The festival is being organized by Anthony Trimble, owner of Key Sports, a Dayton race timing and management company.
“I’ve always been a big music fan, and always wanted to put on a music festival,” Trimble said. “I’ve been working on it for two years, scouting site locations and talking to investors. This was the year that it happened to all come together. Land of Illusion already has a permanent stage and built-in infrastructure, like parking. It’s not like a downtown event where everything would have to be built out.”
Besides his own fandom, Trimble was encouraged by the emerging popularity of electronic dance music (EDM), and the absence of an EDM festival in the Dayton area.
“It’s becoming like pop, because of the Chainsmokers and David Guetta,” he said. “A lot of people know EDM even if they don’t know they know it, because it’ll be the background music of a movie or a TV ad, or something that’s played at a sporting event to hype up the crowd.”
Trimble says the bigger names performing will be Euro, Lost Kings and Bones Thug-N-Harmony.
“Euro has been in the EDM world for about five years,” he said “He plays festivals all over the world. Lost Kings is an up-and-coming act out of L.A. Both are played a lot on the EDM channels on XM (satellite radio). We also wanted to mix the lineup up a little bit, which is why we added a rap act like Bones Thug-N-Harmony.”
Other festival events will include a graffiti wall, a silent disco, where festivalgoers dance to music they listen to on wireless headphones, and vendors selling “kandi,” or homemade, neon-beaded jewelry that’s often exchanged at festivals.
“We’ll have a local lady that’s popular on YouTube who makes kandi bracelets and necklaces,” Trimble said. “She’ll be doing demos. For the silent disco, there’ll be two DJs going on at the same time, and people can pick whichever channel they want.”
The festival was originally going to last two days, but Trimble said costs and logistics forced him to consolidate it into one day. But he hopes the festival will grow to a multiday event with camping options.
“We just started the social media campaign two months ago,” he said. “We’ve got about 2,000 followers and 1,000 people who say they’re going. We’ll see where it goes. It would be nice to have the camping option. Not too many festivals around here have that.”
Contact this contributing writer at aaronepple@gmail.com.
How to go
What: Electronic Dayton Music Festival
When: 2 p.m.-2 a.m. Friday, July 14
Where: Land of Illusion, 8762 Thomas Road, Middletown
Cost: $40 (single admission), $110 (4-pack), $175 (VIP)
More info: www.edmfest.net
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