By the mid-1980s, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were international superstars and were busy selling out venues around the globe.

They had little interest in playing small gigs in front of a few hundred people in Gainesville.

But upon their road to success, they left behind a music scene ripe for the picking, a city ready to explode with new sounds that would attract musicians from all over. Now, people weren’t looking to leave Gainesville so much as they moved there seeking new opportunities.

“Gainesville was a fertile ground for music -- and for a scene,” said Less Than Jake drummer Vinnie Fiorello.

For a growing group of young, ambitious punk rockers in the late 80s, crowds of a few hundred were more than enough attention. Bands like Roach Motel, Doldrums, Scared of Stares and Mutley Chix all laid the foundation for the punk scene in Gainesville early on, having shared local stages with notable touring bands, such as Minor Threat and Naked Raygun. Still, no band had quite taken the city by storm, yet.

Bands would play anywhere they could back then, often performing at house shows or at the American Legion Hall near the University of Florida.

Around the same time, No Idea, then a local punk magazine, had built a steady stream of subscribers and would send 7-inch records in the mail to fans. The magazine would shed light on the local underground scene and was chock-full of interviews and reviews of talented bands that few had heard.

Two of those bands, Spoke and Radon, ended up being Gainesville punk pioneers who showed outsiders that the city had a punk scene to be reckoned with. Through their success, they were able to help other up-and-coming artists that would later turn the city into the punk-rock capital of Florida.

LESS THAN JAKE

At the time that Gainesville’s punk scene was becoming recognized around the state, future Less Than Jake singer and guitarist Chris DeMakes had moved from Port Charlotte to Gainesville to attend UF.

He would travel back down south some weekends and tell his friend, Fiorello, about the music happenings of the college town. Fiorello, had already been reading about the scene through No Idea Magazine, which, by then, had also turned into a record label.

“It blew me away that there were these young bands and they were playing punk rock, but they were playing at clubs, and they were going on tours, and going around Florida,” Fiorello said.

The duo wasted no time to create what became the first Less Than Jake demo tapes. DeMakes distributed them around town and Fiorello eventually moved to Gainesville.

“Those weekend trips back to Port Charlotte were the inception of Less Than Jake,” Fiorello said.

Soon after, they found bassist Roger Lima through a mutual friend and also met trombone player Buddy Schaub. They became friends with other area musicians, though they had a sound that was later defined as ska-punk, which, at least initially, wasn’t widely accepted.

The band largely drew inspiration from others around the country, like Operation Ivy, Screeching Weasel, NOFX, as well as British rockers Snuff and metal bands.

“There was no blueprint of what we were doing when we were doing it,” Fiorello said.

Less Than Jake in the early 90s hustled to land gigs around town, playing in backyards, warehouses and eventually found themselves at Hardback Cafe, a venue that significantly impacted the local punk scene.

“That was a pinnacle point for Gainesville punk-rock music,” he said.

THE VENUES

For many punk music lovers, the old Hardback Cafe was one of the few venues in town that brought people together to see touring punk bands from around the country.

It was viewed as a home for many local artists. Bands flocked to the city, eyeing it as a place to network, put out music and be heard.

“(Bands) moved to Gainesville because Gainesville was this magnet, this beacon for the punk-rock music scene of Florida,” Fiorello said.

Jen Vito was one of those artists that moved to town to further her musical career while attending college.
She lived in the same apartment complex as Less Than Jake, whose band members pitched her on the idea of having band practice in her living room.

Her band No More arrived around the same time Less Than Jake had signed to a major label. Hot Water Music and Against Me!, both who also went on to gain international success, arrived in town around the same time. All the bands, she said, were like a tight-knit community and took care of each other.

“To me, it was a very activist scene,” she said. “The punk scene was heavily tied to activism … and we were welcomed.”

But in 1999, the scene hit a snag when Hardback had shuttered its doors. National acts and rising local bands suddenly had few venue options. Some bands went back to playing house shows.

