Upstart Booking Company, Gravity Given Productions, Hosting End of Summer Music Festival at Dave & Buster’s Dockside
by John Dempsey
Saul Dratman of Gravity Given Productions has put together quite a line-up to end the Summer Season at Dave & Buster’s on Delaware Ave. Many local favorites will be playing throughout the day and night on the dockside bar. The event coincides with the Red Bull Flugtag. The event is happening on the Camden side of the Delaware, but Dockside will have one of the best views in Philadelphia. What goes great with the atmosphere of a Red Bull Flutag? How ’bout some adult beverages and rock ‘n roll.
The line-up for the festival is stacked. John & Brittany, Bong Hits for Jesus, Mach 22, The Jackson, Rider, The Good Excuses, Phil La Placa, and more. Bong Hits is fresh off of playing their biggest show to date. They played with Sublime with Rome and Cypress Hill at the Festival Pier. They also just released a new EP – Low Rent Hustlers. John and Brittany, Mach 22, and The Jackson Rider all recently played the first Annual Liberty Fest at The Legendary Dobbs. And each band seems to be mixing something up in the studio. Phil La Placa may sound familiar from his “Even the Res” days. He has been frequenting local haunts as an acoustic artist more recently. He still brings his A game, strong songwriting with vocals that truly portray the emotion of the words.
The Festival started to come together back in July. Stephen Rose of Bong Hits put Dratman in contact with an intern at a David Ivory’s Recording Studio who also works at Dave & Busters. They wanted an awesome rock line-up to end the Summer Season. Dratman knew how to put one together.
Dratman has been running Gravity Given Productions since March, earlier this year. He has started to book bands regularly at Rebel Rock Bar in Northern Liberties. He put together Conniefest at Connie Mac’s in Pennsauken over the summer. He is working towards making that and annual occurrence. He even has a night booked at The Grape Room at the end of the month. He is moving quickly for someone just getting into the business; a business that can extremely taxing at times.
Dratman is a local musician himself. His band Give Me Gravity is also playing the Fest. He credits some of his success to being more in tune with other local musicians, “It has helped me greatly because I’ve become friendly with musicians on the local scene. Because I’m a musician I feel I know what the bands I book are looking for. They want drink tickets and fair cuts. I’d rather the bands get paid over myself.”
Dratman hasn’t only been working hard on planning- Give Me Gravity just wrapped up an EP they released in July. They’ve been getting spins of their single “Leave” on 93.7 WSTW’s Hometown Heroes Show. They have a pretty solid indie, pop/punk rock sound. At times they remind you of Taking Back Sunday, minus the double vocals in every song.
So if you’re looking to do something this Saturday, whether it’s all day, afternoon, evening, or night, you should head down to Dave & Busters. There will be drinks, loads of plus local original music, and plenty of opportunities to generally be a menace.
