Super Stoked for more Spaghetti

Seth Casana and Mickey Glago of Midnight Spaghetti Productions are not the type of people to settle for “good enough”. As directors of their production company, members of the band, Midnight Spaghetti and the Chocolate G-Strings and founders and managers of the annual Spaghettifest three-day music festival at Natural Chimneys in Mount Solon, these two entrepreneurs are always in search of what they can do to make their company and band better and the festival bigger.
Their latest accomplishments include having Scratch from the award-winning hip-hop group, the Roots perform at this year’s festival, a completed full-length documentary about Spaghettifest 5 and plans to make an even more comprehensive documentary covering Spaghettifest 6 set to take place the weekend of September 26-28.
“This year we’re expecting between 750 and 1,000 people,” predicted Casana. “Our goal is always to improve with each year. This will be our biggest yet with 40 bands.”
However, the event last Thursday night at the Court Square Theater was not just a promotion for Spaghettifest 6, but a celebration of last year’s festival, which was fully documented by a 3-man team from Cave House Studios.
“We met Seth at an MC competition and helped him edit videos from Spaghettifest 4,” explained the director of the Spaghettifest 5 documentary, Mike Frank. “After working on that we decided to do something more comprehensive. We shot as many bands as possible at the festival and I fell in love with it.”
Though Frank started out in the animation side of film after graduating from Full Sail University in Orlando, Florida, he turned to live-film, with special interest in musical events and established Cave House Studios, now operating out of Fredrickburg, VA.
After meeting Casana and editing a rough collection of films from Spaghettifest 4, Casana and Frank decided to take documentation of the event to a new level. After the 3-day festival last September, they had over 40 hours of footage, which was sifted through and the best 90-minutes were selected and smoothly edited into the professional documentary shown Thursday night.
“It was my first feature-length anything and was the longest, most intense project I’ve ever done,” said Frank. “We shot for the whole weekend and while the two other guys had breaks, I don’t think I ever stopped. I didn’t eat because I had to get it all! It was very physical.”
It was also successful.
“I was blown away by the quality and variety of music,” said Frank. “Midnight Spaghetti and The Afromotive were some of the best to record and Murphy’s Kids has one of the most energetic moments on film. We had heard their music so we knew exactly where to be to capture the best shot.”
Local favorite, Murphy’s Kids, who performed in Harrisonburg the night before the film’s debut last week, has been performing at the festival since 2003 when lead singer John Charlet managed his way onto the bill in an unconvential way.
“John actually sat through one of Mickey’s classes, even though he wasn’t supposed to be there,” laughed Casana. “He waited until the end, handed Mickey one of their CD’s and asked if they could be in the festival. We listened to it, realized they were really good and they’ve been in it ever since.”
This year Murphy’s Kids have landed a prime time slot and will be opening for the Friday night act, The Afromotive on the main stage, delivering their typical, high-energy performance fans have come to expect and love.
“Murphy’s Kids was fun to record because we didn’t know what to expect performance-wise,” said Frank. “When we told them we’d be recording they gave us a warning saying, ‘It’s calm now, but it’s going to get crazy,’ and told us to stay off the stage. It was an accurate warning.”
The documentary also captured shots of the venue, Natural Chimneys, the audience throwing frisbees by day and dancing by night and has several short statements from festival-goers interspersed between the many musical performances.
“We wanted to showcase it because Spaghettifest is a blast,” said Frank. “We wanted to show what it was like to be there and give a feel for the sights and sounds together. This year our goal is to capture that even better.”
The documentary shown Thursday premiered following Midnight Spaghetti’s music video “Rat Fight”, which was produced by Indigenous Films director Ryan Poe, who filmed and edited the video single-handedly. The entire video was shot in only a day, but the result was impressively professional.
Following the music video, there was a short introduction for the documentary and viewers were encouraged to check out the website, www.spaghettifest.com. The DVD is available to be watched online and a limited number of copies are available for sale.
Following the documentary which featured a 30-minute performance from Midnight Spaghetti and the Chocolate G-Strings and clips from Electric Baby, Jounce, Ryan Villanueva, DJ Maskell, Freekbass, Unfortunate Sons, The Transmitters and others, viewers were again encouraged to sign up on an e-mail list to receive more information and to get their tickets before leaving.
This year the festival will benefit The Pancreatic Cancer Action Network in honor of Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch. Though he passed away due to pancreatic cancer in July of 2008, Pausch has become a phenomenon with his book and presentation, “Last Lecture: Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams,” which he delivered to an audience of 400 people at the university in September of 2007.
“He is so inspiring and has had such an incredible effect with his lecture and book,” said Casana. “This is just our way of saying thanks.”
Spaghettifest 6 will give hundreds the opportunity to say thank you as ticket sales will help support The Pancreatic Cancer Action Network and give festival-goers the opportunity to see 40 bands in 3 days, meet dozens of like-minded music-lovers and enjoy the beauty of Natural Chimneys Regional Park.
“Every year it’s more awesome,” said Casana. “With 40 bands and an even better, more comprehensive documentary, this is going to be the best year yet.”
Between 3 days of camping, 3 stages of bands and the opportunity to have a cameo in the Spaghettifest 6 Documentary, what could be better?



For more on Spaghettifest 6: http://www.spaghettifest.com
For more on The Pancreatic Cancer Action Network: http://pancan.org/