Remko and Lena – Organizers of the 4th music festival “Tarnopol Gigs” in Ternopil.
Remko is a guitarist and vocalist of the band “Dreadnought in the Pond” (prog, stoner, noise, grunge, blues and punk).
Lena is a volunteer, candlemaker, originally from the city of Tavriysk.
Friends, I congratulate you! It is very nice to gather on the occasion of the announcement of the 4th Tarnopol Gigs!
Tell me how the idea of creating such a festival was born.
Remko: Yes, it was a distant 2016, a different life that we no longer remember)) then we were actively performing with the band “Dreadnought in the Pond”, started traveling to festivals, and I saw how cool it was, rock concerts, stoner scene, psychedelia and so on. So we got acquainted with many bands and decided, what is worse than Ternopil? We have “Koza-bar” and all the opportunities to organize everything properly.
Then I remember that I was very, very nervous, I didn’t know if I would get the money, but it turned out that we came up short against the hryvnia.
Ira: Tell us more about the genre of the festival, because many people don’t understand the concepts of “stoner, psychedelic rock,” even most musicians. Why is this genre so unknown to the Ukrainian scene? Is it very local?
Remko: No, it’s not very local, but yes, it has its own narrow audience, it’s larger in the West. Let’s just say, I don’t put tags on the music, but to give you an idea, we had bands of various genres playing.
Lena and Remko: We had hardcore from the band “Death Pills,” there was punk hardcore, stoner and stoner doom, drone and psychedelia that’s different from classic rock.
Ira: So the maximum avalanche of sound?
Remko: Yes, first of all, and secondly, we try to choose interesting “music”, which is mostly heavy, not typical, rhythmic, polyphonic, so that it is not easy and interesting. What we listen to ourselves, currently it is only the Ukrainian scene. Of course, we wanted to bring it from abroad. We planned for this year, but… Nothing, I think, after the victory, we will definitely do another one for two days.
Lena: IN KAHOVKA!
Remko: We will do “Tavriyski Gigs”)) Wow-wow-wow. (laughs)
Ira: Share how to organize a concert during the war, how are you managing to do it in Ternopil now?
Remko: Recently we organized the presentation of the split “Dreadnought in the Pond” and “Ritual Service”, it was noticeable that the people were a little “hungry” for concerts. We didn’t even have to try hard in the promo, even before we made official statements, we talked to one person and off we went…
Lena: If before it was cool, two-person concerts, now we do everything to collect donations and give people the opportunity to relax a little.
Remko: Yes, pleasant with useful. Now is the moment when it is better to give some value for a donation. Good music, a new experience, then people are more happy to support charity.
Lena: Yes, and it’s great that “NA Poshti” is loyal to charitable events.
Remko: Yes, all the proceeds from tickets go to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and even more. From the last concert, we wanted to donate only the profit from the merchandise, but we donated all the proceeds. Many of our friends donate all the profits, sell their products right at the concert, in order to also join the fundraising.
Ira: Tell me, this time, who will the collected funds go to?
Remko: This time, just like the previous ones, we will donate to the “Musicians Defend Ukraine” fund.
Lena: Also, the second fund is “HumanityHK” Foundation from Novaya Kakhovka, my city. The funds will go to evacuation from the Kherson region, diesel and food kits.
Ira: Tell us about your volunteer activities, as far as I know, you have been organizing collections since the very beginning of the full-scale invasion.
Lena: I initially collected funds for medicines, it was through acquaintances, relatives, whatever they needed. Various amounts were collected, mainly for medicines, which run out in literally two days, and you understand that this is a “black hole”. We also collected for food, treatment of children, equipment for the military. Well, they also threw money at the satellite 🙂
People stop donating just like that, so we came to understand that people need concerts for mutual exchange in order to collect more.
Why don’t we send everything to the Armed Forces of Ukraine? There are large foundations and volunteers who can cover more needs, I know the situation in the occupied territories, what the “orcs” are doing there, I understand the problems of the people, so we will help them in any way we can!
Ira: How do you see the music scene today and in the future after our victory?
Remko: Oh, well, the boom of songs about bayraktars, cartridges and javelins will pass. In my opinion, then a real “revival” of the Ukrainian scene will begin. Because we had it, remember “mustachiy funk”, the underground of the 80s-90s, the alternative of the 2000s, everything went through generations, like a sinusoid – something rose, something fell.
Ira: Well, and many also faced material problems and russification.
Remko: I think that the Ukrainian scene will rise to a completely new level.
Even now, the attention of the event is focused on the Ukrainian scene, of course, for a bad reason, but it has yielded results. Even at such a time, our musicians gather huge halls abroad, and that’s cool.
We always had the so-called “Big in Japan” complex, when an artist was not taken seriously until he achieved success abroad. It seems to me that now we are quite radically destroying this inferiority complex. We have a lot of cool music, sometimes even better than somewhere else.
