A Conversation with Jamie Coletta
the founder of No Earbuds chats about their inaugural festival this weekend in Ponoma, CA.
photo by Erica Lauren
I’ve been lucky to know Jamie Coletta for over ten years now. We met in Los Angeles - I was newly hired as the senior editor of AbsolutePunk.net and she was running PR and whatnot at SideOneDummy Records. What started as a working relationship quickly turned into a great friendship - bonding over a lot of the same bands and going to a bunch of shows in the LA area. Since then both our lives have changed - it’s well documented what I’ve been up to while Jamie started her own company No Earbuds five years ago - boasting an eclectic roster that includes The Wonder Years, Glass Beach, Pool Kids, Oso Oso, Origami Angel, We Are The Union, Queen of Jeans and many, many more. This Saturday June 15th at the Glasshouse in Ponoma, CA, Jamie will be kicking off the inaugural No Earbuds Fest - an all-day two-venue celebration of the company’s five years and featuring one of the best and most diverse lineups you’ll hear. Jamie gracefully took time out of her very busy schedule to chat with me about No Earbuds Fest - check it out below.
enjoy or don’t.
This is super exciting. I'm really excited for you. This whole festival thing is super rad.
Thank you.
And I was reading up on some of the other press you've done. I saw the Daily Bulletin piece and then Molly Mary O'Brien's blog, which was super rad, but yeah, I guess the first thing I wanted ask you is even before you started No Earbuds, did you ever in your wildest dreams think you'd throw a fest like this was something you've always felt you were destined to do?
I don't think that, no, it wasn't a clear vision or idea ever. Not even until last summer, but I think I had thrown…I did a fest with The Alternative back at SXSW a few years ago and I really liked it and I was just like, yeah, I should do more stuff like this. And then I got pregnant and then, yeah, it just took until now to really take it from a sort of idea in my brain of something I should do to becoming an actual thing that's happening.
There are a lot of great PR companies out there to have insane rosters, but we've never really had a festival showcasing their roster - at least to my knowledge - and what's cool is that you did it and it's so diverse. There are so many different genres and styles so it's cool to see it all just in one place. Beyond the festival, I feel like it's always been a priority to have No Earbuds be as diverse as it is and not just be pigeonholed into one genre. You kind of really get to show your true taste and really expand it out.
Yeah, it's never been… I definitely have my bread and butter stuff where it's like, yeah, I'm going to like the very obvious Jamie stuff, but I think I listen to a lot of different things and I can't really ever exactly pin down what makes me something. I think it drives probably my husband crazy sometimes because it's like I should certain things that I just don't, but in the same way it's like, yeah, there's stuff that I've just, I hear it and I love it. I really mean it like that. I booked the lineup based on, yeah, just like bands I loved and songs that I love, people who literally just inspired me in some capacity, even if they're not the biggest band that are going to sell the most tickets. We all saw the memes of when you custom make your own festival based on your listening habits and I did that.
I literally made the fest I wanted to see, I booked it and it's like I'm pretty sure my last version of one of those had Pool Kids, We are the Union and some of the other bands, but it's really the truth. It was just like I didn't think too much about curating something for ticket sales or for a certain look. It was just a mix of different sounding bands that don't usually get these kinds of opportunities, and if they do, they're given the 1:00 PM on a Friday instead of getting an actual headline spot at a festival. I think it's pretty cool, and it was just designed around my taste and just what I like and what resonates with me, which is exactly how I operate with No Earbuds stuff anyway, and with any bands I work with, it's like I've got to love it and I've got to feel it, and that's never changed.
Yeah, that's the gift and the curse of being a big music fan or working in the industry in some ways. You can't just pinpoint a genre or style. Even when people are like, 'Hey, Drew, what kind of music do you like?' I'm like, if it's good, I'll like it. I couldn't care less what the genre is, and that’s I think the most exciting way to listen and consume music. I know you mentioned it wasn't curated for ticket sales, but you could easily pull out four or five bands from this fest and they could sell out venues across the United States in like a package tour. You could definitely just get a really cool nationwide bill, which is just me saying I wish it was coming closer to me.
