Hello Everyone! It’s George Roldan and Beth Wilson, the people who bring you the Rites of Spring Festival, otherwise known as RoSfest, (North America’s premier art rock festival). As we approach RoSfest 2019 in May, we are asking for your support to help us expand our reach into the Florida market with critical ad and radio campaigns. We love Progressive Rock and would like to guarantee that RoSfest succeeds by reaching a larger audience.
About This Project:
As many of you may know, RoSfest, independently owned by Roldan Entertainment and self-financed without any concessions from the music industry, has been going strong now for 15 years and has been primarily located in the Northeast with a strong fan base. We recently moved it to the sunny state of Florida in the city of Sarasota in hopes of growing our Prog family and continuing the festival for many years to come.
We have promoted progressive rock bands both domestically and internationally. Our festival has always been about the music and the fans and we are asking for your help to contribute to our campaign and make it a success. The progressive rock community needs festivals like RoSfest to help our music and enable the artists to have a strong platform to expose their music to the world. There are only a handful of these great independent events left in the USA, let alone the world.
RoSfest, created in 2004, is now in its 16th year! We have put in countless hours of preparation which will lead up to a wonderful 3-day weekend of musical bliss for all who attend in May 2019. Spending a lot of our own money to keep RoSfest going year after year, we are now appealing to our RoSfest family to join us in support so we can expand our reach to a larger audience by using Radio and Magazines to advertise.
We appeal to you, the music lover, to help us put RoSfest and progressive rock bands into the media and into the mainstream. Our plan is to promote RoSfest through media including local radio as well as regional and national magazine ads. We will continue to use social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter to help promote RoSfest, but that’s not enough to get the word out. Our goal is to raise $6,500.00 to support these efforts.
You can help in a number of ways by donating to this Indiegogo campaign. Your contribution will help RoSfest get the word out to people who have no idea that this wonderful awesome festival exists. When people listen to Progressive music, it really helps heal the soul! By donating, you will be helping the bands get the attention they deserve. Our bands this year have been very responsive by donating very special one-off items as well as signed CD’s, customized recordings, records and drum heads to support this fundraiser as well as many other perks.
Some people just can’t contribute, but that doesn’t mean you can’t help:
Other Ways You Can Help
The more people who are aware of our radio and print campaign, the better our chances of raising the necessary funds. By emailing your friends about RoSfest, posting a link to this page on Facebook, or spreading the word on Twitter, you will be giving us enormous support.
Thank you so much for joining in and becoming an active part of our RoSfest family!
Pledge! Our anticipated completion date for RoSfest Radio and Magazine Ads is November 31, 2019. Please help us raise the money we need to allow us to get the word out. All funds raised will go directly towards the media campaign which in turn helps RoSfest.
Mile Marker Zero is the final band signed for RoSfest 2019. They’re a very talented Progressive Rock group from New Haven, CT USA!
Mile Marker Zero isn’t a band that the average progressive rock fan will be all that much aware of, but they have been around in one guise or another for 15 years by now – or 13 years if you refer to the band’s official biography. They released their self-titled debut album back in 2009, and along with their 2006 EP “The Haunted” they did get quite a bit of attention in those earlier days. Being the first unsigned band to have their music featured in the video game series RockBand among the proud moments from that phase of their career.
In later years the band has released a second EP, “Young Rust” (2014), and in March 2018 the band launched their second album “The Fifth Row“. The quality of the latter was so impressive that we just had to book this band, even if we didn’t really have any free slots left – we’ll get back to how that detail will be sorted when we release the official schedule for RoSfest 2019.
For those not already aware of Mile Marker Zero, progressive metal with clear references to the foundations of the genre established “back in the day” by good old Rush is a fitting and appropriate manner in which to describe what this band is all about. We love it, and we are certain that many others will as well – especially after having seen them perform their material live on the stage of course.
RoSfest 2019 will take place on May 3rd through 5th, 2019 at the Sarasota Opera House, Florida. Scheduled bands to play: Friday- Cryptic Vision and Von Hertzen Brothers. Saturday- Entransient, Mile Marker Zero, Karmamoi, Phideaux and Jethro Tull 50th Anniversary Tour with Martin Barre, Clive Bunker and Jonathan Noyce. Sunday- Edge of Reality, Traverser, Flor De Loto, and Riverside. The complete schedule with times will be posted shortly on the RoSfest website.
We love this 2019 lineup and think that you will too! Hope to see everyone in Sarasota next May!
Platinum seat tickets on sale September 4th, 2018 Gold seat tickets on sale October 5th, 2018 Regular seat tickets on sale December 7th, 2018
Finnish progressive rock band, Von Hertzen Brothers, makes a welcome return to RoSfest in 2019, this time as the Friday night headliners.
It’s been almost ten years since this fine Finnish band was booked for RoSfest first time around. At that time, the announcement of them signed to the festival was met with a few puzzled faces and question marks. Those who were aware of the band at that time, mainly due to their fantastic third album “Love Remains the Same” from 2008, knew what they were in for obviously, but many had quite the pleasant experience when they heard what the band delivered at RoSfest back in 2010.
