JohnFest to celebrate five years

Kylie Saari — Staff Writer
FAIRMONT — If you have been to the movies in Fairmont recently, you probably have seen the pre-movie advertisement for JohnFest, indicating May 17 is the day it all goes down. But what, exactly, is JohnFest?

According to Dann Saxton, former Fairmont resident and president of Unity Shows, the non-profit organization that puts on JohnFest, it is the annual celebration of the life and vision of John Obray, a 23-year-old Fairmont resident who was killed in a car accident in April 2004.

This year’s event at the VFW in Fairmont will be the fifth anniversary show. The first JohnFest actually was organized by Obray, who planned to be one of the show’s acts. When he was killed one week before the concert, it was renamed JohnFest in his memory.

According to Saxton, Obray wanted a place for kids to get together and hear live bands, a neutral place to meet and have fun.

“When you’re young, kids can be very judgmental — and mean,” Saxton said. “But the one thing that John realized brought everyone together was music, and he loved all forms of music. He also realized that Fairmont wasn’t a town that had a lot of opportunities for kids to be recreational together outside of the schools. What they needed, he thought, was a place to call their own.

“John created the idea of throwing benefit concerts with the goal of opening a youth center in Fairmont,” Saxton continued. “He called the shows ‘Unity Shows.’ JohnFest is our annual celebration of the organization, and a tribute to our good friend.”

After Obray’s death, Saxton and some other friends of Obray’s registered his idea as a non-profit organization.

According to Saxton, Unity Shows has staff throughout the United States, and currently conducts most of its shows in California. Once a year, for JohnFest, the group puts together a local show, with bands from various places in various genres — a little something for everyone. And they do mean everyone. All Unity Shows events are considered all-ages, meaning there is no need to present an I.D. at the door. The youth in the community is the targeted audience for Unity Shows but, according to Saxton, past shows have generated many elderly concertgoers — a fact that doesn’t phase the bands in the least. No alcohol is served at any event.

All Unity Shows, not just JohnFest, are used as a means to raise money and awareness about the importance of having a place for youth to come together in a social setting that does not involve drugs or alcohol, and encourages the arts.

“We want to encourage these kids to find their way of expression through the arts,” Saxton said, “rather than drugs, alcohol or whatever other trouble is waiting for kids when they are bored and looking for something to do.”

Because different kids like different kids of music, the shows book a variety of bands with a variety of styles.

“The most important thing to me is to make it a diverse experience,” Saxton said. “Sometimes we theme our shows around one genre and sometimes we will spread the show over many diverse genres. We have had reggae, acoustic, world beat, rock, ska, string quartets, electronica and punk music.”

And since the bands play the show for free — playing simply for the cause and the price of merchandise, all of the money left after stage and equipment rental goes toward the ultimate goal of opening an art-centric youth center in Fairmont.

“The ideal venue is big enough to hold a couple hundred people, yet small enough to be intimate and cozy,” Saxton said, “(It needs to have) an area for a stage and audience, and also lounge space for after school art/music activities. We also plan to have a used book library and coffee and concessions ... we hope to rent space in Fairmont in the next year.”

Saxton says that if the youth center is a success in Fairmont, the group plans to continue to open more youth centers across the nation in towns similar to Fairmont.

“This comes down to all of us who are involved in Unity Shows realizing how much the arts changed our lives for the better,” he said.