True. I have had a few requests for the fest to be happening on the east coast for sure, so it's not out of my brain. I will say that if this West Coast one goes great, then I will definitely entertain many other ideas and I have no shortage of them. I have so many ideas, but it has to go well first. Yeah. I think also this first year is kind of centered around it being five years of No Earbuds, so I really wanted it to be all clients, nobody else, and I think if I do continue to do this, which I'd love to and curating lineups like this, I would definitely open it up. I think that it's become a thing where my taste is not just my own clients, obviously those are just the bands I end up working with, but there's so much other stuff that I love that fits into the umbrella of what I've created that I feel like I could extend this to be an even bigger deal if I wanted to. I just sort of started here and I think, yeah, if it goes great, I will do it in other places for sure.
Yeah, you got to do it at home first to see how it goes. Yeah. Yeah, that makes total sense.
Totally.
I love the setup of having the two venues and having a mini SXSW kind of vibe. How difficult or what did you learn about trying to set up a festival with two venues?
I'm in the thick of it right now, frankly, of finding out all the things, right. It's kind of chaotic and I think, yeah, I wouldn't have done anything differently, but I'm in the thick of it all the logistics of the line deliveries, going to two separate places, the food got to go to two separate places, so many things have to go to two separate places, and also communicating to the fans of the show is starting in one place and kind of finishing in the other, so it's like you're checking in at one spot and it's just kind of making sure all that messaging is crystal clear is probably the biggest hurdle. I mean, I knew it was going to happen, but now that I'm living it, it's a little more tricky. But I think the vibe, the vibe I was going for was inspired by fests that I've gone to where I feel the most comfortable, and those are the ones that, they're not the ones in giant fields with massive stages and thousands of people everywhere. I love some of those and I definitely take inspiration from them, but my favorite fests are the ones where I can leave them.
I know that sounds crazy, but to have a way to get out and just get some fresh air or take a break from the show and go get a cup of coffee, I'm not encouraging people to not be at the best, obviously, but for me, I get overwhelmed. I get anxious. It's an intense and a long day, so I like the fact that these two venues are on the same block of the same street, so you don't even have to cross the street. You can just kind of go back and forth for a couple of sets while the two shows are going out at the same time, and I just like the fact that you can get that fresh air. You can just step out if you need to. There's just something nice about that, and the fact that the walk between the two is so short, it's like, yeah, it's just encouraging people to breathe a little bit and just get out
And each band gets to be showcased without feeling like they're pushed down the lineup, which is really cool. It's a really smart way to give all the artists the appropriate amount of shine for something like this.
I purposely wanted that - as chaotic as it is to kind of pull off. I wanted it so that if you really wanted to see every single band play, you could actually see them all. Even the ones that have a little bit of overlap, the overlap is five minutes, so it's like if you really wanted to get wild with it, you could go back and forth.
I don't know if you really need to, but it's up to you. I think when we hit that part of the day, there's stuff for everybody to engage with based on where they're at in their day. But yeah, I think I wanted it to be like, if I wanted to see everybody, I kind of could just because it's, yeah, then there's not that pressure that, oh my God, you have to choose me or somebody else or whatever. I don't know. I just wanted to have it be as inclusive for everybody in every possible way, I guess.
I love that. I think obviously the bands at the top of the bill are very well known and much beloved, and this is not a question for you to pick favorites, but for the people who are coming to the No Earbuds Fest because they're huge Glass Beach fan or they love Pool Kids, what band that's billed underneath them do you think that fan will come away being blown away by, like 'this is my new favorite band,’ obviously you want it to be all the bands, but who do you think is going to be that band or bands who are just going to fucking knock the socks off people who are going maybe just for the top of bill bands?
Yeah, great question. I would say for Glass Beach from all the way down, I mean there's Perennial, we'll probably be a really fun one for 'em to watch and they'll be playing fairly early. I think Jhariah is an obvious connection point there. Their fans are a lot of the same people, and if there's by chance a Glass Beach fan that isn't a fan of Jhariah, yeah, I feel like that's, that's going to be a set they remember for sure. And Jhariah plays just a few sets before Glass Beach.