Ira: Is it advisable to popularize underground music among people who are not interested in music at all?
Remko: People who are not interested in such things will never go to such things. Of course, we can take as an example abroad, where not only young people but also the older generation go to very extreme concerts. But this is a matter of mentality and culture. When we become “older” – we will go to rock concerts and support avant-garde music, then we will be like in Europe (laughs).
Ira: Well, that’s how it works in some places. We need to carefully open this side of music to people. What do you think about Ukrainian festivals, where such a “fusion” of genres, which is designed for an ordinary listener, does not reach the European format?
Lena: In my opinion, it’s the eternal “sitting on two chairs at the same time”, then this is reaching the majority of the audience. Commercial “something is happening”, but in reality it doesn’t work out that way.
Remko: Large festivals are always guided by the market economy, supply and demand. What the people want to hear, they “bring”. That is why we had many summer festivals, where the line-up was almost identical. That is, there are festival bands that gather people, “drive” them around all the venues. I am not saying that this is something bad, it is the way it is in the world. At a festival, where there are hundreds of artists and a dozen stages, it is worth the money. The main thing is that the number of musicians grows and there is diversity.
Lena: We are guided not by quality, but by quantity. For example, the bands “SOOM” and “Slice’n’Dice” play really cool music. The question arises, why don’t as many people know them as we would like? You want to bring them to Ternopil, organize a festival so that as many people as possible join this community, so that everyone gets high and shares experiences. Everyone understands the situation and tries to help. Oleg Dyhan helps us with photos, and the cameramen also shot really cool videos, just to collect money for donations. It’s very pleasantly surprising how many people bothered to help organize such a cool event.
Remko: Now our main goal is to minimize costs in order to maximize profits! We try to provide each participant of the event with some “little things” afterwards. When you yourself have traveled like this, you understand how to satisfy people so that they like us as much as possible)
Lena: Yes, many of our friends really wanted to come to Ternopil, so that in the end they would stay here. Many people speak warmly about our city. Even those who have not been here. We are only for as many creative people as possible to stay here and create new projects. Creative networking is contagious, someone has created something, then someone else will want to create too. This only raises the culture. And so we were inspired to make a split presentation with “Ritual Service” and immediately after that “Tarnopil Gigs”. Mykola Ilkiv, who organized “Potuzhnyak” in Frankivsk in the industrial zone, invited us, thereby pulling us out of a state of apathy.
Ira: Doesn’t it disappoint you that so few people come to Ternopil events for so long?
Remko: Ternopil has over 200 thousand inhabitants, now is the best time for movements, because many have moved to Western Ukraine, so musicians and listeners can be invited to one city. People move by inertia, as once in “Koz” the hall was sometimes packed, and then it went into decline and interest was lost.
Lena: As in previous times, we are focusing on people from other cities to
represent our city, we first invest in promotion through social networks.
Remko: And as for the state, in my opinion, it should not “plunge” into culture. I have not seen a single successful case where the state intervened in culture and something great came out of it. The government supports projects that are interesting to the majority of the population. Underground projects are not interesting to it. At the very least, the city’s economy is developing at the expense of cultural events. But who is interested in that?
Ira: Remko, tell me, how are things going with “Dreadnought in the Pond” now?
Remko: This is the first time we are not performing at Tarnopil Gigs, and I am very happy! It is very difficult to perform and be an organizer. Therefore, I will tell you more about the festival. This time we have the maximum variety of genres, from all corners of our country. A cool ambient band with drums, flute and other instruments from Oleksiy Lupashko will open. Next will be Argos, Manevytskyi musicians, very colorful representatives of Volyn stoner. Next will be “Slice’n’Dice”, this band won at “Koza Music Battle”, I was a judge then and voted for them, so this time I invited them to get together for the first time during the full-scale invasion. After them will be “Straytones” – they are quite popular representatives of the Ukrainian psychedelic scene. Last year they released a really cool album that made a splash at the event. The latest headliners – the Kharkiv band “PRASHCUR” ex “SOOM” experimental drone along with shoegaze, say that they are specially preparing a new program. I don’t know what it will be. They haven’t picked up their instruments after February 24, so they were very happy with our invitation. I’m proud that we were able to bring together very talented people to lift their spirits and make them create again!
Ira: The announcement sounds like it will be the best Tarnopol Gigs of all)
Remko and Lena: We are very worried, we want to organize a warm welcome for everyone, and it costs a lot of money.
Ira: In conclusion, what can you wish the Ternopil stage for the future?
Lena: We sincerely invite you to the concert on October 1! Join the event Instagram, and follow the news!
Remko: Long live and prosper (shows 🖖 )
Iryna Zhmelyk spoke
