The Band Behind the Minecraft Music Festival, Block by Blockwest
Now more than ever, it can be easy to get lost in the wave of headlines — in the chaos and uncertainty of this global pandemic. These are scary times, but there’s artists and creatives everywhere working to find light in the process. So, here’s a new headline to get wrapped up in: Philadelphia Band Courier Club Launch Coronavirus Relief Festival in Minecraft. Imagine showing that to someone in 2013, right?
A quick scroll through Courier Club’s (Timothy Waldron (vocals & guitar), Ryan Conway (guitar), Michael Silverglade (bass) and Jack Kessler (drums)) Instagram reveals a screenshot of texts seemingly joking about the festival concept — quickly followed by a full-blown flyer, complete with a slew of impressive acts attached including Pussy Riot, Nothing, Nowhere., Sir Sly, Hunny, IDLES, Fever 333, Cowgirl Clue & more. The idea seemingly took hold and exploded so quickly — we were desperate to get a peek behind how it came about, how on earth it was happening, and what an attendee might expect, wandering into their first Minecraft music festival.
First off, can you guys introduce yourself and give us a brief introduction of your group on the whole?
Tim: We’ve been together for about a year and a half now as a band, and are based out of Philly. I mean, yeah, [when we started] we were just a bunch of gamers that were playing in different bands at the time. We were on tour with each other and just kind of nerded out together, so when the tour ended, we kept playing video games together and hanging out. Both the bands we were in kind of started fizzling out, and we were just like, “do you guys wanna do music together too?” It’s been happily ever after since.
“We said, “Alright — if Coronavirus cancels our tour, we’re just going to host a concert on Minecraft,” and the joke just started to scale up.”
That’s beautiful. So the idea of this show, since you guys met through gaming and music, this kind of bridges both those interests. Can you start telling me a little bit about this next project? It's definitely out of the ordinary for sure.
It started out as a joke actually. We said, “Alright if coronavirus cancels our tour, we’re just going to host a concert on Minecraft,” and the joke just started to scale up. We actually asked Mop’s little brother who used to run a server — I was like “Is this possible? Can we do this?”, and he was like, “I don't know, maybe,”. So we did some research and found out it’s happened in the past and it’s actually a thing. We thought, “okay, there’s gotta be some infrastructure on how to do this,” and everyone did their part. It started out as just a thing for our fans and then as every day passed it scaled up more. Our manager — DJ — was killing it, reaching out to bands. More and more people were excited about the show, and it just kind of steamrolled into what it is today… which is amazing.
How do you even put together a Minecraft festival, how will this work?
First thing's first, you need to have a dedicated server that can hold a couple thousand people. Right now we are expecting 5,000 and preparing for more as everyday goes by. So you have to purchase the server, which is basically purchasing like a physical computer in a warehouse somewhere. We had to build pretty much the entire landscape (we have a lot of mini games as well) so we were coding and made some plug ins for all the extra activities for everyone to do. And then actually, we started a thing called ‘the discord,’ where we have all the audio streaming. So, what you do is log onto the server, log onto the discord, and then that’s were you hear the bands playing and you pick what stage you wanna listen to.
If you don't have Minecraft you can go to our website and stream a live feed of every stage from the festival.
“You’re going to meet people who you’re probably never going to have the chance to meet again. Immerse yourself in it, explore it and be authentic.”
Let’s say you were an attendee coming into this, having no clue what it is, what are some things you would tip them to look out for? Some things you’d be most excited for yourself.
I’d say just explore everything and talk to people. I think what’s cool about the festival is, you’re going to meet people who you’re probably never going to have the chance to meet again in a sense; because it’s already such an international community starting with the server. So just explore it and be authentic, you can customize your entire character so definitely go all out with that… Immerse yourself in it, meet some people, have a good time. Discover new bands.
Great segue into our next question, you guys have a tone of really cool acts playing… Pussy Riot, Hunny, Citizen, Cowgirl Clue, Cherry Glazerr… Just to name a few. How did you get some of these bands to agree to this project? Was there ever any resistance when asking?
It started out as us giving our manager DJ a massive list of bands we thought of in like an hour, and then we sent out a bunch of cold emails, right?
DJ: Pretty much. Because I've never built up a festival before, we just kind of used this domino effect. We would try and find bands that were of similar size to the ones we had committed, so it started off as just friends of mine and friends of the bands, and then we slowly grew and grew. I have contacts at most major labels and agencies, so I pulled a couple strings and we were able to get some bigger acts. That then helped pulled other acts of their size and we have just been able to level up slowly.
