Dance Gavin Dance’s Inaugural Swanfest Draws 7,500 Fans To OC; Agent Promises Sequel

Steve Thrasher – Swan Fest
at City National Grove of Anaheim, Calif.

As the artist-curated festival trend seems to show no sign of slowing down, one of the latest success stories may surprise those who aren’t paying attention.

Post-hardcore band Dance Gavin Dance’s inaugural Swanfest drew 7,500 fans to the City National Grove of Anaheim in California’s Orange County. The one-day outdoor festival March 30 admittedly did even better than its already-optimistic organizers expected, and they’re looking to do more next year, perhaps in multiple markets.

“There’s a lot of festivals happening in our space right now that we keep getting overlooked on,” the band’s booking agent at 33 & West, Matt Pike, told Pollstar. “Jokingly, we said if we’re going to keep getting overlooked, we’re going to just do it ourselves, and that’s what we did.”

Pike said the Sacramento-based band has flown under the radar a bit but the team behind the festival – 33 & West, manager Derek Brewer at Manifest GRP and Andy Serrao at local club Chain Reaction as producer/promoter – knew it could make a big statement with its own event.

“We know we can do X amount of tickets in the market, and instead of doing two nights at House of Blues or two or three at The Observatory, we decided to instead create our own situation,” Pike said, as in this situation the band and festival partners become their own concert promoter. “If we’re going to go big, we might as well go as big as we can.”

See: Matt Pike Growing Metal And Making Pancakes

– Swanfest

The Swan Fest lineup included special guest Periphery, Crown The Empire, We Came As Romans, Don Broco, and Veil of Maya, with some of the artists on Dance Gavin Dance guitar player and founder Will Swan’s Swan Records, such as Sianvar and Wolf & Bear. Only two of the acts were represented by 33 & West. Serrao’s experience at the Nederlander Concerts-operated, indoor/outdoor City National Grove and with A Day To Remember’s Self-Help festivals also came in handy.

“From the first conversation we all wanted to do a fest with great bands, good vibes and an opportunity for bands of this world to play in a different setting,” Serrao said in a statement. “Being a longtime promoter for DGD and many of these artists I was excited at the opportunity to make our mark. A truly incredible first year, looking forward to building this further!”

The sold-out festival shows the headlining power of Dance Gavin Dance, which has been on a tear since its Artificial Selection album peaked at No. 15 on the Billboard 200 last summer. With Swanfest being the first of the Artificial Selection Tour 2019, upcoming dates include Vibes Event Center in San Antonio (3,300 tickets sold, Pike says), and more than 2,000 tickets sold each market of Washington D.C, New York City and Philadelphia among others.

“With an amazing package and affordable ticket prices we knew we were onto something good as the ticket sales took off and headed for a sellout,” Brewer said, “We were thrilled when it happened! Our main goal was to make sure that the fans and the bands had an amazing time and I think we accomplished this with the first Swanfest.”

Also showing the band’s buzz was a viral moment from the band’s Las Vegas show, with a video capturing an obviously perplexed security guard not quite understanding the crowd’s feverish reaction, which Pike says “was just perfect” and “probably sent to me five times that morning.”

<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet” data-lang=”en”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>my mans was NOT having it last night <a href=”https://t.co/EZMmsuGyPn”>pic.twitter.com/EZMmsuGyPn</a></p>— Bad|Baldwin (@logan_kale27) <a href=”https://twitter.com/logan_kale27/status/1113515228061270016?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>April 3, 2019</a></blockquote>

Asked about the challenges of putting on a first-year festival, an endeavor that notoriously can take years to see any profit from, Pike responded, “Well, I’ll go on record saying we’re going to do two next year. We definitely feel there’s a couple markets we can do festival-type business in, whether it be Sacramento or somewhere in the Midwest like Chicago where band does really well. We’re looking to expand this into something we do year after year.”

Another client of Pike’s, dark-folk singer-songwriter Amigo the Devil, is also picking up steam. He was added to the new Woodstock 50 and just wrapped up a support slot with Irish punkers Dropkick Murphys. Festival appearances at the rock-themed Danny Wimmer Presents festivals are forthcoming, along with headlining in the 500 to 1,000-capacity space.