pit
was not going to end with any usable snaps. Because Grimes asked that the photo
pit be closed for her entire set, and the schedule was an hour behind because of
the early day technical issues, we bailed on seeing Passion Pit entirely, opting
instead for an exit that would get us back to Kirksville before 5 a.m.
The festival itself was a blast. While Matt and Mike functioned on a professional level in getting excellent interviews with festival organizers and Diet Cig,
and my eyes hardly left the viewfinder of my cameras all day, we still found time
to unwind. We watched somewhere around 5,000 people pack into a nice, grassy
knoll and have a good time as we sipped on Gatorade and the endless supply of
water from the multiple filling stations around the village and enjoyed the unseasonably mild August weather.
Even without a fleshed-out list of objectives for the day, it was a largely successful day for KTRM, working under the umbrella of Truman Media Network.
It’s definitely not the last festival of the year we’re going to be infiltrating, on top
of our nonstop coverage of the local music scene. Stay tuned — it’s going to be a
big year for your favorite student-run radio station.
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