Erika Libero and Jess Caesar of the band BANGZZ stopped by Live & Local this month to promote a big event: the Manifest Music Festival, which is taking over downtown Chapel Hill this weekend.

Follow BANGZZ on Instagram.

“It’s just like a big party,” Libero says of the annual festival, which she first launched back in 2016 along with fellow musician River Shook. “(We’re) gathering the community together to celebrate femme voices.”

This year’s installment of the Manifest Music Festival is taking place Friday & Saturday, March 14-15 – with shows both nights at Local 506 and The Cave, spotlighting femme-driven, queer, and non-binary bands. There are over a dozen performers on the bill, including BANGZZ as well as River Shook, Riggings, Narsick, and more, with bands coming in from as far away as Georgia and Virginia.

Visit ManifestMusicFestival.com for the full lineup and ticket information.

Libero says the festival has a punk flair, but that’s not meant to be limiting. “The punk umbrella is huge,” she says, “because punk is (about) being who you are, unashamedly, unabashedly true to yourself. That’s the spirit we focus on when we book the artists: who is being undeniably themselves?”

This year’s festival is being held in memory of a beloved artist who was always undeniably herself: the late Reese McHenry, who passed away last year. It’s also raising funds for Girls Rock NC, an organization that’s devoted to training a new generation of musicians to be “undeniably themselves” for years to come.

“Girls Rock is great,” Libero says. “They work with girls and gender expansive youth, and help empower them through rock music….They help (kids) form into bands and write their own songs, and teach them, ‘your voice is important, what you have to say is important, what you want to say in a song is important, how you think a song should go is important.’ This is art: trusting your own voice to make something, and then saying it out loud…(and) I wanted to find a way for this festival to directly reach out to the girls and the youth in our community right now. I want y’all to feel like you’re taken care of and that we got you. And that we want you to say what you think.”

BANGZZ has always been a band that says what it thinks. Their 2021 album “You Took My Body Long Ago And Now I Am Taking It Back” is still one of the best rock albums the Triangle has produced this decade – and they’re following it up with a new album later this year, titled “Maybe She’s Born With It, Maybe It’s A Trauma Response.”

“A lot of it is about healing,” Libero says of the new album, “and a lot of it is about learning to understand your true, authentic self, and let that person be as loud as they can…

“I want to be more than the sum of my trauma, you know? Life sucks, but I’m still going to smile and try to enjoy the best thing I can do. I’m going to have fun.”

Erika Libero and Jess Caesar stopped by Live & Local to discuss the Manifest Music Festival. They also debuted a new single, “Feral As Ever,” which will appear on their new album. Listen:

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