Niels de Vries

Redefining heaviness. If you’ve had any sort of interaction with the world of Roadburn in the past few years, you have surely come across this notion at some point. Just like everything else in art, culture and human innovation, heavy music is changing, evolving, becoming richer and gaining new meanings. As a festival that strives to give a home to groundbreaking and unusual artists – the “freaks in the corner”, as Steve Von Till from Neurosis so wonderfully puts it – it’s almost a mission statement for Roadburn to not only keep up with what it means for music to be “heavy” but actively contribute to that expansion and that discovery of new territories. And if that might seem like a complex goal, or even a rather vague ethos to follow, sometimes everything comes together and is crystallised in a single moment; something you can point at and just go, “yeah, that’s it”.

That’s precisely what happened when one lonely – and, as it turns out, rather terrified – woman stepped up to the Green Room stage on the last day of Roadburn 2017. Emma Ruth Rundle didn’t know it at the time, but she was about to make Roadburn history.

— José Carlos Santos
— Paul Verhagen (Pics)

“It was such a turning point for the festival,” says Becky Laverty, one of the main faces of Roadburn, as the festival’s Press & Communications manager, who was instrumental in getting Emma to perform this show of shows. “It helped us to open up some doors and explore what heaviness meant. That show summed up really well that ethos of redefining heaviness. That one woman, with no accompaniment, was able to create this unique atmosphere, so dense and overwhelming. It was absolutely a heavy performance, but not necessarily the kind of thing that people associate with heavy music. It immediately became one of the shows that we’ve referenced the most when booking shows. What is heaviness, and in what ways can you define it? That’s a question we ask ourselves all the time, and this show is an important part of the reply to that.”

For all the show’s impact on Roadburn and on Emma herself – we’ll get to that in a minute – it’s funny to realise, when talking to the parties involved, how different it all could have been, if not for a few random details that, with seemingly cosmic will, worked together to create the conditions for that powerful performance. Like, for example, why she stepped up to the stage all alone.

“Before Roadburn, I was on a really long tour, which started with Deafheaven in the United States, and I basically never got out of the van,” Emma says. “I kept going with Jaye Jayle, who were touring. When I got the Roadburn offer, I decided to book a European tour around it as a lot of American bands do, to make it more affordable. Because I couldn’t afford to take my own band, the idea was to use Jaye Jayle as my backing band, and have them open the shows during the tour – that would give them the opportunity to go to Europe too.”

When things didn’t work out with Jaye Jayles‘ drummer, Emma brought in the drummer from her own US-based backing band, and the group only had a few days to rehearse for the tour. Then they all went to Europe, without ever having played a show together.

“We had a day, as a long soundcheck, before a show somewhere, to play as a band. That was it. I’m saying this, and I realise that I would never do any of this now, when I look back on it,” she laughs. “We made it through that night’s show. But was it good? I don’t know! But it didn’t feel right to me. The whole purpose of this trip was to be at Roadburn, so I reached out to Walter and Becky asking them if a solo show was a possibility they could consider.

“If I had the opportunity to present it as a band, and to represent well the album I had made, which was the reason why I was invited, I would have chosen to do that. But I felt that it wasn’t good, it wasn’t presentable, and the last thing I wanted to do was to be humiliated at Roadburn. I was finally going there, it was such an honour to be there as an artist, at that magical place… So I eventually made the choice at the last minute to do it alone.

“I hadn’t played a solo show for some time because I had been touring with my US band,” Emma continues. “I hadn’t played in that format since I did solo opening slots for other bands, with reimagined versions of what the albums were, but at least that’s something I did do for a long time. I felt I had enough experience and I felt strong enough to do it like that again.”

To add to this sense of a-woman-against-the-world loneliness, another unfortunate event unfolded: “This was the same year that Chelsea Wolfe, King Woman and True Widow played,” Becky recalls. “There is actually a photo with Chelsea, Nicole, Kristina and Caro from Oathbreaker – this group of great women who played Roadburn, and Emma wasn’t in it because she was only there on the Sunday. I remember a conversation with her when she told me she was really looking forward to coming here and seeing all these women who were playing that year and with whom she’s friends with, and none of them were there anymore when she arrived and she was all on her own!”

But Emma never backed down. She was prepared. Scared, but prepared. “I knew that it was going to be terrifying,” she says. “All of the emotions leading up to it, I would describe them as terror and fear. You know that nightmare where people are standing naked in front of their class or something? That was what this whole Roadburn thing was like to me. I hadn’t performed in front of metal audiences in a long time either, but I do have a lot of experience with people heckling, talking to each other, not listening, even dumping beer on my stuff. I was ready for all that. I was ready to go into battle. I wanted to have this accomplishment of performing no matter what. I had this idea that if I had a band, people would have more respect for it and listen. And if they didn’t, at least we’d be louder than them.”

