With a nod to ’90s grunge, Cleveland two-piece Army of Infants is a distorted explosion of garage and blues with surfy tones and a heart of Motown soul. Drummer Jacob Pflanzer and guitarist Jared Welch are currently working on a split tape with the Black Shades to be released in mid-March and have a string of tour dates that includes a performance at this year’s SXSW.

Can you tell us a little about how you got together?

Jacob Pflanzer: We went to high school together and played together off and on through school. It wasn’t until after school when we really kind of started playing shows. The rest just happened.

Not a review goes by without a hat tip to the blues. What’d you grow up listening to and what kind of influences do you draw from when you’re writing?

JP: I …

CLEVELAND, Ohio (January 10th, 2012) BRITE WINTER will return to Ohio City’s Market District on February 16th 2013 with a continued focus on art and music to warm the winter spirit. The festival, now in its 4th year, is a growing showcase of some of Ohio’s best artistic talent along with up and coming artists from across the midwest. In 2012 the festival grew to an unprecedented 10,000 attendees showcasing 15  art installations and 40 acts across 8 stages.  The BRITE WINTERl steering committee plans to continue the vision in 2013 by expansion of the programming South of Lorain Avenue or ‘SoLo’ and supporting the growth of the free festival via more sponsors and partners.

The guiding idea of BRITE WINTER is to explore and play outside in the wintertime therefore the festival has always featured an outdoor stage for bands …

Go play in the snow. Even if it’s not the mother-nature kind.

An unseasonably warm winter with scattered snow storms at best followed by rain at worst has left many wondering if winter-time sports are passing us by in Northeast Ohio. Not so, say local opportunists.

“I’d of course rather just have a cold, snowy season,” said avid Ohio skier Morgan Mecaskey of Cleveland Heights.

But cold and snowy or not, she’s been hitting the slopes anyway.

“Last Friday it was amazing,” she said of her recent venture to Boston Mills Ski Resort in Peninsula.“It was cold and it snowed. They had a bunch of jumps built up and were in the process of making moguls on the hills.”

But regardless of the weather, “You can still have an enjoyable and worthwhile experience,” on the slopes she said, so long as there is a good …

Some things change, some things stay the same.  We’ve been hard at work the last couple months to connect great ideas to make this year very special. If you’ve been watching the pages of this site go up, you already know the details about what we’re changing… there is a lot, but in general there are 3 big changes to Brite Winter Festival, one of them is listed at the top of the page. You can’t miss it.

1.) Moving to Ohio City.

Brite Winter Festival, began as a pop-up city event, which had the goal of gathering people in under used spaces, (like Hart Crane Memorial Park) encouraging them to explore and see new opportunity. As the festival grows and we welcome a larger and broader audience to join us, our focus is still to continue encouraging exploration but we also …

Brite Winter 2010, at Hart Crane Memorial Park in the Flats.