As for Pool Kids. It's La Fonda. Their album that came out last year was produced by the same producer who made Pool Kids’ self-titled record, so obvious production tie-ins there and Talker is another one that I think Pool Kids’ fans will dig. Talker's got a really cool energy to her and her live show. She's got a chaotic Kathleen Hanna presence that I love, and I just think there's a pop centric connection for those fans.
And then if you can't come to see somebody like Dollar Signs who haven't played in California in years, you'll probably love Teens in Trouble Set. You'll love JR Slayer, some cool indie rock power pop stuff. There's really so many through lines between all the bands that it's like, if you love Perennial and JR Slayer, great. Those two are a good combo together. They're guitar nerds. There's just so many little kind of ties that are happening all over the fest that it's rad, and I definitely want it to be that way where, yeah, a lot of the people may come for the bands they know, but I encourage them to come early and see something different because there's just so much going on, and I think that was part of the intention was to fill that early part of the lineup with stuff that needs a spotlight because I think it's rad and these people don't get these chances that often.
Yeah, I definitely hear the through line through all those artists. When this idea was percolating and coming to fruition, how excited were your artists to want to play on this fest? What was the excitement level there?
I mean, most people wanted to play it. I feel like everybody wanted to. It was just a matter of availability and budget and trying to figure out what could I build with what I had to work with and who was available. And it was part of the reason I chose to do it in Pomona as well was that I felt like putting it in Los Angeles itself was like, that's a big market to ask people to play when that's a big city. They should be developing their headline business there if possible. So I decided to kind of do it a little bit somewhere different so we could pull in a little bit of a different crowd as well.
That's rad. I love Pool Kids. I think they are the best live band I’ve seen recently. They were here in Indianapolis literally the month before the self-titled released.
Yeah, they're nuts. I've seen them a fair amount of time's live now and just truly expert level shit. I can't wait to see 'em.
Just the showmanship, but while still nailing all their parts and they're just the most fun band.
Yeah, they're nuts. They're just the best. I'm so happy they're playing. They're, they're one of my favorite live bands too. They pull it off like nobody else.
I want 'em to be the biggest band ever.
It feels right. It feels like it's coming.
I'm really stoked that they're on this inaugural No Earbuds fest. It feels right that they and Glass Speech, and We Are The Union are on it, quite frankly, they all just feels like essential OG No Earbuds-type band, so it just feels right that they're here for the first festival.
Yeah, totally. I feel like Pool Kids is one that I started working with right when I started No Earbuds. Glass Beach pretty much within a year of starting No Earbuds. And then We Are The Union, same thing within a year. They were all within the first year to two years, so that was sort of part of the booking was a little bit of bands that mean something to this and that speak for something to the story of No Earbuds and sort of telling that story in a bigger way.
So yeah, it's rad that they're a part of it and saying even some of the smaller bands, it's a couple, there's three or four of 'em that are super young new bands that I've gotten really excited about in the last couple of years. Then there's stuff like Talker who I've been working with Talker since I started No Earbuds, so it's like a lot of these people are just real ride or die people for me, and I really appreciate them. So I'm trying to give them an experience that they've not had before. And maybe it is year one, we'll find out if it's scrappy. I'm doing my best. I'm trying to think of everything that no one ever thinks of and make sure that these bands feel crazy supported in doing this and get a unique experience out of it that they're not going to get anywhere else.
And then I love the newsletter zine idea. That I was a part of that. I feel very honored, but what was the inspiration behind having something like that being circulated to the first 100 or 150 or so people coming through to No Earbuds Fest?
Sure. Well, my initial idea was I wanted to, because I knew I was booking bands that pretty much nobody knows about in the very early parts of the Fest, I wanted to incentivize people to come early. So I thought about things, I feel like sneaker companies do this kind of shit and stuff where it's a limited drop or something. So I was like, okay, what if I made swag bags like Michael Scott style that were a bunch of free knickknack things,
Stuff We all Get.