So the proceeds from this festival will go directly towards benefiting the COVID-19 crisis. Can you tell me a little about how you are generating revenue through this, and how that would work on that end?
Tim: The event is totally free. We’ll be selling merch that’s exclusive to the festival that will have all the bands on it and a custom design. If you purchase that shirt, all the proceeds from that go directly to the fund. We are also offering VIP access to the fund, which means you can go to other certain areas that others can’t, and you can hop into chat rooms with members of the bands and organizers of the festival. You’ll have some cosmetic differences to people in the festival as well. You can actually do an almost ‘Minecraft Meet & Greet’ with the artists, so you can like, take screen grabs with bands. But to get that access you also have donate $25 to the cause. If you can’t afford that, we also have free options to get the VIP by participating in the mini-games and finding rare items on the map!
I think we’re are also pushing to get some sponsorships and ads going on so that companies can offering some donations, that’s the goal.
Amazing! This project has so many different layers to it — what has the timeline looked like for this? How long have you been planning?
A little under a month, like three weeks right? Let’s find the exact date. We had a text message that we sent each other… I believe it was March 14th.
What impacts on the music industry have you seen COVID-19 taking, and how do you hope to make new opportunities? I know everybody’s losing tours and shows, it’s taking a huge impact to a lot of different creative industries. What do you guys hope to inspire with this unconventional event?
I think my biggest thing with this event is that I want people to look at these virtual worlds as a blueprint for things to come in the future. Because I think there’s a lot of value in having these channels available for people, and there hasn’t been a great urge for it, because we have had all the privileges of going to shows and being in rooms with people. So now that that’s not a thing, I think everyone is like, “Oh we need to develop a whole new world, basically online.” I think that I would love to use this to gain more attention for that world of creating virtual experiences, and really pushing that ball forward; getting more attention and more developers working on things. We keep talking about wanting to do a virtual festival that’s on our own platform, something that’s open-sourced so we can give it out for free - totally free. Developers can just add on and build on to it and create something really special, separate from Minecraft, and something that’s made for the pure reason of going to music festivals.
“I want people to look at these virtual worlds as a blueprint for the future.”
I also noticed that the attention span of everybody is changing because of this, everyone is online constantly. Things like release plans, and all the planning that the industry was very used to might not matter anymore because people need things now. I don’t know, I think that things might actually get faster in a sense.
DJ: Maybe even faster than they’ve already been. I don’t know if you guys wanna mention the change in our release dates?
Tim: Yeah, definitely. We were planning on dropping the EP April 24th and having a nice roll out for it, but now we are just like, “we need to put this out now.” It just needs to be. Everyone is waiting for something to take their attention because nothing is happening. I think it’s cool though, I heard the other day that Charli XCX was just like, “Yeah screw it, I'm just gonna make an album right now and drop it.” I think it’s just been a cool change of pace.
“Can it even slow back down? Can that be a thing that happens? Or has the world completely changed and the industry completely changed?”
Do you think that different events like this, and the mindset you’re talking about: that things are coming out just because you can and speeding up your releases. Do you think that this will continue after Covid-19, or do you think it's more likely to be temporary?
Tim: I don't know, it might be like a Pandora’s box effect. If everyone has access, if all this goes so fast right now and then it slows down…can it even slow back down? Can that be a thing that happens? Or has the world completely changed and the industry completely changed?
I guess we’ll find out when we get to the other side? I think it’s too early to tell. I don’t think there’s no going back, and on a broader scale too the world is going to be entirely different when we go back to the normal way of life. This has never happened to anyone living right now, this is the first time, so I guess we will see. And uh, hopefully it’s for the better, and I guess we have to try and make it for the better and be vigilant with that stuff.
Most definitely - and find creative ways to spend our time and creative new projects like the ones you guys have here. Is there anything else you guys would like to take a minute to highlight?
Tim: Let’s just look to these virtual worlds as a blueprint for the future and like find ways to really build on that in any way possible because I thin that's going to get us through this.
DJ: I’m gonna throw the management card in here and say the date is April 25th for the event and the boys are dropping a single called ‘Soundscape 1992’ on Friday and an EP called Drive Like Your Kids Live Here’ drops next Friday on the 17th.
Block by Blockwest is happening on April 25th — click here for more details and to find out how to join.
Courier Club just dropped their new EP, Drive Like Your Kids Live Here — you can listen here, and find them on Spotify!