Our second ‘Mo-Wave interview comes to you from the Chop Suey greenroom at an hour that felt very late. We later confirmed that it was about 9 PM. It was a long day. Tyler Morgenstern sat down with Seth Garrison, lead vocalist for Seattle-based dream pop quartet Night Cadet and festival organizer, to chat/yell about queer art, lousy budgets, and pride.
Where is your band from, and how long have you been playing together?
We’ve been together for probably a year, and we live here in Seattle. But Barrett [Anspach, violinist and composer] and I moved here from New York about two years ago.
What draws you to ‘Mo-Wave as an artist, and in your case, as an organizer?
I think people often forget about how much cool shit queer people do. So to me the festival was just a way to be like “Oh yay! Look at all this cool stuff we do!” Every band you know has a gay person in it, and that’s kind of awesome. And with ‘Mo-Wave in particular, there’s just so many different kinds of music. It’s so eclectic. Tonight is a perfect example. There’s metal, dance, punk, us–dreamy shoegaze. It’s so diverse, what ‘Mo-Wave is presenting. And it’s great. At least I think it’s great (author’s note: it was really great).
I saw Jordan O’ Jordan this morning and, oh my God. It made me feel proud. It made me feel so proud to be gay. So that’s another reason why I’m doing it. It makes me feel very proud.
And this is another big question for you as an organizer: what can be done to get more queer people on stage?
Well. Having more funds means you can do more, obviously. Being able to pay people is huge. Right now we’re shoestringing it, and we’re just trying to break even. It’s expensive to do this. The issue isn’t finding queer people that are awesome. They’re everywhere, and this is just one step in putting the spotlight on that. But I think in the future, putting on an all-ages event is important. We didn’t do that this year because it doesn’t work here very well, and we all have full time jobs. Just to do what we did was a sacrifice we all had to make.