Fortunately Roadburners came through and proved themselves up to the situation. The audience in the Green Room on that magical evening was in itself a sanctuary, it lifted rather than brought down the brave performer singing her heart out to them.

“The Green Room was absolutely crammed!” Becky recalls, still in some awe of the atmosphere that was built in there. “Emma looked a bit nervous when she first came out, but then she totally owned the stage. It was such a powerful performance. Although I believe it would also have been incredible if she had played with a full band, it was really a stark performance, which felt right because that album, Marked For Death, is quite stark as well. She looked so strong and powerful, she dominated in such a calm and quiet way. Afterwards I spoke to her backstage and I told her this, and she said it had been one of the shows where she’d been the most terrified. But it didn’t come through at all.”

It did not, but Emma was indeed: “I’m super disorganised, and Becky and everyone from the staff really helped me. I was like a little bird and they picked me up and put me back up on my nest. Once I got to the Green Room – and I’m reliving the fear right now! – as soon as the show started, I realised people were silent,” Emma says quietly, her own voice hushing as if still in acknowledgement of the incredible response she got on the occasion. “It was a very powerful and moving experience for me. I think to this day it still remains my favourite show that I’ve ever played.

“I’ve never felt the respect that I felt from the Roadburn community and the audience, it really blew my mind,” Emma says. “It changed my life, honestly. I felt that was a pivotal moment in my career as a performer. Nothing has ever been the same for me since that moment. It was the first time that I felt… maybe this isn’t placed in the right way, because people should get their sense of self-worth from other places, but at Roadburn I felt respect as a musician for the first time in a way that I had never felt before in my life: I felt like I had a place.

“It gave me a strength that I’ve taken with me forever since then. That I have the right to do what I’m doing, that I have a place to have a voice, that I shouldn’t feel ashamed for myself, for what I’m saying and what I’m singing.”

All of this somehow makes missing Emma’s curation-that-never-was in 2020 even more heartbreaking, but there are also good things to take away from that. “It’s such a shame her curation never came to fruition,” Becky laments. “But I do feel that our relationship with her is not over and there is much more to come. That was just the beginning. It’s also to do with how heavy music has evolved. I don’t think Emma would be covered in the likes of Metal Hammer ten or fifteen years ago, for example, and for that matter nor do I necessarily think she would have made much sense at Roadburn then, even. The boundaries of heavy music are shifting, and she is a prime example of how they are evolving.”

Emma herself says of the pandemic-interrupted Roadburn 2020: “It’s sad. It’s crushing. We all did the work, it was there. It would have been so cool. It was such an honour, and such a highlight of my career as a musician, working with Walter and with Becky and everyone involved, making the decisions, talking to the bands, getting to know some of them, getting a feel for this amazing community and how it was all coming together in this moment.” But she also comes away with the positives and with the hope that doesn’t fade: “I don’t feel like everything was lost for me though, I still took away an amazing experience. I do feel horrible for everyone who didn’t get to see the shows, I’m sad that I didn’t get to see the shows! And for all the bands that didn’t make it there, too. But this is what it is now. We’re still here, we didn’t lose our lives and a lot of people did, that’s how I have to look at it. I really look forward to when I can get back to Tilburg and to Roadburn again.”

We’re all counting seconds over here, dear Emma.

“Oh God, that one,” Roadburn artistic director Walter sighs and then laughs wearily, just at the mere mention of Thou’s legendary Misfits covers show at the Ladybird Skatepark during their residency in 2019. That reaction alone already tells you everything about the odyssey that took place behind-the-scenes of what has become one of the most surprising and talked-about moments in Roadburn history.

When Thou were confirmed as Roadburn’s 2019 Artists In Residence they agreed that they would play four distinctive sets over the course of the festival. Only three of these shows were included in the schedule – the time and location of the fourth remained under wraps. Despite that (or maybe because of it?) it became one of the most unforgettable shows in Roadburn’s 20-plus years. So, let’s take this from the very beginning…

— José Carlos Santos
— Teddie Taylor (pics)

“From the first moment I talked to Bryan about Thou being artist in residence for Roadburn, the idea of having a secret show was already there,” Walter reveals. “I told them about the options: I mentioned there was a skate park, and the Hall of Fame room.” Thou vocalist Bryan Funck confirms: “We had decided pretty early on that it would be really cool to do a covers show, and we wanted to keep it secret, and also do it at the smallest place possible. We didn’t think so many people would be that excited about it, so we thought we’d just create something a little more intimate, just cram a bunch of people into a small space.”

