This year marks the 18th outing for Sideshow, a blend of music, visual arts and creativity from a variety of mediums at Yellow Cab Tavern. Musician and Sideshow music coordinator Joe Augustin and members of Dipspit and Basement Moonshine visited the WYSO studios for a preview of this year's event live on Kaleidoscope.
"For me, the biggest thing about Sideshow is that so many of my favorite friendships in the Dayton art and music community came from working together with people on this Sideshow project," said Augustin. "I haven't been around since the beginning, but I've been doing it since Sideshow 9, and... I mean, even just here in the studio tonight, that's how I met Victoria, who's now here playing with Basement Moonshine. That's how met the guys from Dipspit. It was a really fun year, and it just kept me coming back to Dayton more and more."
Sideshow allows nonartists and artists alike the chance to experience what the community has to offer and to forge new connections.
"If you're a gigging musician and a bunch of your friends are musicians, you don't always get to go see them play," said Victoria Harper of Basement Moonshine. "So I know at SideShow, I get to see people play that I may not get to. So for me it's awesome just to have that variety of people. And then I've met several artists. It's funny. I met [Basement Moonshine bandmate] Antoinette as a musician and she met me as the flag girl for Dipspit. And so she didn't know I was a musician and I didn't know she was an artist. And so we completely had like role reversal, but that's kind of the awesome thing about it is, is you kind of, you know, you meet in these different circumstances and have this crazy kind of experience. You never know what's gonna happen. And now here you are in a band together."
This year's event will be one-day, Friday, May 23 with a special preview night on Thursday, May 22.
"I feel like the it's going to be a well-attended event because there there are so many new new voices and and hearing the same people a different way. And you get a lot of different audiences. It is no different than going to a large festival, you know, one of those big ones and you're seeing all these bands because you're going to see one big band," said Dip from Dipspit.
All Sideshow events are free and open to the public.
