[SLIDESHOW] Revealing Lexington’s hidden gems

By Katie Saltz and Roy York

If there ever was a time for the cultural floodgates to be broken down in Lexington, this past weekend was the spark to light that fire.
“It seems to me that we’re experiencing a real cultural renaissance, and a lot of things are starting to happen,” said Ainsley Wagoner, general manager of WRFL.

Boomslang was one of those things — a three-day music and art festival hosted by the UK student radio station. The event ran Friday through Sunday and encompassed music acts spanning all genres, art with no boundaries and circus acts that drew gasps of astonishment.
While WRFL orchestrated the weekend’s events, Wagoner said the festival was an opportunity to merge Lexington’s different facets.
“I think that’s one thing that Boomslang really banks on, is that a part of all this is also about how we connect with the community because of all these art shows, all these local bands, and the carnival kids, ” she said.
Don’t try this at home
People often say they would walk through fire to get something they desire. Eric Myers will eat fire just to make you smile.
Myers is a member of Ford Theatre Reunion, a circus band and performance group, who took the outdoor stage for the Boomslang carnival on Saturday in the Buster’s Billiards and Backroom parking lot. Myers used two burning batons to set lines of flames across his shirtless chest, cradled the blue blaze in the palm of his hand and extinguished the fire with his tongue. While it may seem crazy to some, this 22-year-old thinks making people happy is worth the risk.
“The reason it’s important to me and the reason that I do it largely is that I have literally seen hundreds of people today with ear-to-ear smiles,” Myers said.
FTR began the show with their circus band during the Lexington Collaborative Fashion Group carnival-themed fashion show. Alex Johns, a 22-year-old Transylvania University graduate, plays clarinet and sings in the band, but her solo performance included $70 worth of nails, a bucket full of broken wine bottles and her bare skin.
Johns crossed the runway in a tight-rope walk with a sea of shattered bottles with her naked feet. The shards crunched and popped under the weight of her body, but Johns reached the other side with seemingly unscathed soles. Johns gave the audience more of her daring antics by taking a rest from her show – lying on the tips of nails hammered through a wooden board, the skin on her back exposed to the points of metal. Although the performers persistently warned audience members not to try these acts at home, group member Joe Harbison said trial and error drives the learning process.
“The truth is, the way you learn is you just do it and cross your fingers,” he said.
While some at the show averted their eyes, Ben Phelps, a UK agricultural economics senior, said he was curious to see the show after reading about the carnival.
“I’ve never seen fire eating or walking on glass, laying on nails,” Phelps said. “It was an amazing show. (The) most unique thing I’ve ever seen.”
Phelps said he was surprised the sideshow performers were all Lexington locals.
“I never knew this was in Lexington,” he said. “I always thought stuff like this only happened in Vegas.”
Johns said she thinks most people are unaware of the existence of the Lexington sideshow acts only because people aren’t searching out unusual types of entertainment.
“Passionfire, Sacred Fire, Girlie Girl Burlesque, Deadly Sins Burlesque — there are circus performers all over this town,” she said. “It’s just nobody knows because nobody’s paying attention.”
Boomslang was just the kind of event that could change that attitude, Johns said, by highlighting all the hidden gems of Lexington.
“Something that’s great about a festival like this is it brings together a lot of acts that are performing all the time under one blanket name that people do pay attention to,” she said.
Harbison hopes the publicity his group gained through Boomslang will encourage people to be more open-minded when choosing entertainment.
“I think that people need to see stuff like this because there’s nothing wrong with it,” Harbison said. “It doesn’t really reach the mainstream sometimes because people think it’s going to be a lot more offensive than it is.”
The diversity of the crowd is a factor Harbison believes is what makes the group so appealing.
“We’ve done this show and frat guys are like ‘Yes!’ and then 85-year-old grandmothers are like ‘Yes!’ ” Harbison said. “Kids love it and punk rockers love it, everybody loves it, there’s no reason not to. It’s zany.”
Dressing for the occasion
Forget Valentino. Forget Oscar de la Renta. It may not be haute couture, but on Saturday, local designers made their mark on Lexington’s fashion scene.
The Boomslang carnival included a circus-themed fashion show organized by Sarah Jane Estes, an art studio sophomore. The event came together through collaboration between Estes and members of FTR.
“Sarah Jane wanted to do a carnival-themed fashion show, so we said, ‘Well then let’s do it — what can we do to make this more visually appealing, what can we do to make this a full carnival?’ ” Johns said.
Estes and other designers were already working with FTR on their carnival when WRFL approached the fashion show planners and offered to combine forces. WRFL made the show a focal point of the all-day event in the Buster’s parking lot.
“We were really blessed to get the interest of WRFL,” Estes said.
The designers, including Lamin Swann, Nani, Soreyda Benedit-Begley, Jamie McIntosh and Jordan Cox, agreed to a carnival theme for their pieces.
“I was really inspired by carnival and circus animals,” Estes said. “We planned everything from the circus clothing to the circus music, the carnival colors and the animal (themes).”
Every designer brought a unique take on the theme to the runway. From a leopard print body suit with a transparent cutout around the middle, to a multi-colored skirt resembling a circus tent, designers danced between the subtly of the pieces and making bolder statements with their designs.