Thou had originally thought of the Cul de Sac for a venue, but the festival wasn’t using it that year. The smallest room available was the Hall Of Fame; but it wasn’t quite right for what the band had in mind.

“The room itself is small, but the stage is quite wide,” Bryan explains. “It’s a nice, cool space, but in terms of what we were going for, especially with that set, it was a bit sterile and it just wasn’t going to work. The skate park stayed on our radar, mostly because it felt like a punk thing, something that’d be fun to do. We even imagined that it would be great to have people skating at the same time and everyone going nuts!”

Fortunately, it didn’t get that far, as security staff had enough on their plates as it was, but the journey towards skate park acceptance was to be a long and arduous one for everyone involved. “We had different opinions about how popular this was going to be – we thought that there would be people there, sure, but not that many,” says Thou guitarist Andy Gibbs, laughing now at how colossally wrong he was in that prediction. “If there were other things happening at the same time, which there were, we thought it’d just be this niche thing. We weren’t sure if word would spread, and how fast, so for us it’d just be like a really small show with half a dozen people. But Walter told us right from the beginning that no, there’d be a shitload of people and it’d be difficult to manage. I don’t think I really understood that until right before it happened. We had thought people would just stand there and stare blankly at us like they usually do,” he laughs.

As we all know by now, it was far beyond a ‘niche thing’. Anyone who was at the festival that afternoon will remember the feverish anticipation when people started to realise that the secret show was due to take place.

“Until a couple of days before the festival, things were still undecided on both ends,” Walter recalls. “The Hall of Fame was easier, there was a stage, it was a proper venue, but there was a certain magic about doing it at a skate park. The real fun started when we announced the running order and the times. People started going crazy because the fourth show wasn’t announced, they kept asking where and when it would be, and we would just shrug and say, ‘We don’t know!’ But it was really obvious from the schedule, the spot was right there – the Hall of Fame ended at 11pm that evening! What did you think was going to happen afterwards?”

When Thou arrived in Tilburg at the beginning of the festival, they went to check out the two venues. And while they weren’t particularly excited about the Hall of Fame, they figured it could work. But over the weekend there were a couple of other impromptu shows at the skate park – Thou saw the potential and wanted to make it work.

“On Saturday morning, anticipation was at a high,” Walter remembers. “The band had decided and asked for the skate park, and production went ballistic. ‘How can we have hundreds of people in there, it’s not doable!’ they told me. People at the festival were, at the same time, getting super anxious, to the point that I couldn’t even walk around anymore without someone coming up to me and asking me about it every time! I remember even Nergal, who was at the festival, at one point came up to me and asked me to tell him where it was going to be! And I just kept saying ‘I don’t know!’, and it was really the truth, even if no one believed it!”

If you’re not too familiar with the proceedings of putting shows together, you might be wondering what all the fuss is all about: it’s just a room but with ramps, right? Walter explains: “The problem is that the skate park is not a venue for shows. For the little punk shows we did there, we just threw together a small DIY PA, and there were a few dozen people watching, and that was fine. But the production team was adamant that it wouldn’t be able to accommodate something of this size and scope.”

That seemed to seal it; but there was one superhero about to rush in and save the day. “After several serious conversations with all parts involved, it was Frens, the 013 general manager, who came to the rescue,” Walter laughs. “He told me, ‘Walter, we need to do it DIY style! This is punk rock and we’re going to do it at the skate park, we have to!’ I told him that production didn’t want to do it, so he went and talked to them, and just told them matter-of-factly that it had to happen because the band was on the way and it was confirmed with them already. Which it wasn’t! But he overruled everything anyway. This happened around 10pm, about an hour from the show. We had an impromptu meeting with security, and we also still had to call the general manager of the skate park to tell him what we were going to do, and he kind of gave us the go ahead, he was just like, I don’t know, sort it out with the production!”

If you have met him at the festival, you’ll know that Walter in panic mode is usually, despite the seriousness of the situations, a harbinger for special things to happen. And here he was, going berserk once more, right before yet another legendary happening.

