“Bring the Noise” was a musical mantra popularized by the hip-hop group Public Enemy, and Chris Wiersema lived that aesthetic ideal as Iowa City’s premiere programmer of experimental music and other out-there sounds. Over the past quarter century, he brought hundreds of boundary-breaking artists to town in his myriad roles as a house show promoter, booker for local rock clubs, Mission Creek Festival programming director, and founder of Feed Me Weird Things, his own deep listening series.
In 2023, Wiersema launched FEaST, an annual music festival featuring avant-garde luminaries Godspeed You! Black Emperor, the Sun Ra Arkestra and other iconoclastic, internationally acclaimed artists. When the widely beloved programmer passed away earlier this year, the captivating sounds that he curated likely would have gone silent if not for Wiersema’s friends and collaborators, who ensured that FEaST would be back this fall to decimate minds.
“As sad as this all could be, it truly is a thing of beauty to see this level of talent, verve and daring all in one place, and is a testament to the generational programmer that he was, and would have continued to be,” Dylan Marcus McConnell wrote on the FEaST website. “Though we may be without his guiding hand, he has handed us the reins: we are going to make this a FEaST he’d be fucking proud of.”
The graphic artist, who works under the name Tiny Little Hammers, first met Wiersema not long after moving to town from Portland, Oregon. While in a bit of a buzzed state — and feeling quite convivial and enthused after a performance that he had just experienced — McConnell approached the tall, bearded, rather imposing fellow who stood in the back of the room and asked something along the lines of, “Why are you always here?”
“Because I book the shows,” Wiersema curtly responded.
McConnell promptly offered his services as a designer, primarily so that he wouldn’t have to pay admission. It was true love and lots of work from there on out. Wiersema introduced him to the team behind Mission Creek Festival, for which he began designing posters, along with creating publicity materials for Feed Me Weird Things and FEaST.
Wiersema had already booked most of the 2024 FEaST lineup by the time of his unexpected death, so Matt “Red” Rebelskey and several other compatriots ensured that the din didn’t fade out. Wiersema’s memorial service at the Englert Theatre attracted hundreds of people, many from out of town, serving as a tribute to the outsized impact that he had on underground music scenes around the country.
Recalling Wiersema’s signature brand of black humor, Englert programming director Brian Johannesen recounted how he used to say the biggest irony in a promoter’s life is the turnout for their funeral. That got a big, cathartic laugh.
“I don’t think people were aware of how much Chris’s presence in Iowa City shaped the culture around us until we lost that support,” McConnell told me. “For the weirdos, the seekers, those of us looking for new and, yes, the weird, he was both a beacon and a net swung into the sky to bring those experiences to us, a little Midwest flyover university town more interested in sports than seems healthy.”
Wiersema went to great lengths to cultivate sonic spaces that were inclusive, even when the artists that he booked and the reverberations they produced could encroach on an audience’s comfort zone. As he told me a year ago while sitting in his listening room at home, when he happened to be (unironically) adorned in a Madonna T-shirt, “FEaST and Feed Me Weird Things aren’t meant to be this kind of anti-music, anti-pop kind of thing, or anything like that. It’s just a different way to listen.”
“Chris had a particular way of cultivating curiosity,” Rebelskey explained. “There was no guilt or shame thrown for not knowing an artist, but an outreached hand welcoming you to come for the ride. Friends old and new got together to experience something exceptional and share new thoughts and ideas. It’s a truly welcoming community full of people you know, and people you’ll soon know.”
Rebelskey, who had helped produce shows with his good friend over the years, recalled that the performances Wiersema booked were a part of him — they moved to his core, and he believed that everyone should have the opportunity to access these transformational experiences.
The sonic outlaw’s origin story began at the age of 16, when Wiersema was sent to a reform school in the Dominican Republic that banned any kind of secular music. Wiersema had been a voracious lister since he was a kid; Prince’s Batman was the first cassette tape he owned, and the early 1990s alternative rock explosion provided the soundtrack of his adolescence.
“When I was there,” he recalled, “like, every night after lights-out, I would just go through albums in my head and try to replay them and replay them until my mental tape kind of wore out and I couldn’t remember that music anymore. I sort of hit this bottom where I just forgot. But then I started hearing music everywhere — whether diesel engines or thunderstorms — and I began to attune to natural environment sounds in the way that I used to fixate on music.”
From there, Wiersema set out to dissolve the boundaries between art and everyday life by demonstrating through rigorous practice the ways that aurality can offer us new ways of understanding the world and creating community.
“I think we have a greater chance of discovering paths to empathy by engaging with the unknown,” Wiersema told me, “paths that we don’t necessarily have when we go back to the familiar. Engaging with something new is both terrifying and also cathartic, because it can reveal things about the ways we think and process information in real time.
“That can make us feel vulnerable, but through doing that, we can also recognize that vulnerability in others. By taking in things fully without the armor of critique and past experience, it creates a path to more positivity. I think it engenders an empathy, an understanding of each other’s unique experience and perspective — not just in art, but in the world.”
Soon after Wiersema’s death, Rebelskey and Englert Programming Coordinator Grace Merritt didn’t think twice about making sure that the Feed Me Weird Things shows that he had already booked would happen in his absence. They are also part of the team presenting this year’s FEaST.
“We got a small list of people together and reached out to them,” Rebelskey told me. “They all said ‘yes’ in an instant. Since then, we’ve been putting our heart and soul into this festival.”
Two of the artists who are part of the FEaST 2024 lineup — Haley Fohr (a.k.a. Circuit des Yeux) and Jon Muller (performing as Friend with Andrew Fitzpatrick) — also played at Wiersema’s memorial service. And even though a shadow will loom over this year’s FEaST, its performances will first and foremost be a celebration of life itself, in all its complexity and dissonance.
“This year’s FEaST has a pretty broad span,” Rebelskey said. “You can get down to some sweet guitar licks from Ava Mendoza, or get lost in yourself with Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe and Sarah Davachi. If you’re looking to be bludgeoned in the best way possible, stop in and see Wolf Eyes. There really is something for anyone who wants to hear or feel something new.”
Kembrew McLeod has purchased his tix for FEaST, and you should too! This article was originally published in Little Village’s September 2024 issue.
