Local bands fill stage for 11th annual ICT Fest

Local music fans packed the stage area Saturday evening for the final night of ICT Fest, a three-day event that bills itself as a bastion for underground local and regional bands.

Since Thursday, 45 bands have been in town to play the festival, and about 60 percent of those are Wichita-based, festival organizer Matthew Clagg said. No matter where a band is from, they’re “all dope,” according to the festival website.

This is the 11th time the ICT Fest has been held, though it has changed hands numerous times since its founding in 2004. There was no festival in 2008, Clagg said.

Clagg took over the festival’s operations in 2012, and, for the first time, the festival was held at El Vaquero Family and Friends, a venue on the northwest corner of Central and Cleveland, near downtown.

“My personal mission is just to have something to say every time I hear somebody say those famous words: ‘Nothing is going on in Wichita,’ ” Clagg said. “That’s just a total farce at this point. There’s something going on every night of the week that’s super-fun – you just have to look for it.”

Clagg said the average age of festival attendees ranges between 17 and 35, but he tries to recruit bands from a variety of backgrounds to play the festival, which is open to people of all ages.

That means if there is a band that cannot play bars in Wichita because its members are not yet of legal age, “they’re going to be playing at ICT Fest, if at all possible – if I can find them,” Clagg said.

The website for ICT Fest, www.ictfest.com, is intended to serve as a community resource for local bands to hook up with other local bands and to provide a list of bars that book local bands, as well as “house venues.”

Musicians set up their basements for a concert and invite people over for house shows fairly frequently, Clagg said.

“That’s kind of the haven for all-ages shows,” he said. “Everybody comes over to play on a Friday night, and everybody invites their friends. Hope we don’t get shut down by the cops.”

That sort of tight-knit music community is what events like the ICT Fest are trying to bring out, Clagg said.

“Part of the reason (the festival is held) is to get everybody together,” he said. “Just to get old bands and really young bands and bands of a wide spectrum of music together in one place, to get together and celebrate.”

This story was originally published September 5, 2015 at 8:30 PM with the headline "Local bands fill stage for 11th annual ICT Fest."