The Fresno Urban Sound Experience Festival – or FUSE Fest for short – has for the first time expanded into a full-blown, two-day festival with more than seven venues and a line-up of more than 30 bands.
Unlike some music festivals, the FUSE Fest is designed with no headliners among the all-local bands. This effortlessly emphasizes the wide range of musical talent found around Fresno. The current state of the festival has been compared by some to the South by Southwest Music Conference and Festival (SXSW) in its early stages.
This year’s festival began on Friday with four venues: Joe’s Steakhouse, Downtown Club, Hero’s Sports Lounge, and Club One.
“The best thing [about FUSE] is that it brings people together and they go see live music instead of just going to a bar or watching a movie,” said Tom Walzem, guitarist for surf-rock band, The Neptunes. Friday night at Hero’s Sports Lounge was not their first FUSE appearance though. They were a part of the first FUSE Fest back in 2008, and they see first-hand the impact the festival has on the community of Fresno.
“The crowd [at Hero’s] really listened carefully. All the people who came to FUSE came out because they really wanted to hear the music,” Walzem said. Seeing how smoothly the festival ran, Walzem credits the festival with helping The Neptunes reach wider audiences for their music.
The festival is a good method of showing the central valley that Fresno has a great music scene of many different genres. One way the FUSE Festival is able to expand the number and distance of the people that they reach is with the help of the Dirty Dowdy Podcast by Chris “Dirty” Dowdy from Fresno’s New Rock 104.1 radio station.
“As far as mainstream, some people don’t know what it is,” Dowdy said about the FUSE festival. He hopes that with the involvement of New Rock 104.1 this year, more people will start getting the message and help spread it even further.
Although this year the festival has expanded in days, venues and bands, Dowdy believes there is still room for growth; especially with the occasional difficulty of trying for events in the downtown area of Fresno. Still, he remains positive in that these issues will simply take time.
A big contributor to keeping up with the positive assurance is the feedback received from festival-goers. Some audiences are already supportive to begin with, and the wider the festival opens up those doors, the more open people will be to local music they have never heard before.
That positivity doesn’t only reach audiences, but also the bands themselves. Spanish experimental-rock band, Dia Del Astronauta, had their first experience with the FUSE Fest as a result of Aire Espacial’s unfortunate last-minute cancellation due to an emergency.
“We enjoy playing, we never play for the money,” said Dia Del Astronauta drummer, Angel. “With more unknown small bands, you don’t feel anyone is better than the other,” added singer and guitarist, Abraham. With the adrenaline rush that they get from being on stage, the festival shows that hard work pays off, and it has now opened up more doors for Dia Del Astronauta, who played at Fulton 55 on Saturday. While their original ideal was to create music for soundtracks, after seven years of playing together, Dia Del Astronauta is inspired by the FUSE Fest to keep going and do more.
Serving as Saturday’s headquarters for the festival, Fulton 55 in downtown had double the acts by splitting them up between the main stage downstairs and the smaller and more intimate Coffeehouse Stage upstairs. While most of the acts that performed upstairs were mainly acoustic – such as Heather & Joe, and Suicide Lounge – the bands that played downstairs had a lot more noise to make.
“There is talent, Fresno breeds talent,” said Adam Lee of Let’s Go Bowling, “Fresno has had a unique, rich music scene for decades; we need to celebrate!” That is by no means an exaggeration, Let’s Go Bowling has been around since the 80s and they have traveled far enough, performed with big-enough bands, and remained true to Fresno to know that first-hand.
Let’s Go Bowling’s ska sound had the crowd at Fulton 55 dancing and jumping during their entire set. While they may be widely known, the FUSE Fest gives audiences the opportunity to sample some great music and remember it later. As 104.1’s Dowdy put it, “It’s all under the umbrella of FUSE.”
Paul Miskulin of Let’s Go Bowling, echoes The Neptunes’ Tom Walzem when he says that with the festival, he hopes people are inspired to text each other and actually meet up in person. Clearly, the FUSE Fest is an event no one in Fresno should miss. It comes once a year, and each year it’s better than the last. Besides being about the music, it’s also about demonstrating what downtown Fresno is and can be.
As fusefest.com says, “Forget what you’ve heard or think you know about Fresno’s music scene. Experience it for yourself.”