Saving the fest for last

AND THE BANDS PLAYED ON QueerFest Midwest’s eclectic lineup motivates the masses.

In 2001, groups of queer-music enthusiasts waited in line to buy tickets for Wotapalava, a touring festival featuring the Pet Shop Boys, Rufus Wainwright, Soft Cell and the Magnetic Fields. Unfortunately, they were the only ones: The fest was canceled because of lack of interest. Among the crestfallen was Erik Roldan, cohost of Chicago’s Think Pink, a weekly radio program devoted to LGBT music.

“I bought my tickets for that the morning they went on sale, and then it got canceled due to tickets sales being poor,” Roldan says. “But I always thought [the idea] was so cool.”

And so a seed was planted. After Think Pink began airing in 2003, Roldan and former cohost Ali McDonald started holding random fund-raisers at the Hideout for their show. What was initially an LGBT dance party called Fruit eventually morphed into an evening of live music featuring LGBT musicians, followed by dancing. Queer Fest Midwest!, which takes place Saturday 25 inside the Pulaski Park Field House, is an expanded version of it.

“It’s kind of like the über-Fruit,” Roldan says. “It’s just a logical extension of the parties that Think Pink has been having for over four years now.”

QueerFest Midwest is a first-of-its-kind festival of music and visual art, not unlike a similar event on Roldan’s radar called Homo A Go Go, which debuted in 2002 in Olympia, Washington (and is on hiatus until 2008). The all-day event will feature about a dozen local and national LGBT bands playing in succession, and will include a visual- and performance-art component curated by Gonia Rejnowska and Justin Polera, also happening inside the field house.

“The mission of QueerFest Midwest is to promote queer visibility through music and art in a Lollapalooza-style festival,” Roldan says.

Among the artists slated to perform are national acts like the Ex-Members, a queer band composed of former members of both the Butchies and Team Dresch; hip-hopper and transman Katastrophe; Team Gina; Johnny Dangerous; Gina Young; and Katz. They’ll share the stage with local performers Chris Garneau, who appeared at Alt Q last year; lesbian rockers 8 Inch Betsy; bluegrass duo Actor Slash Model; and indie pop favorites Office, who are signed to James Iha’s Scratchie Records.

But while the lineup appears to be the perfect mix of genres, styles and attitudes, it didn’t come easy. “It’s very clear now that it’s difficult to get something off the ground from scratch with no history and no reputation,” Roldan says. “It’s very hard to convince people that you’re serious and that you’re going to execute something that isn’t a horribly doomed gong show.”

To get QueerFest off the ground, Roldan was assisted by music writer Trish Bendix, who created the now-defunct online lesbian lifestyle magazine Chill with her girlfriend, Jamie Murnane. Together they came up with a wish list of bands. They also had help from visual art–curating duo Rejnowska and Polera.

“When I got the 30 Under 30 award [from Windy City Times], I announced during my thank-you that I was doing something like this and that I needed help,” Roldan says. “As soon as the ceremony was over,  Justin Polera contacted me and said he curated art and that he would like to help. That’s when Rejnowska and Polera got involved.”

Like the music, the visual-art includes an eclectic lineup, such as renegade filmmaker Bruce La Bruce as well as local artist and alt-queer-party impresario Latham Zearfoss.

“I think more and more people are hungry for Chicago to be synonymous with groundbreaking things, and I think it’s definitely moving in that direction,” Roldan says. “We’re a world-class stage, and this is something I hope turns into an annual thing.”

QueerFest Midwest happens Saturday 25.