Post music festival unites adventurous bands, fans in Fountain Square

The annual Post music festival is a rare homegrown success in Indianapolis, but most people who care about the event don’t live here.

More than 80% of attendees who will gather July 24-26 for Post performances at Fountain Square venues Hi-Fi and Hi-Fi Annex will travel from other cities, according to festival co-founder Nason Frizzell.

“We would love more of an Indiana crowd, but it’s become a destination thing and a yearly pilgrimage,” Frizzell said.

Thirty-one bands representing seven countries—including Australia, Belgium, Switzerland and Venezuela—are scheduled to play the sixth edition of Post. Frizzell and co-founder Derek Vorndran said the festival is nearly sold out, with about 1,000 people expected on site each day of the event.

That attendance figure doesn’t make Post a mainstream smash, but the event’s sustainable growth since its 2018 debut is worth noting in a city where independent music festivals struggle to survive.

Since 2002, local festivals Indy Summer Stages, Jammin’ on Jersey, WARMfest, Evermore, Fountain Square Music Festival, Holler on the Hill, WonderRoad and All IN Music & Arts Festival have launched and eventually disappeared.

Post, however, is an esteemed part of the music industry. Metal Injection, a New York-based website that reports on heavy music, notes that 2025 will be Post’s “biggest year yet.”

“Now a cornerstone of the post-rock and post-metal world, the festival will feature three stacked days of genre-bending acts,” Metal Injection reported.

This year’s festival includes several bands with relatively high profiles, including Converge, A Place to Bury Strangers, Pelican and This Will Destroy You.

“We have to deal with one or two tour buses a year now, which is cool,” Frizzell said. “It’s not all just U-Hauls anymore.”

Another notable band, Cave In, dropped off this year’s bill after band member Adam McGrath injured his arm while hiking in Vermont.

Frizzell and Vorndran know the “post-” terminology can be a stumbling block for people wanting to know what music is performed at the festival.

Generally, “post-” is affixed to the name of a genre once a style is established and artists then stretch sonic boundaries. Punk rock, for instance, emerged in the mid-1970s. By November 1977, London-based music journalist Jon Savage introduced the term “post-punk.”

Nicole Oesch worked at Indiana City Brewing Co. when the first Post festival was staged as a two-day event at the bygone microbrewery. Oesch now supports Post through a sponsorship provided by Kismetic Beer Co., which she co-founded in 2022.

She said music fans can find many points of entry at the festival.

“Some of it’s more metal and doomy,” Oesch said of the performances. “Some of it’s atmospheric. Some of it has lyrics, and some of it doesn’t. But it’s still cohesive and works together. Every time we go, we come back with a band or two we’d never heard of before that absolutely blew our minds.”

Frizzell doesn’t fixate on labeling the sounds heard at Post.

“When people ask what kind of music we book, I always say it’s the underserved genres everybody likes,” he said. “They just don’t know what it’s defined as.”

Staying afloat

After producing the first edition of Post with a budget of $5,000, Frizzell and Vorndran now work with an annual budget of $130,000.

“I think we’re the opposite of probably most music festivals,” Vorndran said. “Their strategy is to book the biggest bands as possible to make a lot of money. Not to say we don’t like to make money. We’re hoping to break even each year. But we’ve had a strategy of starting small and slowly trying to grow this each year.”

The pandemic wiped out plans for the festival in 2020 and 2021, and the event landed at sibling venues Hi-Fi and Hi-Fi Annex in 2023.

Hi-Fi, a 500-capacity indoor venue, and Hi-Fi Annex, a 900-capacity outdoor venue, are operated by concert company MOKB Presents. Hi-Fi is part of the Murphy Arts Building, while Hi-Fi Annex occupies the parking lot behind the Murphy.

In 2026, MOKB Presents will stop using the parking lot and open a second venue inside the Murphy. Frizzell said that development will be a positive one for Post.