“I rushed to Thou’s dressing room, and all the band were there with Emma Ruth Rundle. I told them, ‘Skate park is happening! What amps do you need?’ Everyone was super excited and started throwing around ideas: I want a model T, I want that one in the corner backstage, this and that. Five minutes later, I’m backstage with a lorry and all the amps on the street being loaded on it to be carried to the skate park. Of course, that’s when some people saw it happening, and started to catch on. We set it all up with the recommendations of the security staff, who were super helpful, because we still had to measure doors and all kinds of things like that: we still didn’t know exactly how many people we could fit inside without running security risks, which we obviously weren’t going to do.”

All in all, it was one of those situations where it was better to ask for forgiveness than permission. “The day after the show, we had to have a real talk with production, because they were a bit angry,” Walter says sheepishly but with a devilish grin. “They were not amused about mine or Frens’ actions. I know I was very undecided in the days leading up to it, it was all ‘Hall of Fame! Skate park! No, Hall of Fame! No, skate park!’ all the way, then I reassured them on Saturday that we wouldn’t do the skate park, and then at 10pm I’m all like, ‘SKATE PARK, YEAH!’ I get why they were mad.”

Fortunately, anyone who was there will surely be unanimous in considering that it was all worth it. The first thing Bryan told the audience before they started playing was, “So look, we’re gonna have a lot of fun, or we’re going to look like a bunch of fucking dipshits. You gotta pick. Usually we look like dipshits, so I’m thinking we’ll try to have something new tonight, and have fun.” And fun they had…

“The amount of people there was actually less exciting to me than the actual response to it, that’s what made it so memorable for me,” Bryan says. “People were so into it, and having so much fun! For as little as we practised for that set, and probably for as poorly as we played, it turned out incredibly well. It was easily one of the most fun shows we ever had. That set is now the set by which I judge all Thou sets by. It’s actually become a sort of completely unrealistic thing to live up to, but I can’t help it. After having experienced it, now I know it can be like this. So why can’t it be like this all the time? It sort of ruined our normal shows for me!”

For the festival, it was an equally momentous occasion. “It was a defining Roadburn moment,” Walter states. “As awesome as the big shows are, as much as we are known for our production values, as much as the commissioned pieces are an essential part of everything… sometimes, it all comes down to stuff like this. All these bands started out in garages, in basements, in skate parks. This sort of thing is where our hearts lie, it’s where we all come from. Seeing a band in a garage or in a damp basement, it’s in our blood. And it all came together on this show. The band, the fans, the staff, everyone in that room came from that same place. This is the underground that everyone fell in love with years ago, at the very beginning of our individual journey. The expression in people’s faces, the smiles, the joy, the excitement… I’ll never forget it.”

Also, in more practical terms, it had an effect that is still to be measured: “A venue was born, too,” Walter says. “The requests we had for bands wanting to play the skate park in the 2020 edition that didn’t happen was insane. It’s actually being rebuilt now, so we don’t know how it’ll look or even if we’ll ever be able to use it again, but we’ll see.”

It’s interesting to look back now on such an important part of both the festival and the band’s history, and to think about how any small detail might have completely changed it. For instance, Andy reveals that it wasn’t always a clear choice to have Misfits as the theme of the covers show.

“Mitch [Wells, bassist] actually wanted to do Deftones,” Andy says. “I think when we first talked about it, Walter thought we’d do Nirvana, that’s why he suggested it in the first place,” adds Bryan. “Which makes sense: we do a million Nirvana covers, so that’s what people would expect us to do. But for us it was like, let’s just have fun with it. Being a crazy show, and at a place where people weren’t expecting, it all came out of us not wanting to do just the same old thing that everyone thought we would.”

Andy agrees: “That was the whole appeal. I don’t think anyone would peg us for Misfits fans, and to be honest, none of us are really huge Misfits fans! Mitch was really pushing for Deftones, but we pushed back a bit on that, because no one’s gonna go crazy over a bunch of Deftones songs: it’s not energetic enough.”

Perhaps even more shockingly, Bryan quips: “I wanted to do Metallica!”

“That would have been great!” Andy agrees. “But the songs are so complicated: there was no way we could have gotten that together in time, we didn’t have a ton of time to practise for this.”

And you know what? Thou and Roadburn aren’t done playing tricks on you guys. “I loved all the secrecy about it, that’s the kind of shit I love,” Bryan says. “If we ever come back to Roadburn, I’d love to not even be on the bill, and just show up and do a bunch of really fun and weird stuff and have a great time with it. Just surprise people!”

Andy picks up on this: “Maybe we can play on the other side of town. In the lobby of the hotel, like that Nine Inch Nails marketing campaign: we’d leave cryptic notes in bathrooms all over Tilburg. That would be sick.”

Sit tight: who knows what Thou will have in store for us next…