Indian Runner frontman Michael White is someone who believes in strong community support and a “punk rock self-sufficiency,” as he puts it. His group should be familiar to anyone who has attended a KCSS event in the past year or so or regularly tunes into 91.9. They didn’t make it into this weekend’s Rocksgiving, the radio station’s annual fall show, and White decided to turn that initial bummer into something positive. He and the rest of Indian Runner wrangled up some of the other KCSS regulars who didn’t make the cut to host their own hoedown this Saturday, Mocksgiving.
“We were sort of disappointed by the fact that a lot of the bands we love didn’t get booked so we planned out a show the next day [as a] kind of supplement,” White said. “The Airlings, Alida Mckeon, Of Us Giants and Table for Five are all really great bands that have played KCSS events in the past, and because of that, working with them seemed natural.”
“I think Mocksgiving is a clever idea,” Garrett Neeley, Productions Director at KCSS, said. “The lineup has bands that I would not want to miss and the fact that it’s been set for the night after Rocksgiving makes this an incredible weekend for someone to get to know what’s going on with local music.”
In addition to these local acts, The Moms, a punk group out of New Jersey, is slated to play. The Moms recently got signed to the indie label Paper + Plastic, and they are stopping in the Valley during their tour across the U.S. Indian Runner, having played with them in the past, reached out.
“As well as being a very talented punk band they are also some very nice and down to earth people,” White said. “We bonded with them over our mutual love for New Jersey post-hardcore band Thursday and our general love for early-2000s emo music. So when we found out they were going to be touring in the area about the same time Mocksgiving was happening, we jumped at the opportunity to get them on the show.”
White has been putting on shows since he was 15. He speaks of being involved in the local hardcore scene, and how the spirit of those shows – often put
on wherever space was available – informs Mocksgiving and the other events he hosts.
“It wasn’t uncommon back then to catch local hardcore bands playing in garages, local churches and parking lots with thrown-together sound systems and borrowed amplifiers,” White said. “I really want to bring some of that grit to our local scene now. For Mocksgiving our drummer Kameron Schumann actually booked most of the bands. He’s a little bit younger than the rest of us, so it was nice seeing him take the reins and really make this thing work. It gives me some hope to see the younger generations of musicians really become invested in the ‘do it yourself’ way of thinking.”
Mocksgiving is being held in the Grizzly Rock Café and Grill – a site for many KCSS events and local shows. To Indian Runner, the popular Turlock venue was the only real choice, an extension of what the festival is all about.
“The owner of the Grizzly Rock, Frank Sanders, has always been very supportive of our local scene and is a very easy guy to work with,” White said.
“Since the conception of the show I always thought of it as being sort of a more homegrown version of what KCSS is doing with Rocksgiving. From the local brewing companies on tap to the music coming out of the speakers, the whole event is a very good example of what supporting your community looks like.”
It’s easy to imagine Mocksgiving as a knock against KCSS for going in a slightly different direction. But White doesn’t see it that way. While there has not been a lot of thought yet put into the future of Mocksgiving (that would betray its punk rock grittiness), he sees it as working hand-in-hand with Rocksgiving, perhaps being the show that books the groups that don’t make it in each year.
“We really want to see this event as something that coincides with Rocksgiving and not something that is separate,” White said.
“After all, we are all supporting the same local music scene, and I think there is plenty of local talent to be displayed at both events.”