Festies

Ep. 40 Festies Recap: Give Thanks 2025

• Sunny Balopole, Vanessa Gutierrez, Clark Lawson

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We spent Thanksgiving weekend on the dance floor at Give Thanks in San Jose. From dark, bass-heavy energy to melodic, feel-good moments, the weekend showed how one festival can hold two completely different sides. We break down the sets, the crowd, the venue logistics, and the one upgrade we’re hoping for next year. Join us as we recap Give Thanks and share what the community is thankful for.

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Vanessa:

Hey, Sunny.

Sunny:

Yeah, Vanessa?

Vanessa:

What do you call the two best friends that love music festivals?

Sunny:

Hmm, I guess you would call them Festies!

Clark:

Festies.

Sunny:

All right, everyone. Welcome back to Festies.

Vanessa:

I'm Vanessa.

Sunny:

And I'm Sunny.

Vanessa:

I just realized we haven't done that in a while. I was like, what if we have new listeners who have no idea which one's Sunny and Vanessa?

Sunny:

Yeah, I was thinking that too. I was just gonna say, please give a nice warm welcome to Clark.

Clark:

Hi.

Vanessa:

We know who Clark is.

Vanessa:

Just kidding.

Sunny:

Our lovely engineer.

Clark:

Hi.

Sunny:

And my boyfriend, life partner. I just saw someone the other day on TikTok say being older and saying you have a boyfriend is kind of immature.

Vanessa:

That's why they say partner?

Sunny:

Yeah. And then I saw another TikTok where it was this guy who was gay saying, straight people, stop being so PC and don't say partner because I'm gonna think you're gay.

Vanessa:

That's what I always. That's what I think when people say partner, I'm like, are they gay?

Clark:

It's more of a young versus old thing in my mind, too, versus anything else of like why I would say partner.

Vanessa:

Well, now that we are older, I can see why people say that. And in an older relationship, you know, like that's been going on for a while. Yeah.

Clark:

My I know my parents, one of their really good friends, Kelly, him and his not wife but long-term relationship, they both had been married before and decided they didn't want to get married, but they were together for like 20 years.

Vanessa:

Yeah, at that point, just say husband.

Sunny:

Yeah.

Clark:

Also, my aunt Ann and Josh, they'd been together for 20 years.

Sunny:

Saying boyfriend and girlfriend would be weird.

Clark:

Yeah, right. Like

Vanessa:

my boyfriend.

Clark:

This is my boyfriend, Josh. And I'm like, you just turned 60. And what are you talking about?

Vanessa:

But that is so true.

Clark:

Are you guys gonna go steady? Like what?

Vanessa:

That is so true because I have had patients that'll say, like, my girlfriend or my boyfriend, and then you ask them, like, oh, how long have you guys been together? And they're like, 30 years. In my head, when you said boyfriend, girlfriend, I thought it was a brand new thing.

Sunny:

Right.

Vanessa:

So yeah, that makes sense.

Clark:

Yeah.

Sunny:

Well, if you're wondering why we have Clark on the mic today, it's because we went to a Give Thanks music festival.

Vanessa:

They gave all the thanks.

Clark:

The thanks were given.

Vanessa:

It's giving thanks.

Sunny:

Oh, I get it now.

Clark:

It's 20 years old. That wasn't even like a thing yet.

Sunny:

Oh, just kidding.

Clark:

If they put a comma, it would be giving thanks.

Vanessa:

I'll say that to ed sometimes, like it's giving whatever, and he goes, giving. He just like does not get it.

Clark:

That's so funny. And we're already really late on that, right?

Sunny:

Speaking of things to be late on, I was picking picking up the kids from school, and shoot, I can't remember. It was basically something like high five, down low, up in heaven, six seven.

Vanessa:

Sorry. I did not see that coming.

Clark:

Damn.

Sunny:

I knew where it was going that he was gonna like take his hand away, but I wasn't expecting this the six seven, yeah.

Vanessa:

I'm gonna use that on Ed tonight.

Sunny:

Uh give thanks. Give thanks. We were able to go this year because the give thanks team hooked us up with VIP passes.

Vanessa:

That's an upgrade from last year.

Sunny:

Right? I know. Thank you so much.

Clark:

Yeah, that was awesome. It's just nice to be able to go to another spot that's more clear and then being able to get as close as we were.

Sunny:

Yeah.

Clark:

For just shooting video and stuff. I could like line up with the barricade in the front and get videos of people on, you know,

Sunny:

rail riding.

Clark:

Yeah, rail riding.

