Words By: Emma Hintz (@emmahintzz)
Photos By: Amanda (@ajpgphoto)
I had the opportunity to sit down with Andres Hernandez, founder of Indie Night Live and member of Tampa Natives Rohna. We talked about the upcoming east coast indie night tour, where the idea for indie night started, his plans for the future of indie night and more.
Emma: How did the idea for Indie Night start?
Andres: So there are a couple of parts that really bloomed the idea in my head, so obviously during the pandemic when we had no shows for a while I was always thinking of cool ways you could bring people out to a show and get people excited to go to shows again. It just so happened that the first shows that started to come back were local shows because touring wasn’t really possible yet, what I noticed pretty quickly was that every band was trying to play as much as possible so the excitement died out pretty quickly. When Rohna was getting ready to play shows again i wanted to label it something different so people might decide to come out for the event rather than just going to see one of the bands playing. Before the pandemic I was putting on shows called collectives and there would be different artists and vendors and a lot of different genres of music and it brought a bunch of different people from different scenes together, I realized I wanted to put together events like that again but a little more focussed. So for Rohna’s first show back I decided to name it “Indie Night”, which was inspired by the name “Emo Night”. I had gone to my fair share of Emo Night events and I always had a good time but I thought it would be sick if there were actual bands playing, and I’ve always been more involved with the indie music scene anyways, so I thought we might as well try it out with live music and see how it goes.
Emma: I think the idea for indie night is so smart because the name really makes it more of an event rather than just a normal show, so you have a lot more people coming out even if they don’t know any of the bands playing. The branding really is so perfect, the posters are so cool and eye catching, the reels and tiktoks always pop off, you are able to reach an entirely new audience of people that might not know any of the bands playing, but are more so going for the vibe of it all. It’s a great way for people to discover their new favorite band.
Andres: I am really glad you were able to experience one of the best indie night events because that really was the moment where I realized this is gonna be something big.
Emma: The fact that it was a sold out show at the crowbar was so sick, the crowbar really was the perfect venue for it, the crowd was so fun and into the music so it was really cool to see. I feel like sometimes you can go to a show and no one really wants to dance or sing along or anything but that was not the case at indie night, everyone was dancing, moshing, crowdsurfing, it was the most fun crowd I have seen at a local show in a very long time.
Andres: It was mind blowing to me because while of course there were a ton of people I recognized from the local scene there was also a ton of people i’ve never seen before and I could tell that indie night was their first experience at a smaller local show.
Emma: I really feel like for a lot of people indie night is going to be their entry way into local music because it really is hard to find out about a lot of shows happening in your area unless you are apart of the local scene but with your marketing and continuous posting on tiktok and instagram people have a much easier way of figuring out where and when the next indie night is and hopefully lead people to finding their new favorite band.
Andres: That has honestly been my main goal with indie night.
Emma: So how did the east coast tour come together?
Andres: I’ve always wanted to take indie night to new cities but it all became pretty clear after the last Tampa one that I was going to be able to sooner rather than later. I had some promoters reach out to me that sketched me out and that made me realize I would much rather just do this with the people that I trust and I’m close to, so I turned this thing into an LLC and I trademarked indie night as an event, I wanted to make sure before anything that I owned as much of it as I could. While I was doing that I was already in the process of booking a tour for Rohna and when I was reaching out to people I kept getting asked to turn each show into an indie night so I thought well, let’s make the whole tour an indie night tour, it will benefit Rohna, and indie night as a whole, and it will give the venues more incentive to book with us. The whole tour came together with ton of organization and emails, you know the usual booking stuff.
Emma: Is there a certain city you are most excited to play on this tour?
Andres: Definitely New York, that was how the tour actually started, it’s always been a bucket list of mine to play in New York and since starting indie night I’ve always wanted to do a New York indie night, so I was kind of like, even if this is the only show we play we’re going there and coming back, but luckily we were able to book some shows on the way up and on the way back down. I’m very excited, Our Wicked Lady is a sick venue right in Brooklyn, it's a fully enclosed rooftop venue so even though the show is in the fall it’s still going to be warm.
Emma: It’s gonna be such a fun show, New York is on a totally different level, shows there definitely have a completely different energy than Florida and I think it will be perfect for indie night. What are some of your goals for indie night in the future?
Andres: I have some short term and long term goals for sure, in 2023 I would love to do a west coast tour, and maybe even take the tour through the midwest while we’re at it. long term I would love to do a much larger tour, bigger venues, more cities, really just do an expanded version of what we are doing now. I’m still figuring a bunch of things out, I’ve had a ton of people message me being like “hey I would love to be apart of this, how can I help out?” and at this point it’s just me, the goal is definitely to take it wherever it will go, ideally something as big as emo night brooklyn but who knows! It really can be whatever it calls for.
Emma: It’s so sick so far, and the fact that you’ve done this much on your own so far is really inspiring honestly, the social media side of indie night really is so tight, do you have any background in social media?
Andres: I’ve been playing in bands for like ten years now, when I was 14 I joined my first band and even back then I was always the one to say “hey we need to promote this show, let’s post about our new single” and stuff like that, having that be apart of my routine for ten years now has made it become second nature for me. Now my day job is in marketing so it made me take the social media aspect a little more seriously, at the end of the day i’m still just having fun with it and being consistent as possible and trying to grow the community, I’m still trying to think of different things to do with it. I’ve always been the only band member who even knew how to make a creative post so after doing it for so long it’s something I've become really comfortable with.
Emma: Is there anything else you want to say to the people at home, give the people at home some good reasons they should make it to one of the stops at the tour!
Andres: Oh there are tons of good reasons to make it out to a show! You’ll be able to discover a cool new band, you’ll certainly meet a ton of really cool people, you’ll feel like you are apart of this growing community, the indie night playlist that plays in between the bands is all of the hits so you get a little taste of nostalgia while still being able to discover a bunch of really cool bands, a lot of the bands play covers too so it’s really just a good time even if you don’t know the bands you are about to go see. We are still growing the whole thing so it’s just something really cool to be apart of at these beginning stages.
buy tickets for the next indie night here
check out indie night on instagram
check out indie night on tiktok
keep up with Rohna
keep up with amanda here
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