Carnival of Soul

The 16th Annual Valley of the Vapors Independent Music Festival will be March 20-23 this year, with one key difference: the opening reception will be a double feature that’s an Arkansas premiere.

Instead of the party that has taken place opening night in years past, on March 19 Low Key Arts will present a showing of “Desolation Center” at 7 p.m., followed by “Sonic Youth: 30 Years of Daydream Nation” at 8:45 p.m. at the Pocket Community Theatre.

“The opportunity to screen these films presented itself to us, and we were so excited,” Low Key Arts Executive Director Sonny Kay said. “The reason we’re doing it at the Pocket Theatre is really because they’re mostly right in our backyard and serve a very similar role in the community, as we do, and honestly their theater space is just more suited for something like a film screening like this. We want it to be comfortable for people, we also wanted to have the largest audience possible.”

Kay said they anticipate approximately 1,000-1,200 people of all ages throughout the entire festival.

“It certainly brings in people from all over Arkansas … I think it caters to people mostly from the greater Arkansas area,” he said.

The festival is for anyone interested in “boundary pushing, out of the ordinary rock music and anybody interested in the state of the musical underground,” Kay said.

“The festival caters to what’s considered indie rock or alternative,” he continued. “I used to call it punk rock, but that’s kind of limiting. It really does cross all genres. … How about colorful, often explosive alternatives to mainstream radio music?”

Kay said that, “musically speaking,” the highlight of the festival will probably be a group called “Carinae.”

“They played VOV last year and then they headlined Hot Water Hills in October,” he said. “They are a definite crowd-pleaser, probably more than any other band that played last year.”

Another highlight of the festival, Kay said, will be the “Keith Morris Book reading” at Kollective Coffee+Tea at 4 p.m. March 21.

“(Morris) certainly qualifies as someone who could be called a living legend,” he said. “He founded a couple of very influential rock bands in Los Angeles in the late ’70s and has been a presence in the underground pretty much ever since. Sixty-five years old and still in a punk band.”

Additionally, the festival will include two “guitar pedal workshops.”

“One is devoted to analog guitar pedals, which are physical pedals that are on the floor that you plug your guitar into,” Kay said. “That one actually has a fee attached, but the fee includes a custom VOV pedal that people will actually put together in the workshop.”

The other is a virtual guitar effects workshop “that’s all to do with software and basically creating sound effects in the computer and that’s the one that will be at ASMSA.”

Kay said Valley of the Vapors means a “whole lot” to a lot of people in Hot Springs.

“So many people in Hot Springs have grown up attending this festival and have really grown into adults at the festival,” he said. “It’s been a presence in the lives of people here for 15 years, and I think it’s something that a lot of people have volunteered for and something they have a lot of pride and ownership over. I think it’s a really unique event in Arkansas.”

Kay described the festival as being “unequal” to anything else in the state and “symbolic of the spirit” of Hot Springs.

“We feel like it’s a really strong one (this year),” he said. “We’re excited about the opportunity to bring some influential people to town and lead the workshops. The film screening we feel like might be the start of a new tradition, so yeah we’re really excited and we hope people are, too.”

Local on 02/23/2020