Luckily, the Civic Media Center, Kriegers Warehouse and Common Grounds had opened by then and picked up some of the show duties, packing larger shows in tiny venues. Common Grounds moved to a larger structure to fit the demand, allowing another venue, 1982, to open up. Vito eventually took ownership of 1982 for several years, which was an all-ages venue.

“There were ways that we kind of kept the scene going,” Vito said. “... In the house-party scene, you can only invite so many people, so it was more segregated. But once there’s a public place and it was all ages, and kind of open to lots of other underground music, things were good again for a while.”

THE FEST

The Gainesville scene again significantly changed after a man from Harrisonburg, Virginia named Tony Wienbender came to town. He, like others, would frequent Gainesville in its heyday to play shows. He first learned about the city’s music scene by reading about it in a punk zine.

“Gainesville is very communal and friendly,” Wiendbender said.

His band Swank played at Hardback in the mid-90s when he first ran into Chuck Ragan, the lead singer and guitarist for Hot Water Music. Ragan handed Wiendender a demo tape titled “Push for Coin,” which Wienbender then took back home and began distributing, knowing he had just found a band that was due for success.

The bands later helped one another by booking gigs in the other’s home state.

“We, along with a couple other folks in the Virginia area, if we liked the band, could take care of them,” Wienbender said. “And, in trade, they would do the same for us. And when we would come down to Florida, we would play with Hot Water and Less Than Jake.”

While attending James Madison University, Wienbender received a call from Fiorello, who asked if he would sell Less Than Jake merch while the band toured one of the first Vans Warped Tour summers. Wienbender obliged and later jumped at an opportunity to work for Fiorello at the record label Fueled By Ramen.

Wienbender moved to Gainesville in 2000 but later departed from Fueled By Ramen, largely due to his dislike for the direction the label was headed in signing pop-rock bands, several who would go one to see fame. Fiorello later cut ties with the label, too, but went on to start another one company -- Paper and Plastick.

However, it didn’t take long for Wienbender to land on his feet after working dead-end jobs. He had started The Fest then began working at No Idea Records. In Harrisonburg, Wienbender helped start the annual MacRock festival, an annual do-it-yourself festival that celebrates independent artists through concerts and panel discussions. He realized Gainesville was missing something similar and used his relationships with people in the scene to start the event.

“I curate Fest with a very selfish standpoint, like this is the music I like,” he said. “... For me, there's something about heart and passion, and that's punk rock.”

The first year wasn’t so successful, at least monetarily.

“Everybody loved it,” he said. “Did we lose money? Yeah, we did. But the initial drive was there.”

Despite the financial loss, Wienbender recalls a conversation he had with Against Me! singer Laura Jane Grace after the first event, which the band headlined. He said she encouraged him to keep Fest going due to its positivity.

After getting the stamp of approval, he began put on the second Fest and made even on the two events. Each year following, the event became bigger than the previous year. By the festival’s 10th year, it became so successful that it became Wienbender’s full-time job.

“The demand of the fest just grew and grew, and they grew to become more diverse in the lineup,” Vito said, who has played the event every year.

Today, The Fest has surpassed Wienbender’s expectations. The three-day indie and punk-rock music festival offers 300 bands, comedians and wrestlers to thousands of attendees from around the globe. The event keeps downtown Gainesville vibrant for the entire weekend and gives a much-needed boost in sales for bars, restaurants, hotels and music venues.

The festival is one of the longest-running and largest punk music festivals in the state, much less the country.

In 2019, The Fest’s headliners once again will include Against Me! and Less Than Jake. Vito will also be playing with several bands.

Through the years, and despite their success, Hot Water Music and Less Than Jake continue to take pride in helping smaller bands gain notoriety, something others did for them early on.

Fiorello jokes that his band was a “training ground” for others that would go on and become more successful than them, pointing to bands like New Found Glory and Yellowcard.

Each time they take the stage, though, fans can hear stories about their humble beginnings in Gainesville.

“Less Than Jake always flew the flag of Gainesville, as our hometown, as a conception point, as a point it made us who we are,” he said. “It’s the foundation of what our ideas were and still are. And I think that's a beautiful thing to be able to have that hometown pride.”