Vanessa:

Top tier content.

Sunny:

Top tier content.

Clark:

I was like, Sunny, I need to get a video of people headbanging on the rail because that's always the best.

Sunny:

Give thanks is an insomniac event. And this year was held at the convention center in San Jose. I did go last year without Clark.

Clark:

Yeah.

Sunny:

Last year was at the Cow Palace.

Clark:

Shout out to Meghan for going with you.

Sunny:

Yeah, thank you, Megan.

Vanessa:

Oh, yeah.

Sunny:

Unfortunately, though, Vanessa couldn't join us because she had plans with her sisters. I looked at your TikToks and it looked so fun. I mean, your stories look so fun. We've been talking about TikTok.

Clark:

Yeah, true, true.

Vanessa:

Yeah, it was their 27th birthday. And I never go out with them right when they turned 21, the pandemic hit a few months later. So I never got to go out with them when I was still going out. I don't really go out as much anymore, but so I was like, I'm going with them and their friends for their birthday.

Sunny:

Totally.

Clark:

I will party with my sisters.

Sunny:

With your twin sisters.

Vanessa:

Yes, I have twin sisters.

Sunny:

So cute.

Vanessa:

And I am not a twin. Every time I say, Oh, it's my twin sister's birthday or something, and they're like, Oh, you have a twin sister. I'm like, no, you idiot. If I had a twin sister, I would say it's my birthday.

Clark:

Yeah. The weight of people's concentration is on the word twin.

Vanessa:

Right.

Clark:

They hear the word twin and they're like, you have a twin.

Vanessa:

Yeah.

Sunny:

There's another one of you.? Yeah. Right. How exciting. But for this festival, when I was hitting up give thanks to potentially go, yeah. I just assumed it was Saturday, Sunday. Turns out it was Friday, Saturday. And we had Thanksgiving dinner planned at Clark's longtime family friend's house. So we went to the Thanksgiving dinner, left totally stuffed food coma, and then booked it to San Jose.

Vanessa:

Then worked it all off. Worked off the the meal.

Sunny:

Yep. Ran around.

Clark:

Truth.

Sunny:

Should I stop because of the gardeners? Yeah. Sorry guys. If you can hear that loud noise, it's because the gardeners are leaf blowing outside. So bear with us.

Clark:

Yeah.

Vanessa:

Blowers.

Sunny:

Stop blowing our yard. Okay. Anyway, we made it to the convention center at 10 p.m. And then when we got in, we instantly hit the merch table.

Clark:

Yes.

Vanessa:

What time did it start?

Sunny:

It started at 6 30. Oh dang. To 12 30, I believe. Unfortunately, we were late on Friday, but we still were able to run around and get a lot of content. So that's kind of mostly what Friday was focused on. For it being inside, it was pretty big.

Vanessa:

Really?

Sunny:

And there are lots of different areas.

Vanessa:

Like Bill Graham kind of where there's different rooms.

Clark:

No, think more like

Vanessa:

I don't have been there, I just can't picture it.

Clark:

Like a trade show could happen there too.

Vanessa:

Oh.

Clark:

Right?

Vanessa:

Uh-huh.

Clark:

S o this was like a whole room which felt very like warehouse-y, very wide and long and not super tall ceilings. There was a little bit of bounce back, a little bit of delay on some of the sound when you were further back. But once you were wherever the crowd was at, there wasn't any issue.

Sunny:

Yeah. That didn't bug us too much.

Clark:

Yeah.

Sunny:

Outside the huge room, there was a place for the merch table and people selling sunglasses and different kinds of like bandanas. And then there was a separate room where you had to go to buy drink tickets and food tickets if you wanted to purchase that stuff.

Vanessa:

That seems like a lot of waiting in line for no reason.

Sunny:

Yeah, we heard some people complaining about it having to go back and forth. I kind of liked it. The line at the actual bar goes really fast because they're not dealing with money.

Vanessa:

Oh, okay, okay, okay, okay.

Clark:

And it's not like, oh, you need two tickets for this drink. It's like, no, no, no. Each ticket is $15. So it's just a couple different tall cans of beer and then like kind of regular well drinks.

Sunny:

It was just a bummer because by the time we remembered that, it was too late. Oh, yeah. They already closed drink tickets.

Clark:

They stopped selling drink tickets at 10 30.

Vanessa:

Oh, yeah.

Clark:

So I was like, well, I just missed it.

Sunny:

So Friday we also spent a lot of time exploring our VIP area. It had access to a separate hallway area that had its own bars. It was connected to a viewing area that had its own bathroom. So we never had to wait in a bathroom line.

