TIMMONSVILLE — The fourth installment of a mixed-genre music festival will descend on a rural Pee Dee winery and wedding venue with three stages featuring hardcore metal, punk and electronic acts, as well as drag queen performances and wrestling matches.
Freak Fest, slated for Oct. 16-19 at Cartersville Country Winery in Timmonsville, is organizer Ethan Lewis’s labor of love for the outcasts, subcultures and, well, “freaks.”
“The festival is for anybody who doesn’t fit in the outside world, any form of alternative culture, because that, at the end of the day, is what all these subcultures fall under,” said Lewis, who’s been booking shows in Columbia and Florence for years.
Zach Grondines, a musician from Charleston who’s performed and attended every year, said the festival is a unique amenity for hardcore music fans in South Carolina and along the East Coast. It’s part of a larger trend Grondine has witnessed, one where metal and hardcore scenes are flourishing in Charleston, Columbia and Myrtle Beach.
“He’s kind the the centerpiece for all this,” Grondine said of Lewis. “He has his hands in many different cookie jars and is spreading many different webs around. So it’s really cool to see him really put in the effort to help people to grow.”
The origin of Freak Fest
Lewis hosted the first Freak Fest next door to the winery on the farm he grew up on in Florence County. The next year, after more than 100 people showed up, Lewis was motivated to expand the festival.
The festival has since grown to four days, three stages and hundreds of attendees. When speaking to Free Times Oct. 7, Lewis said pre-sales were already outpacing last year’s ticket sales when the festival saw more than 300 people.
A four-day pass to the festival, which includes showers and “first come, first serve” camping, is only $70. Lewis said the affordable price was intentional, even though he’s been pressured to raise prices.
“Every time I do this, I take a financial risk,” Lewis said. “But … I’m never going to get in over my head to the point that I’m having to ask people to pay an absurd amount of money.”
In addition to a policy not to turn anyone away at the door, Lewis said Freak Fest adopts a strict no bigotry policy.
“My policy is what the culture stands for, which is no racism, no sexism, no homophobia, no transphobia, no discrimination of any kind against any identity,” he said.
A mixed-genre show
The original Freak Fest was born out of Lewis’s desire to book a show with all the genres he loves — metal, punk, hip-hop, electronic and even drag.
“Rave culture and hardcore culture are very similar, even in how you express yourself,” Lewis said. “Those are the two genres of music that make people move, more than any other genre.”
Grondines is a vocalist in the Charleston metalcore band GOW, which has played Freak Fest every year.
He remembers the first festival: no stage, no lights, the band played in the dirt while an attendee tended to a camping grill.
“From start to finish, nobody cared that was in a field,” Grondines said. “People were there for the sake of music.”
Seeing the turnout from that first festival ignited Lewis’s passion to keep creating something for the subcultures who accepted and supported him when he moved to Columbia.
“It was originally going to just be a one-time thing, and then the turnout was insane, and it just completely reignited the flame within me, and it just kind of wrote itself from there,” Lewis said.
What can you expect from Freak Fest?
At first, Lewis was worried about the cultural exchange of metalheads, goths and other alternative Southerners descending upon the rural community he grew up in, but that first Freak Fest helped ease people’s fears about camping somewhere remote — and the community has welcomed them with open arms.
“As many negative things that come from the South, there’s a lot of beautiful things that come from living here that people don’t get to see,” Lewis said. “And I feel like this gives you the best of both worlds.”
This year, the addition of Palmetto Wrestling Club will bring another popular subculture in South Carolina: independent professional wrestling.
There will also be drag queen performances, a “family dinner” for staff and VIP ticket holders, and a village with about 40 vendors.
Music acts performing include GOW, Newground Death Rugby, Future Coffins, Graves of Valor and End of Sanity.
Camping and parking are first come, first serve, but Lewis said there’s so much space in the area, he doesn’t expect to run out of room.
For tickets, head to freakfest.bigcartel.com for prices and additional information.