This week East Coast Horror Group writer Adam Holtzapfel had a chance to chat about the upcoming Charlotte show with one of the co-founders of Days Of The Dead, Adolfo Of The Dead.

 

 

Adam Holtzapfel – Heading into your first show in Charlotte, how has fan response been for the new city?

 

Adolfo Of The Dead – The response for Charlotte has completely blown us away. Generally, you go in with tempered expectations whenever you go into a new area for the first time, or even just try out a new idea at an established show. Charlotte has totally bucked this trend and has put up some very strong pre-sale numbers that rival even our long running midwest shows. We still have a month until the show and I guess we’ll end up seeing what the final result ends up being, but the amount of support we’ve gotten from the Carolinas – not just in pre-sales but in social media buzz, in local businesses reaching out looking to help with promoting, and in fans volunteering to help work the show – has far surpassed our best expectations.

 

AH – With the film fest, FX & Costume contests, the black track panels, and blue track events there’s something for everyone. How have you seen these events grow over the past few years and with allowing different people to oversee these areas is that a huge relief to you as a promoter?

 

AOTD – I couldn’t be happier with how well all of our programming and events have grown over the years. We’ve always set out to be more than just an autograph show and it’s satisfying to be able to present our fans with a plethora of things to do at our shows. At any given moment you could sit in on a celebrity Q&A panel, catch an exciting indie film before it breaks into the mainstream, or attend a seminar on how to create FX quality makeup on a budget. Best of all, the people we’ve plugged in to head up each aspect of our show does a fantastic job and are able to do so without a whole lot of supervision. Usually I have one or two brief phone meetings with any of those folks each show where they tell me what they need (if anything), and after setting it up they let me know they’re all good to go. I know they’re going to deliver each and every time and the pride they have in what they do keeps them consistently raising the bar with every show.

 

 

 

 

AH – 2017 marked your second year in Louisville, has the response been up to your expectations compared to Atlanta, Indianapolis, & Chicago?

 

AOTD – Louisville has been great. Scott has been an absolute killer with the Tattoo Expo portion of the show which has absolutely blown up in just two years. The overall show is still growing in comparison to our Chicago and Indianapolis shows (which have become monsters), but Louisville has a groove of its own and the city is fun as hell and comes out to represent. It’s a great city to eat in, too! We’ve been getting people asking about it since January so looks like folks are ready for Round 3.

 

AH – For the after hours events there’s always a band or two at least one night, how do you decide on what local bands to play?

 

AOTD – We’re big fans of local music and keep a good ear to the underground. In the past we’ve had the pleasure of working with the likes of Macabre (Chicago), Evil Engine (Chicago), Casket Creatures (Atlanta), Drude (Louisville), and Iron Diamond (Indianapolis), among others. In the end we go with what we like and hope the audience feels the same. So far, so good.

 

 

 

 

AH – Since you’ve decided to add photo ops to the show, they’ve been quite the draw. How have you seen that grow versus the early days?

 

AOTD – We were probably one of the last medium to large scale shows to jump on the pro photo op bandwagon, mostly because we felt a little dirty putting out new things for fans to spend money on. It’s always been our belief that fans should get as much as possible out of their admission ticket, without having to fork out tons of extra cash once inside the event. That said, fans really like pro photo ops and we actually got so many requests to include them that we needed to revisit our philosophy. We use Jason Shaffer Photography for all of our ops and being able to have him do that for us actually makes me feel good about adopting pro photo ops into our events. Jason does a hell of a job and has been working professionally for almost 20 years, has had his work published in magazines and displayed in galleries, and has a bit more of a refined output than the standard Sears Portrait Studio type ops you see at alot of other shows. If we’re going to offer something, I want it to be the best and Jason definitely gives us that. If I wouldn’t pay for it, I wouldn’t expect our fans to pay for it.

 

AH – What’s your current 5 most listened to albums?

 

AOTD – Ooof….man, that’s a tough one. I’m always all over the board going between new and old. Looking through my Amazon Music playlist, these stand out most often:

Elder – Reflections Of A Floating World

Bloodclot – Up In Arms

 DVNE – Asheran

 Bad Brains – Rock For Light (my go to cardio-starter on gym days)

 Kadaver – Kadaver