It’s almost that time of year again, where thousands upon thousands of black t-shirt and jorts wearing music fans will descend upon Gainesville, FL in hopes of seeing their favorite bands and drinking just enough to not remember seeing anything all. While there are hundreds of well-known names on the Fest schedule this year, we wanted to showcase a handful of the bands who are heading down to Florida and playing for the very first time. So keep reading, check out all the bands in this series, and get to know some really great under the radar talent!
Next on the roster is Long Beach, CA’s HAILACAB. The band – which features members of Caskitt, Ursula, Upper/Downer, and The Sleeping Sea King – has released two singles earlier this year. Make sure to check them out on Sunday, October 30th at Vecinos at 10:30PM.
Stream their first single, “Better Weather,” below:
Stream their second single, “Elephants in the Greenroom,” below and make sure to catch them during Fest weekend!
Interview
How long has HAILACAB been a band?
We started tinkering around in the beginning of 2021, and then got more serious that fall, so I’d say we’ve been a band for a year.
Have you attended Fest before?
I, Matt Caskitt, have been and played multiple times. But this year will be a first for Jesse, Bert, and Bruce!
What are you stoked for during Fest weekend?
I’m very excited to help bring the joy of Fest to both of my bands playing this year (HAILACAB and Matt Caskitt & The Breaks). Fest is like a family vacation/reunion, but you actually wanna go… like truly want to be there. The rest of my bandmates are definitely excited to see what Fest is all about, and to see a lot of their favorite bands in one spot! Bruce, one of our guitar players is a wrestler and I can’t wait to show him and the guys Fest Wrestling!
What’s your best Fest story?
I’ll go with Toilet Pizza. In 2015, my former band, Caskitt, toured to and from Fest and shared a hotel room with our friends from Southern California: Dudes Night. We arrived in Gainesville in the wee morning hours of Fest Friday and no one in Dudes Night was coherent to answer their phone, so we couldn’t get the hotel info, so we slept very uncomfortably in the van. Friday Night, I got blackout drunk and slept on the floor of our shared hotel room at The Wyndham.
Those two nights of poor choices definitely contributed to me waking up sick on Saturday, Caskitt’s Fest debut at Loosey’s. I was bummed but extremely excited to rip my first Fest set. So I decided to stay in the hotel all day Saturday and rest my body and throat for the show. I had some Five Star pizza delivered but had to order an absurd amount for one person in order to get delivery. I ate like 1/2 a pie, left the rest for my hotel-mates, and headed out for our set around 5pm. Set ripped! Crowd went nuts! But an hour later, the sickness is wiping me out and I don’t want to get other people sick, so I go to Rite Aid for bottles of NyQuil and I head back to the hotel room to crash.
Queue: 1am Sunday of Fest. I awake to a goddamned party in our hotel room. Dudes Night and the rest of Caskitt have invited a shitload of people to party in our room. I’m a bottle of NyQuil deep, so I awoke momentarily only once during the debauchery. I wake up several hours later. The party is done. Bodies stacked on bodies in this hotel room. Cans everywhere. Bottles everywhere. Decency nowhere. I stumble through a forest of bad tattoos and body hair to the toilet to relieve myself of my fest-flu-piss and mid-stream find that I am watering a slice of pizza in the toilet. Seven years later and no one who was in that room at the Wyndham Hotel has owned up to toilet pizza. And if Jimmy Gomez says it was him, he is lying but he knows and is covering for who did it. Toilet Pizza.
Let’s say you’re booking the lineup of a festival that represents you as a band. What would the top 5 headliners be?
What does the band have coming up? What can we all look forward to from ya’ll?
HAILACAB is looking to record a full-length next year and play out a lot more. We’re all pretty busy with day jobs and other bands. Me w/ MC&TB, Jesse w/ Ursula, Bert w/ Upper Downer, and Bruce w/ Sleeping Sea King as well as wrestling. But we’re super stoked to play this year and hope to be back year after year.
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