Sponsored by Wells & Co. Custom Tattoos, Looks That Kill Salon, and Sexy Goat Hot Sauces, Halfway to Halloween is an all-ages event, but attendees under 18 must be accompanied by an adult.
The festival will feature live performances from The Lurking Corpses, The Creepy Crawlers, First Jason, Pumpkin Guts, Bat Thorn, Lillian Wells, The Lollipop Kids, and The Transylvania Hellhounds. Genres span from horror punk, shock rock and glam to metal, hardcore and beyond.
Halfway to Halloween, à la a mini horror convention, will also have a vendor marketplace, offering paintings of horror and rock icons, locally designed chainmail, eclectic and paranormal ephemera, and more. HorrorShock will also have a booth with merch from bands on its label.
Sexy Goat Hot Sauces, a Kettering company, will be hosting a hot wings challenge during the festival. Attendees will have a chance to withstand the heat.
For the mythical and metaphysically minded, Queen Zoaya, a spiritual counselor, will be available for readings.
There will be a costume contest and prizes for the best dressed, to further the springtime Halloween idea.
The horror festival may lean in the PG-13 to R direction, but families and all ages are encouraged to attend.
Bridging the gap between a horror convention like HorrorHound and a punk-centric music festival, Halfway to Halloween Fest takes an à la carte approach to those two and three day weekend fests and distills the witches brew down into one packed night, into a micro festival.
Rev. Chad Wells, the chief force behind HorrorShock Records, had originally booked the date at Yellow Cab as a return of the Creepy Crawlers, his Dayton horror rock band. Discovering the dead halfway point to Halloween, the band decided to do something a little bigger, and started building out an event based around the record label.
But the festival idea soon grew beyond HorrorShock, as bands like Lurking Corpses and First Jason came on board. First Jason is fronted by Ari Lehman, the original Jason Voorhees — that is, spoiler alert, the ugly bald kid who jumps out of the water at the end of the first “Friday the 13th.”
“It’s a celebration of that lifestyle and culture and whatever we love,” Wells said. “Now that it’s a festival, it’s not just about us anymore. So we had to get the biggest bands that we could get.”
Wells has been playing live music around town since the early 1990s, namely in Cricketbows. He’s been a part of a lot of festivals, but this Halfway to Halloween Fest is a first in terms of scale for HorrorShock Records.
Horror, punk, metal, rock, and weird art fans rejoice — Halfway to Halloween Fest is like a full moon to a werewolf, a skull patch to a ripped denim jacket.
Brandon Berry writes about the Dayton and Southwest Ohio music and art scene. Have a story idea for him? Email branberry100@gmail.com.
How to go
What: Halfway to Halloween Fest
When: 6 p.m., April 26
Where: Yellow Cab Tavern, 700 E. 4th St., Dayton
Cost: $10 advanced, $15 door
Tickets: horrorshockrecords-shop.fourthwall.com/collections/tickets
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