The New Colossus Festival returns this week for its biggest year yet

Photos and interview by Stacie Joy

The night before the New Colossus Festival kicks off, its founders — Mike Bell, Lio Kanine and Steven Matrick — are tucked inside Arlene's Grocery on Stanton Street, fine-tuning last-minute details. 

What began in 2019 as a modest indie-rock showcase has evolved into a sprawling, nearly weeklong, multi-venue celebration of 190 bands from around the world.

Ahead of Tuesday's kick-off, we asked the three founders about the festival's growth, identity, and future. (Find band, ticket and venue info here.) 

Mike Bell...

Lio Kanine ...

Steven Matrick...

New Colossus has expanded to six days this year, with more venues taking part. What's driving that growth? 

Lio Kanine: The simple answer is that the demand is there. People are excited to come to NYC and spend a full week here seeing cool new/up-and-coming bands. It just proves to us that live music is still valued and an important part of life. And there are so many amazing new bands that we needed more days to give them room to perform. 

How would you describe the festival's identity to someone who's never been? 

Steven Matrick: The New Colossus Festival is the most meticulously curated of all the showcase festivals. Simply put, we don't book bands as favors to people, and we insist on using our ears to figure out who plays. We also like to keep it to Indie Rock bands. Indie Rock as a genre is actually pretty wide open, as you can hear when you put on the festival playlist. So yeah, I would tell them you can see 100 bands and love them all. That's a pretty incredible thing. 

Mike Bell: The festival is a highly curated "sampler" of live music from around the world. The emerging artists we book are based on whose sound we love. The festival exists for the artists first and foremost. This is a showcase event, and its purpose is to help artists grow their careers by being seen and heard by the music industry and new fans. Secondly, the festival is for fans and centered on the live-music discovery experience. For both artists and fans, we aim to create a sense of community by keeping things close and accessible. 

Kanine: I view TNC Festival as a music-discovery platform. The people who come to TNC are huge music nerds who love seeing and hearing about new bands. It is exciting to be able to see something incredible in a small room with like-minded people. 

When you come to TNC, you not only see great live bands but also get the opportunity to make new friends, as the majority of people who come will have similar tastes as you. And that is a rare thing to find in this day and age. 

Why is the Lower East/East Village the right home for this festival? 

Kanine: Great pizza on every corner. 

Plus, it's just exciting to be able to walk around the streets of LES and know that is where The Strokes, Television, Ramones, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Walkmen, New York Dolls, Interpol, etc. all hung out and played. 

Matrick: The Lower East Side and East Village are so important to the history of music in NYC and the history of music in general. The music scene seems to keep moving east over the years, from the East Village to the Lower East Side to Williamsburg, to Bushwick, to Bed Stuy, to Ridgewood. 

It is super important for us to have a week of music back on the Lower East Side and welcome 190 bands from all over the world to play at these historic venues where many legendary bands got their start. It's also geographically awesome how close all the venues are to one another.

Bell: For nearly 200 years, the Lower East Side not only welcomed immigrants from all over the world but also served as the cradle of numerous music genres and greats in the pop, jazz, folk, and indie scenes.

What new events or parts of the lineup are you most excited about this year? 

Kanine: The Shoegaze party is my favorite event of the year. I have dreams about it year-round. It's a magical all-day event that only happens once a year. [March 7 at Arlene's Grocery.] 

Matrick: Lio and I both throw awesome label parties (Kanine and Dedstrange). I spend the year finding punk rock bands to come and play the Dedstrange day party at Pianos on Saturday, March 7. 

We've also begun presenting stages around the world in Berlin at the 8MM Festival, Rotterdam at Left of the Dial, and in Reykjavik at Iceland Airwaves. All three of those festivals are presenting stages and artists at this year's festival, which is certainly a great way for us to expand. 

Bell: It's hard to say! My tastes tend to lean toward music that makes me want to move my body. There are many of those on the playlist, and they are the artists I'm most excited to see. There is a shift in the panel programming that I am especially excited about. We are focusing on communities within cities. Building community is more important these days. 

Has the mission shifted at all since the first edition? 

Kanine: To keep it indie and fun was my mission from the start, and it is still my mission. 

Matrick: Absolutely. We were originally thinking of being an add-on to SXSW, and now we're really our own thing. We only have 20 out of 190 bands playing both, and I think people probably prefer coming to NYC to going to Texas, where things are pretty politically dodgy, even if Austin is kind of the exception to that. The mission itself, though, is to give exposure to artists from all over the world in Manhattan, and that has remained remarkably consistent. 

Bell: No. The mission has always been to support emerging artists from around the world and expose them to the U.S. market.

Where do you see New Colossus in five years if everything goes your way? 

Matrick: Hmmm. We really love what we're doing and presenting. I think the thing I'm most happy about is that we're adding partnerships every year. We have 31 partners out of about 60 shows. I'd love it if, in five years, we had, say, 100 partners on 100 shows, and that tons of labels, agencies, and PR companies were actually competing to host stages with us. 

We are getting there. This year we have more labels throwing parties: Crafted Sounds, Ernest Jenning and À La Carte Records as well as the festivals I mentioned earlier, international showcase presenters like FOCUS Wales, The Spanish Wave, and Nordic Next, media partners like Exclaim!, Bands do BK, Opposite Marco, God Is In The TV, Radio Free Brooklyn, and more. 

Kanine: As long as people still appreciate and love live music, we'll be here. I'd love to see our new Mayor at some of our showcases, watching the international bands and making friends with people from all over the world, sharing tacos and beers.