Today, BumbleFest will celebrate the seventh anniversary of the printed version of PureHoney Magazine with its annual indie rock music festival in West Palm Beach.
“Every year we throw a party, but about three years ago, the party got a little bigger, and we started calling it BumbleFest,” says Steve Rullman, publisher behind the Florida-based PureHoney Magazine.
The third BumbleFest is once again larger than last year’s event. This year there will be 34 bands, 12 more than last year. Last year there were four stages. This time, the event unfolds across six stages in five different buildings on Clematis Street. The concerts are all scheduled to take place on the 500 block of the street. Two stages can be found inside Respectable Street. Meanwhile, Dntn WPB, Kismet Vintage, Hullabaloo, Voltaire and Subculture coffee will all feature one stage each.
“You have to have space to put 34 bands on one stage in one night. It’s just fun; people get to come around and bounce around business to business,” says Rullman. “There’s a little spark in the air, and there is a sort of energy in the air because people are following the schedule they want to see.”
Rullman has also strived to make Bumblefest bigger by booking bands from out of state to share the bill with the many local artists that make up the line up of the event. “This year I started by reaching out to touring bands who wanted to come down here, and once I got some of those confirmed, I filled it with bands we worked with the past years,” explains Rullman. “There are five or six touring bands, and the rest are locals. Ten are from Miami, and the rest is split up between Fort Lauderdale and West Palm.”
This year, among the big headliners (or touring bands) are the Lumerians from Oakland, Santoros from Los Angeles, Gustaf from New York, and The Pharmacy’s Scott Yoder
(pictured at right; photo by Eleanor Petry), from Seattle. Booking thousands of concerts in the last 27 years, Rullman is very excited to grow BumbleFest even more for the future and is thinking about creating a more regular music event featuring local music.
At least a thousand people are expected to assist in making the 34 concerts happen. “This event is just a way for people to actually check out a whole bunch of different bands in one night,” notes Rullman. “A lot of people don’t have time to search for good music anymore. It just gives people an opportunity to quickly and easily see a bunch of stuff all in one night, in one sitting.”
The music festival starts at 5 p.m. and continues until 4 a.m. “It’s just a lot of fun,” declares Rullman. “The vibe has always been good. The thing I hear the most from people is the energy, and the vibe is just very different from other festivals. It’s not dark, angry or violent. It’s a good energy.”
For more information about the schedule and the bands, click here. Tickets purchased in advance are only $10.
