During the weekend of Oct. 15 and 16, the Door Daze festival rocked out at the BLUEprint venue in Kingston with its packed lineup of bands, artists and vendors.
The festival, created with the goal of supporting the New Paltz DIY music scene documentary “Doors at 7,” included many of the bands that were interviewed for the film. Created by Hudson Valley-based filmmaker Noelle Janasiewicz, the documentary has been in development since early 2021. The artists featured included singers, songwriters, designers and several other types of creators that contribute to the scene.
Despite the thunderstorms that hit the area late Saturday evening causing the cancellation of the screening of the film, the festival went on to have a day and a half’s worth of successful sets and performances. 20 performers and 15 vendors, along with a set of local visual artists, were set to make appearances. Tickets were sold through Faucet Media, a musical collective based in New Paltz that hosts shows and events in the area.
Faucet and the “Doors at 7” team raised money for the festival by selling merchandise for the three-year anniversary of Crossroads, an old house show venue in New Paltz that hosted many of the bands in the DIY scene over the years. The merchandise was designed by local artists and the profits helped to fund Door Daze.
Janasiewicz feels like the parts of the festival that were able to happen were great.
“We put in a major amount of time and effort into making it come to life,” she said. “It really was so cool to see the community come together again after being disconnected from one another for so long. Despite the rain on the second day it was still overall a success —in my books at least.”
Caleb Couri, a musician in the New Paltz area and a Faucet Media contributor, also feels that the festival went well. He is excited to share the moments from the festival that he enjoyed the most with the people who weren’t able to attend.
“We didn’t want to miss anything, so we had a team of photographers, videographers, and of course we recorded live sound,” he said. “We have just started going through everything and are really excited to share some of the moments we managed to capture.”
The performances were also available to stream on the Faucet website so that anyone, even those not in the New Paltz area, could see the bands that make the DIY scene the way that it is today.
Janasiewicz described the process of putting everything together for the festival as “strenuous.” She has been working non-stop over the past six months to organize the documentary itself, and Door Daze came right after. Still, she feels like the outcome was worth it in the end.
The documentary itself features interviews from over 30 musicians, creators, show organizers, DJs, writers, photographers, visual artists and countless other roles in the house show scene. In February, the production team held a live stream benefit show over Instagram live featuring five musical acts.
Throughout production, the team had a GoFundMe page set up that also helped with production costs. In June, there was another show to help raise awareness for the film at the Zana Rec venue in Woodstock that also featured bands from the documentary.
Since it was a large-scale event, the “Doors at 7” team made sure to keep all of the guests and performers safe by requiring proof of COVID-19 vaccinations or a negative test within 72 hours of their arrival at the venue.
The festival went on as planned until later in the evening on Saturday, when torrential rains cancelled the rest of the planned events, including the screening of the documentary. The team plans on rescheduling the debut of the documentary on Oct. 24, during a show at the Tall Grass venue in New Paltz. Faucet Media will also continue their streams on a Halloween show on Oct. 30 at the Pauly D’s Basement venue.
“I figured that’s probably the best way to really do it, the documentary is about the importance of DIY spaces so doing it at Tall Grass feels very fitting for it,” Janasiewicz said.
“Doors at 7” will be available for streaming on Oct. 24 along with the screening, so the public will be able to view it then.