“The biggest thing I stress about is if it’s going to rain,” he said. “And I personally like most of the bands that we book in an indoor space.”

When scheduling performances, the Post organizers want attendees to catch more than a snippet of each act on a lineup that isn’t filled with conflicting show times.

“The fan base is very supportive and excited to be part of it,” Frizzell said. “It’s not a festival where you can catch maybe 25 minutes of each band. Derek and I want the flow of music to be curated correctly. If you think of a festival in the United States as being Woodstock 1999 or Coachella, where people go wild for three or four days, that’s not what this is.”

Nevertheless, large events have an effect on Post. It can be a challenge, Frizzell said, to hire artists for an affordable price.

“Big festivals have ruined the niche festivals when it comes to bands expecting guarantees,” he said. “It’s sometimes hard to tell that story to a booking agent. Yes, band ‘X’ could go play one of the larger festivals and get paid $25,000. But you’re not going to have 1,000 people there to see them. … It’s more about community and actually showcasing music.”

Shared history

Frizzell plays bass in Pillars, one of the bands scheduled for this year’s edition of Post.

Vorndran owns a record label that issued Pillars’ debut album, “Of Salt and Sea,” in 2017. The label, In Store Recordings, is now known as Post Recordings.

Before Pillars, Frizzell played in Indianapolis-based emo bands Asking Autumn and Re Vera, which were fixtures of the Emerson Theater—a storied all-ages venue near the intersection of East 10th Street and Bosart Avenue—two decades ago.

Brent Schindler, owner of guitar shop Indy String Theory, played bass in a band that also attracted crowds to the Emerson. Schindler’s band, Gwen Stacy, was a metalcore act that toured extensively.

Indy String Theory, 1311 Prospect St., opened in 2016 and specializes in guitar sales and repairs.

“We have a lot of bluegrass players and a lot of electric players, from blues guys to metal dudes,” Schindler said. “We’re kind of all over the map, but that’s because Indy is kind of all over the map.”

Schindler’s shop has been a sponsor of the Post festival since its inception.

“They came in and said, ‘Hey, we’re going to do this thing that we love and try to build it from the ground up,’” Schindler said of Frizzell and Vorndran. “That takes some courage, because you’re putting a lot of risk out there for yourself if it fails. But they put these things together for such a large group of people and pull these bands from all over the world. Those bands are trusting you to put on an amazing event, and [Frizzell and Vorndran] have killed it. Every year, it’s better and better.”

Indiana flavor

Kismetic, the brewery founded by Oesch and her husband, Ryan Oesch, traditionally makes a commemorative beer to accompany Post.

This year, Kismetic is collaborating with fellow Indianapolis company Big Lug Brewing to craft a rye pale ale that will be sold in wax-dipped bottles.

Nicole Oesch said part of Post’s success can be attributed to Frizzell’s and Vorndran’s affection for the festival’s music.

“It’s truly a passion project for them,” said Oesch, whose company operates a taproom at 201 S. Rural St. “We’ve seen that here at Kismetic. When you’re passionate about something and people can tell, they really respond to it.”

Vorndran, who grew up in Fort Wayne and attended Indiana State University, said people have suggested that New York, California or Chicago would be better sites for Post than Indianapolis.

“You know, the punk rock mentality is that if you do something cool, people will hopefully show up,” he said. “That’s what happened with this. It probably would be extremely easy for Nason and I to do this at one of those locations. But what’s the fun in that?”

Frizzell, an alum of Perry Meridian High School and IUPUI, said Post attendees rally around Indianapolis as the festival’s home.

“For the first two or three years, Derek and I had to defend Indianapolis,” Frizzell said. “Now the fan base does that for us. When somebody new comes in and makes a comment on the internet, Derek and I don’t have to step in anymore. People say, ‘We have our little area where we spend three days together and everybody does their thing.’ Hundreds of people go to restaurants and bars, which is cool to see. It’s becoming a destination.”•