In recent years, the downtown area has had a difficult time drawing in a large number of patrons when compared to Jacksonville’s more popular nighttime attractions. Although downtown has seen success in this area as of late, Passion Project, an artist management, booking, and event promotion and Production Company located in Jacksonville, continues to look for new ways to bring people over the bridge.
Lead by Matthew Connor of Bangarang Jax Events, and Trey Hebron, Passion Project decided to create a new event called, “Crush: The Seasonal Block Party,” that will take place quarterly throughout the year. This new event features an enormous lineup that is encompasses many different types of dance music including dubstep, trap, house, rap, and electro-rock.
Teaming up with the collection of bars downtown known as “The Elbow,” Passion Project hosted its first block party on September 1. The two venues that hosted the event were 1904 Music Hall and Underbelly. Located behind the bars, Crush also featured an outdoor venue called the Sandbox where festival goers could party under the open sky. The show featured an entire day of national, regional, and local talent from 4 p.m. to 2 a.m.
Hebron, who is also the director and talent buyer for Crush, first got the idea from last year’s event Bass in the City, which he said originally created The Elbow. “This is kind of a spinoff of that event,” said Hebron. “What we tried to do was condense it down and make it [Crush] a little bit smaller.”
Initially, the crowd started entering the event at a sluggish pace, but as the night went on, Crush continued to grow until every venue was well populated with a number of attendees.
Christian Gomez, who was working behind the scenes on production and equipment for Crush, said that one of the main attractions of the event was that each stage had diverse styles of music that appealed to so many different people’s tastes.
Though Crush was focused primarily on music, the event also hosted a few live painters and a considerable amount of merchants that were stocked with shirts, hats and other accessories from local businesses such as Icon Boutique and Tee & Aye Clothing.
Connor stated that the overall goal of Crush is to provide a way for local musicians to play alongside more well-known artists that have already toured around the country. In doing so, Connor hopes to put a spotlight on Jacksonville and showcase its incredible amount of talent, in addition to displaying how larger acts have the ability to come to our city and have a successful performance with ample support.
One of the more renown local artists to perform at the event was veteran group Corporate Slackrs, who have never played together downtown before this event. Ironman, the group’s DJ, said that Crush was an excellent idea for Jax, and said it had a lot of potential to be one of the biggest events for the downtown area. “I think that as they keep having these seasonal block parties over and over they will keep getting bigger and bigger. Everyone seems to really be here for the music.”
Meadows, another member of the Slackrs, said, “I thought the event was great. It was well run and everyone here seems to be having a good time. I had a great time [performing] on stage.”
Another notable local artist T3ΔM also performed at Crush. Before their set at Underbelly, Alex Benson, T3ΔM’s producer, took the time to share with Void his opinions on the new seasonal party. “I went into it [Crush] hoping that there would be some people here, and now I’m totally stoked. There’s tons of people here.” Despite his early doubts of the event’s overall attendance, Benson hopes that Crush will continue to draw a larger crowd in future festivals, and make the downtown area a popular spot.
Hebron said the next Crush block party will be held this fall on November 10. Future events will see similar a similar lineup to this summer’s Crush. Hebron added that Crush will always be predominantly focused on EDM music, but that Passion Project plans to continue to sprinkle in various genres such as rock and hip-hop.
Ultimately, Passion Project hopes that Crush and events such as these will bring more people to The Elbow and make it a popular destination for not just Jacksonville residents, but also people outside of the city. With a strong turnout and a good first running, it looks like the next Crush this November will be even more successful.
