Any pop punk fans in Leeds (or elsewhere) will have heard of Slam Dunk festival and, well, if not, then where have you been hiding? One of the best calendar days of the year for any fan of old, new, and slightly off the beaten track pop punk, the festival is fast approaching, so we caught up with the man behind the Slam Dunk brand, Ben Ray.
So where did it all begin?
I’m originally from Birmingham and I started working with music through a band I was in, putting on shows for myself and my friends bands, putting on a few other bands and that was always a part time hobby. Then I came up to university in Leeds, went to Leeds Met doing something unrelated – engineering management – and basically I got the opportunity to do my hobby shall we say as a full time career, so I dropped out of university to do that, and became the events coordinator at Leeds Met Student Union.
An easy decision by the sounds of it?
Well.. it was a sudden one shall we say that? It was one of those things where people have always got hobbies that they’d never think of doing as a full time career – sports… or even if their hobby’s knitting or something and someone turns around to you and says “would you like to knit all day for a full time career?” Suddenly that opportunity was presented and I took it. While I was doing that, on the side I started the Slam Dunk brand down at the Cockpit as a club night in 2001. Then for a couple of years I was developing the Slam Dunk brand to gigs and club nights, then in 2006 we started Slam Dunk Festival.
How did that come about?
Again, it was something we kind of fell into by accident. We had Fall Out Boy who had already done a headline gig at the university, and we had the option of having them back but we needed a big enough venue and the only venue big enough was Millenium Square. It was summer so we wanted to do it outdoors but we weren’t sure whether they would sell enough tickets themselves so we extended it a bit to a festival with about seven or eight bands. So that was just one stage. I always sort of knew that would be a one-off, because obviously with bands as big as Fall Out Boy, catching them at the right time is very hard to do, so I always knew we wouldn’t do that again. Then we moved to the university and started to build it there. It was so successful in Leeds that we decided to do a second date, but it was really important that we took exactly model that we did in Leeds and transferred it to somewhere else. It’s not exactly the same, but it’s the same sort of principle. Three years later, last year in 2013 we went to a third site.
Do you think you’d ever do a two-day thing?
No I don’t think so. I think we’ve found the niche and we don’t want to be greedy by taking it any bigger. When it becomes a two-day thing you start thinking ‘do we go for the full weekend’, and also just the quality of bands. It’s such a niche thing now – I like to have a strong line up where someone just has to look at it and go ‘right, that’s great’. I find even if you dilute it – especially when you announce a festival – even if you’ve got two of the best bands and you put on 20 bands that people haven’t heard of, it just doesn’t work.
How do you go about deciding? Will you have your eyes on who you want on the bill for a long time beforehand?
Yeah, you sort of pretty much know. You book from the top downwards. Finding a headliner is the hardest thing by far – trying to find that top level band, and there’s a lot of problems with exclusivity nowadays. A lot of bands can only do one gig over the summer, and when you’re fighting off the likes of some massive festivals like Leeds and Download.
Do you find that it’s got a lot easier to draw in those big names as Slam Dunk has got bigger itself?
Yeah it’s easier now because all the American bands have heard of it. When you start off obviously if an agent goes would you like to play a festival they’re like ‘what’s that?’ but now when they say Slam Dunk they know straight away. I think for a lot of the US bands we make sure they have such a good time – that’s one of the things I do, I like to make sure that the bands have a really good time when they get over here. That’s another reason why I do it for just one day because there’s no flip flopping – we put on a good party, then they go back to America and tell other bands how good it is.
Is the quality something you’ve found easy to uphold?
Yeah. I think the line up’s really important. It’s hard because there’s some really good upcoming bands, and quality wise they are really good. If you go to Leeds and Reading they’ve got so many slots, so many stages, 3 full days, running really early to really late, and so many slots for new upcoming bands, which unfortunately I don’t have. I’d like to put more new bands on but I can’t. I get contacted by bands all the time that don’t have management, or smaller agencies and stuff that are like ‘I’ve just found this new band, they’re great, it would be great to launch them at the festival’ but unfortunately I can’t because there’s so many bands on that level. It’s also that we want bands that have worked hard. I’ve said to a few agents this year, that even the smallest opening slots – first of all I want to see a band that’s got out there and done a headline tour under their belts and worked hard to get to where they are.
Who have you yet yo get on the bill as a headliner?
There isn’t anybody where I’m thinking ‘I must have them at some point’. I don’t wanna say that because it depends on the level of the band. Being a pop-punk festival, I suppose Blink 182 would be amazing to have as a headliner but the festival won’t ever be that big. I know where the festival is. Blink are headlining Leeds and Reading and we’re not gonna get to a stage where it’s as big as Leeds and Reading. It’s a niche festival and if we try and start competing at level we’ll fail. We’ve found a gap in the market and we’re gonna stick to it. I mean we’ve had Paramore play, You Me At Six. A lot of these bands I would never say are too big but in current situations these bands can go and sell arenas by themselves; there’s no motivation for them to headline something like this because you can’t pay the money that they need and what they’d get offered from elsewhere.
So tell us about your work with You Me At Six?
I discovered them in 2007 and we actually started Slam Dunk Records up in 2008 to launch You Me At Six. That’s another thing that helped build the brand. I discovered them, started managing them and we needed to release their first record, so we created Slam Dunk Records and put out their first release on it. We’ve done another couple of records since but it’s a very inactive record label shall we say. We release stuff when we want.
Just an obvservation from back in those early days – there certainly seemed to be a rivalry between them and Kids In Glass Houses when they’d both just started out. You Me At Six seemed to stride on right past them despite having the same fan base – can you point that to anything?
Well I worked my magic and uh… (laughs) No, I mean I do know the formula. It was obvious to me that when I started working with them, what the formula was: everything from how they looked, how they act with the fans, the tours that we got them to do, the songs that they had. How we managed it really was a good job. It was just everything. You could see the band had the package and it was very easy to push them in the right direction. It was just obvious that they were going to continue to build and their song writing ability was just brilliant.
Finally, your favourite performance from any Slam Dunk Festival of the past?
I don’t know, you know. I should have this answer prepared. See it’s the older bands that I’d see when I was younger and the kind of bands that launched and kicked off the Slam Dunk brand. That stuff was ska-punk back in the day so they’re my favourite bands. Less Than Jake this year will be a good one.