“The pieces represented every aspect of art seen in this town,” Estes said.
Estes said events like Boomslang help young designers to get publicity, since there is currently no venue for extreme fashion in Lexington. Estes hopes to create a place for the fashion-hungry to get their fill from local designers instead of turning to major cities.
“We’re creating a brand so we can represent Kentucky,” Estes said. “Our main goal isn’t to move away to New York. We want to be the face of design to Kentucky.”
Small town sound
One band’s casual is another band’s crucial.
For some local acts invited to play at Boomslang, the festival was an opportunity to rock with the big acts and gain exposure. Local musicians stepped onstage along with veteran international groups to prove small bands are teeming with musical talent and are itching to break onto the national scene.
Shows were spread across Lexington at venues such as Al’s Bar, The Void Skateshop, Natasha’s Bistro and CD Central, who hosted musicians before and after the main shows at Buster’s.
Lisa Walker of the band Wussy performed at CD Central with bandmate Chuck Cleaver on Saturday. Walker said the festival shows over the weekend were an opportunity for students to get out of their usual music routines and find something new.
“I think the kids who would go to Kings of Leon (who performed at Rupp Arena Saturday) would go to Boomslang and find a lot of music they would like,” Walker said. “The nice thing about this festival is it mixes local, regional, national and international acts … It brings out people who didn’t know there was so much in their backyard.”
Headliners such as Mission of Burma, The Black Angels and Os Mutantes may have brought the crowd to Buster’s, but Lexington brought its own thunder to the stage
Tiny Fights, a Lexington-based “cosmic electro-rock” group, who played on Buster’s alternative stage following headliner Faust on the main stage, said they usually played for small bars and house parties.
Jamie Adkins, bassist for Tiny Fights, said playing in the same venue as larger acts was an awesome experience, but he would have liked to have seen his band have a more central role.
“I wish that Tiny Fights would have played on stage with Faust last night,” he said.
Other Tiny Fights members were pleased with the festival as a whole and joked about the experience.
“Faust was a great opening act for Tiny Fights,” said Adam Dickinson, who plays the guitar and uses a computer to synthesize sounds for Tiny Fights. “We hope they can play with us again. (They are a) pretty good little band.”
All jokes aside, local bands invited to play at Boomslang said the festival was an integral part of the growth of Lexington culture.
Big Fresh, a Lexington-based band offering a sound “like progressive Beatles with synthesizer,” said they were grateful to be asked to play at an event as large as Boomslang.
“This is the kind of place that Lexington needs, really needs,” said Evan Belt, flugel horn player for Big Fresh. “I think it can thrive.”
Peter Prescott, drummer for headliner Mission of Burma, a band formed in 1979, said the explosion of local and experimental music over the years was encouraging.
“When we started out, it was a barren wasteland of (bands like us),” said Clint Conley, bassist for Mission of Burma. “Now we’re probably a lot more conservative than a lot of the bands here.”
Almost every band said exposing new people to different types of music was important for Lexington to grow as a center for musical expression.
Adkins said now is the time to begin supporting local artists through festivals and venues like Boomslang to further the growth of local acts.
“I spoke with four people last night who saw Tiny Fights that had never heard us before, and they liked us,” Adkins said. “So, if you can touch four people, I guess that’s good.”
When all is said and done
As Sunday night’s events were heating up, Boomslang co-coordinator James Friley said he was not disappointed with the overall turnout for the Buster’s main stage shows, but he had hoped for more attendance.
“Ticket sales could have been better,” Friley said. Around 600 people attended Buster’s on Friday night, and he estimated about 350 on Saturday. Numbers for Sunday’s attendance could not be acquired by press time, although Friley predicted a large turnout to see the “legendary” band Os Mutantes.
Friley said he thought an unbalanced distribution of the bands was the reason Saturday’s crowd was smaller. Friday’s lineup was overbooked, causing smaller bands to push back their showtimes. Friley said the music continued at one after-party until 5 a.m. Saturday.
“I think Friday was better. Saturday’s lineup just wasn’t as strong,” he said.
While Saturday held a smaller crowd inside the venue, the outdoor carnival drew a crowd he hadn’t expected — and in temperatures of 49 degrees.
“The carnival was a huge success,” he said. “It was weird, even at 11 p.m. there were still 100 people outside watching the burlesque show.”
Boomslang didn’t start heavily advertising until about two weeks before the festival began, Friley said, and more online marketing might have helped boost sales.
“It was not enough time to get 1,000 people in here,” he said. “But I’m not disappointed.”
Friley said for a future festival he wouldn’t book any after-parties because they ran so late into the morning, but he considered the overall weekend to be a success.
“There is still so much excitement, even as it’s over, people are still super pumped,” he said. “I think it was awesome because everyone keeps saying it was awesome.”

For more about Boomslang, check out the other Kernel article’s on the event. No boundaries at Boomslang, and   Q&A with WRFL’s Past and Current leaders and Sight, sound showcased in festival art.

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