We are bringing them back for the headliner slot in 2019. It is a good pairing with Cryptic Vision for starters, as both of them are returning bands that haven’t played for us for a number of years. In addition, Von Hertzen Brothers have continued being an active live and recording band all along, with four additional studio albums to their name, all of them strong, quality productions, and the band’s reputation as a potent and high quality live act have continued to grow too. The reports coming in from the band’s recently concluded 10 year celebration tour for “Love Remains the Same” are glowing brighter than the sun itself.
Van Hertzen Brothers have been gaining attention. It is this sonic exploration that has seen them blaze a trail across Europe since 2006, leading them to play with artists from Foo Fighters, 30 Seconds to Mars, Neil Young, Biffy Clyro, The Wildhearts and ZZ Top to Anathema and Opeth. With seven stunning studio albums to their credit, VHB have developed into a fantastic live band. This band is the perfect fit for the RoSfest lineup and its audience.
RoSfest 2019 will take place on May 3rd through 5th, 2019 at the Sarasota Opera House, Florida. The final line-up and schedule for the festival are Cryptic Vision, Entransient, Karmamoi, Phideaux, Jethro Tull 50th Anniversary tour with official members Martin Barre, Clive Bunker and Jonathan Noyce. Edge of Reality, Traverser, Flor de Loto and Riverside.
We are pleased to announce that Peruvian band Flor de Loto have been signed to ROSFest also for 2019.
Following a spectacular performance at last year’s RoSfest, we have decided to bring Peruvian band Flor de Loto back also for the 2019 edition of our festival. For a number of reasons: Their concert last year was brilliant, and many desired to see them again sooner rather than later. Some missed out on the show, and from what they heard from others they knew they had missed something good. Hence we see to it that this situation is resolved. And finally Flor de Loto have now signed with US label Melodic Revolution Records, a label that are longtime friends of RoSfest, and they are releasing Flor de Loto’s new album Eclipse.
As we stated last year: Progressive Rock is alive and well on the South American continent, and one of the most popular progressive rock bands in South America is Flor de Loto from Peru. They have built a steadily growing fan base all over the continent since they first appeared in 2005 with their self-titled debut album, with a solid presence as a live band for more than a decade and seven (soon eight) studio albums to their name cementing their reputation as a high-quality band.
Their take on progressive rock is one that resides somewhere in between Jethro Tull and Iron Maiden, incorporating elements from metal, Andean folk music and, chamber music into their compositions alongside nods towards hard rock and psychedelic rock. This results in a sound and style with a broad appeal: This is a band with fans also from outside of the progressive rock universe.
Alonso Herrera, Alejandro Jarrin, Pablo Alayza, Alvaro Escobar, Pierre Farfán and Gabriel Iwasaki are members of a band that has a reputation as a quality act on all levels. We are eagerly looking forward to being able to once again experience one of the top progressive rock bands from the South American continent performing live at ROSfest 2019.
ROSfest 2019 will take place on May 3rd through 5th 2019 at the Sarasota Opera House, Florida. The final line-up and schedule for the festival are still TBA. Confirmed bands to appear so far are: Riverside (headliner), Karmamoi, Cryptic Vision, Prideaux, Martin Barre (performing 50 Years of Jethro Tull), Edge of Reality, Entransient, and Traverser
US progressive rock band Cryptic Vision is confirmed to appear at RoSFest 2019.
Those who have good memories will recall that Cryptic Vision was one of the bands that appeared at the start of the millennium that caused quite a stir, releasing their first albums in 2003 and 2006 respectively, and with a third album to their name that followed in 2012. During their initial phase, the band was also signed to RoSfest, which resulted in the album “Live at RoSfest 2005”.
While news about the band have been a bit slow in recent years, they remain active. As a matter of fact, they are working on material for a new EP these days, a production that is planned to be released prior to RoSfest 2019. The current members of the band are Rick Duncan, Todd Plant, Sam Conable, Tim Keese and Howard Helm: The very same line-up that have been in place for the greater majority of the band’s career. Cryptic Vision continues exploring progressive rock in the same vein they have done since they started out, with a typical US touch to their overall sound in a manner that was pioneered by bands such as Kansas back in the day.
When we moved Rosfest to Sarasota, Florida for the 2019 edition of the festival, Cryptic Vision was one of the first bands we reached out to. Besides being a known entity and quality band that haven’t played at the festival for more than a decade, Cryptic Vision is also a local band: They are actually based in Sarasota, so you cannot be more local than that.
Cryptic Vision have been chosen to be the band that opens Rosfest 2019, the very first band to hit the stage on Friday. We know we are not the only ones that are looking forward to seeing and hearing this fine US band play for us again.
RoSfest 2019 will take place on May 3rd through 5th, 2019 at the Sarasota Opera House, Florida. The final line-up and schedule for the festival are still TBA. Confirmed bands to appear so far are: Riverside (headliner), Karmamoi, Cryptic Vision,
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