Stuff We All Get. And so I thought, okay, I'll do those for the first a hundred people to show up and inside of them I was trying to think of what could I put, and so obviously I have sponsors for The Fest, so I got a lot of little key chains and stickers and stuff like that. But then, I don't know, I just thought about a zine. I don't know where it came from frankly. It was just an idea. And like I said, I have several of those all the time. So it's usually just a matter of do I have the energy to take an idea from that stage to the finish line and I'll use my Twitter most of the time to feel it out. I'll post something, just see what the reaction is. And I remember I posted something about the zine just to feel out interest, and I had to have gotten 250 emails and DMs and just an insane amount of people that I really love and respect were like, ‘this seems interesting.’
And I was like, okay, there's interest here. There's interest in the idea that doesn't exist yet that I'm not even sure I'm going to finish. But now I feel a little bit more people want to be involved with stuff I'm doing. So it's like it wouldn't be all on me. I think finding out that there were some people who could help me with art and with the layout and writing things and things like that, finding out there were some people who wanted to be a part of it, took it from an idea into, okay, I think we can pull this off honestly. But it was nice to have somebody who was an expert like Patrick Crowley, who is a former editor at Billboard. They reached out to me and was just like, ‘I love doing stuff like this and I would love to help make this look as cool as it is.’
And John Allison Weiss designed the cover and the back cover as well and altogether, and then obviously everybody who wrote for it, like you and photographers, it exists because so many people helped make that happen, and Smartpunk is helping print. And so yeah, it all just spurred from an initial idea of giving people value for coming early and checking out these bands they don't know that well, and this zine being like, I love going to the Fest and getting the Fest booklet when you check in that has, it's huge. It's really thick. They've got hundreds and hundreds of bands that play, but every band has a paragraph and a little information about them. So I kind of loved that. And same on the website, I believe on the Fest website. I just loved that physical feeling of something I could look at in between bands or when I'm home or flying or waiting at the airport or something and just read about all these bands. So it was kind of like my version of that. And yeah, it's beautiful. I'm very excited. The limited copies will just be those first hundred people at the No Earbuds Fest, and that'll be the only print copies I do. And then after the fest, at some point I'll put it online
As someone who got to see the layout and the finished product in PDF form, it is beautifully designed. You want to to be one of the first a hundred people to get that shit. It is super dope - it flows so well and it’s so cool. And I like all the unique ways everyone approached writing about it instead just like your boilerplate type bio, which was, that's what I was trying to do with the Queen of Jeans. I was like, let's make this fun. I just don't want, there's so many bios you read about this band and get press releases, so let's write about it if you haven't heard them before. So it's such a good idea. And when you mentioned so many people reached out - I know for me personally, I was like, yeah, I want to help out. I want to help Jamie. I just think that's such a testament to what you've built with this and just your time before and the friendships and relationships you’ve fostered. People want to see you shine. And it’s rad so many people had that mindset of ‘yeah, I'm going to help Jamie in whatever way she needs.’ And it's super dope to hear how excited everyone is and I couldn't be more over the moon for you.
Thanks, bud. I appreciate that.
I feel like you've probably been asked this question a bunch of times, but what feels like success for you for the No Earbuds Fest? Or have you already felt it? Are you still just too thick in the weeds right now and you’ll know it when you feel it?
God. When I can see that people, actual humans will actually show up, that will make me feel like I know. I see that the tickets are selling, so I know it's happening, but there's still this sense of disbelief, I think, until I'm sure that there are people physically in the building that I have that giant fear of failure. But I think that's pretty common, and being vulnerable comes with a healthy amount of terror, and I think that that's just what I'm feeling. So I think success will be that people show up and have a good time and yeah, just that people are there having a good time, everyone's safe. No sketchy shit happens and yeah, that's kind of my dream scenario.
Yeah, no, yeah, you'll have your Michael Scott “My heart is very full” moment, I'm sure.
And then after I will be so offline. You have no idea. I have been going so hard with this fest that I will disappear even harder. I cannot wait. (laughs)
thanks to Jamie once again - if you live in California and you don’t go to the No Earbuds Fest this weekend you will probably regret it forever. If you haven’t gotten your ticket yet you can do so here. Also check out the website. I will be vicariously living through all of you who attend this weekend.