When I get Kieran Kelly on the phone, my main question is simply: why? Why put on a show in 2016 with three bands that were predominantly active in 2010? “Well, it’s entirely because of Dave (from Calvinball) and Lucy getting married. I thought I’d capitalise on the fact that you and Joe would be back, and obviously Matt’s around. When I knew Calvinball would play, I used it as leverage to get ONSIND to play another gig and then I got drunk and messaged Wakey Ste and asked if Pudge fancied playing. He said yes, so, here we are.”
Nostalgia is fun as hell, especially when you were involved the first time around. But six years is a long time in anything, especially punk music. Times change, bands are started, bands break up, what once was cool is now probably not. Kelly is aware of this, though. “I made a conscious effort not to make an entire ‘back-in-the-day’ fest, so I got some newbies in (and Throwing Stuff) to balance out the old and new”, he declares. He’s excited by the new bands on the bill, too. “I asked Honey Joy to play and through them I heard of Molar who are really fresh. Then I met the singer from WACO when he came to Manchester Punk Festival – his band sounds sick and is like Great Cynics mixed with something else. Then there’s Aerial Salad opening up. It’s this really enthusiastic kid from around here who gets super involved at shows, they sound like they’ve listened to Green Day and Rancid loads. He said he was super excited to be on the lineup, which is really nice to hear.”
There’s an assuredness about Kelly, a self-belief that he knows what he’s doing and knows why he’s doing it. “This ManchFESTer is happening because I really wanna put another gig on at The Star and Garter before it closes forever, and I figured this would be a good Saturday to do it. The weekend before the wedding, Calvinball being around…I thought ‘Fuck it, we may as well just get a load of mates and pack out the Star and Garter for potentially one last Moving North time’.”
There is no indication that any gig that Moving North promotes is ever a chore, ever feels like a job or a strain. Kelly does shows when, and how, he wants. “It’s kinda cool just being able to stick on a few bands every now and again. I’ll keep doing it as much as I can whilst existing as a human.” So, what’s the plan for the future? “I guess the plan is to just keep on keeping on. Just do shows when they pop up if I want to and I’m not too busy, team up with local promoters and I just want to try and get loads of different people trying to watch loads of different bands, constantly. I just think it’s good if you can keep getting bands with the whole DIY culture coming through – I’ll always have gigs for them.”
So, Moving North will always be very much rooted in DIY, then? “Yeah, well, there’s no fun in anything else, is there?”
ManchFESTer takes place on Saturday 27th August and tickets are available here.
You can find the Facebook event here.