The Mac Weekly sat down with Springfest organizers Sam Landsberg ’15 and Will Kent-Daggett ’15 to get the scoop on what Springfest 2013 will look like.

TMW: Which performers did you settle on?

WKD: It’s Big K.R.I.T. and Baths.

SL: And a local band called Black Diet. Big K.R.I.T. is headlining, Baths is opening, and Black Diet is opening for Baths.

WKD: There will also be a student band which is TBD, depending on who wins Battle of the Bands.

When is the Battle of the Bands?

SL: March 30th.

WKD: There is more information on the poster that will be distributed on Friday, about how to enter the Battle of the Bands.

How did you guys decide on bands?

SL: It’s been a pretty long process. It started by just compiling a list of people that we were interested in, and that was like a giant list, and then we talked to our Concerts & Festivals committee about what they wanted, and then we sent out a survey to the student body a few months ago. Since then, we’ve been sorting through the most popular bands on the survey. Some bands book other dates, or they cost too much, and there are other complications, we’re trying to deal with their agents. So that’s the process.

What was the most exciting thing about these bands for you?

WKD: Big K.R.I.T. was the number two overall on the survey, so that on its own was a big deal for us because we could afford him, he was available, and it seemed like a good match.

SL: Based on the survey, he’s popular with the Macalester student body. Another exciting thing is that he’s kind of a rising star in music right now and I think he’s going on to good things. Baths is putting out a new album very soon, and so that’s kind of exciting about him, and I think he should be getting a lot more attention in the next few months.

WKD: I think another big thing for us was accessibility and diversity. Personally, if I had just been picking for myself, I might have picked bands that wouldn’t appeal to most students. We wanted to pick bands that hopefully a lot of people would know the name of, and if you hadn’t heard of them then you could still show up and enjoy it. As for variety: Big K.R.I.T is hip hop, Baths is kind of electronic, dancey, and Black Diet is a soul/funk band from the Twin Cities.

SL: There’s a pretty broad spectrum there. We also wanted to support local music. Word on the Street opened for Black Diet at Seventh Street, and there were a lot of Macalester students there who seemed to be enjoying themselves, so we thought it would be a good addition.

Have you started planning the rest of Springfest? Specifically: what is the food situation going to be?

WKD: We’ve started. We really want Springfest to be outside…unless there’s a hurricane. We talked to the staging company and the sound guy to make sure that–unless there’s enough rain that people wouldn’t want to be outside anyways–we can still have it.

SL: We’re also trying to make it more of a festival feeling. Last year was kind of an exception, because the weather made it so difficult. But I think what’s cool about Springfest is that it’s not just a concert, it’s a whole festival. So we’re working on getting food and other fun things that you can do if you don’t want to be standing in the concert crowd. A big thing is that we want collaborators for stuff like that, so we sent out an email to all the student org leaders asking if they had ideas for booths. We haven’t had many responses, so we’re still looking for people to volunteer. We’re hoping Mac Bike can bring back the smoothie bike, for example. We really want to have a variety of activities and make it a real festival.

What’s the t-shirt situation?

SL: Wanna design one for us?

Maybe not me, but are you looking for people to submit potential designs?

SL: We could consider opening up poster submissions to T-shirt designs too.

WKD: Sign up for Battle of the Bands, or send any poster submissions you have to macpb.tumblr.com/.