Clark:

Also nice.

Sunny:

So we just floated in and out of there.

Clark:

Yeah. We could see the blocked off area that was the actual backstage behind the screens. And I don't think I've ever seen something that close, like the actual back of all the production.

Sunny:

Did we say who played on Friday?

Vanessa:

No.

Sunny:

Do you mind reading it, Clark? Because there's a few that I know I'm gonna mispronounce.

Clark:

Yeah, yeah. I'll probably say I'm wrong too.

Vanessa:

But I don't even want to attempt that first one.

Clark:

Yeah. I don't know. I don't know if it would be Hood's or Huv Hurve's

Sunny:

Maybe just spell it,

Clark:

Hides. H-V-D-E-S.

Sunny:

Yeah.

Clark:

So we weren't able to make it to that, but um, she had a Bloodrave set, and then there was uh Bear Grills and the Bad News Bears, then Jewels with a JDM set, and then we were able to see all of AT liens, um, and they have they had an OG trap set, which it very much was, and then we saw the headliners, uh, which was Excision with a back-to-back with Sullivan King. The first set that we saw the whole thing of was AT liens, and the type of set they were doing was right up our alley. Um, this like kind of grimy, dark, but really groovy set. I used one of their songs for our reel that we put up that's this remix of a Creed song, which is dope because it's just like getting to the drop of the song, and it's like all this Creed vocal, and then yeah, what like this fat drop drop. Um, they also had uh pretty hilarious visuals for that. They were referencing the video from Creed where he's like diving off a building and they had like a CGI alien flying through the air and stuff while that was playing. But yeah, yeah, we we really really enjoyed that.

Vanessa:

How was excision?

Sunny:

way more fun than we were expecting. We really loved it. Yeah, we were so into it. Yeah, it was pretty metal.

Clark:

Yeah, Sullivan King, he's like a metal guitar player.

Vanessa:

Oh, okay.

Clark:

I think the combo is perfect. Kind of how like Griztronics has its own thing.

Vanessa:

Because historically we've we haven't been by we I mean me and sunny been big excision fans. It's like too hard for me, at least, I should say.

Sunny:

But you would have loved it too. Like just the crowd energy makes it all a good time.

Clark:

And we had so many nice little interactions with people in the crowd.

Sunny:

Everyone was so nice.

Clark:

That's so the combo of metalhead and EDM world at a metal concert, too. You will meet some of the nicest people. Like people are so nice too. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sunny:

I hate to bring this up to bring the mood down, but Friday when we got there, there seemed more than usual a lot of stretchers coming out with people.

Vanessa:

Oh no.

Sunny:

Um, so it was it was kind of scary. But if anything, give thanks was on it with the medical staff. They had like an abundance of med staff.

Clark:

I did not see any person that looked like they needed attention not receiving it. There was always

Vanessa:

I guess that's good

Clark:

staff.

Sunny:

So just a reminder to everybody be safe at these festivals,

Vanessa:

l ook out for each other.

Clark:

Pay attention to people around you, pay attention to your friends.

Sunny:

And then we ended up leaving at midnight because we wanted to gear up for day two. Now let's get into day two. We got there at 8 p.m.

Clark:

My old manager, Mike, he saw that I was at Give Thanks on Saturday, and he's like, How are all the Asian people? Literally, like all of his Asian friends were all there, and majority of all the DJs were Asian as well. So really, yeah, so it was a really big community of Asian ravers.

Vanessa:

Yeah.

Clark:

That was just what ended up being the pull.

Vanessa:

I feel like ravers here in the Bay Area are majority Asian ravers.

Clark:

True. We have we we do have a huge point community of Asian people here too. Okay.

Sunny:

The Saturday Acts, Hoang opened with a hyperdrive set, and then Hallion with Keys to the Sky, and then Sabai went a back-to-back with Yatep for their Yabai debut. So put those two together. Get it? Okay. William Black played his Shadow Realm set, and then the night wrapped up with Illenium doing a back-to-back with Dabin.

Vanessa:

illennium. How many jerseys did you count?

Clark:

Oh my gosh.

Sunny:

Oh, I should have counted jerseys.

Clark:

So many.

Sunny:

But yeah, it's definitely more music with sweeping drops. And Saturdays felt like more like a melodic heart on your sleeve sing-along kind of crowd.

Clark:

I think that's perfect.

Sunny:

What was good about Saturday is Clark remembered to get drink tickets early.

Vanessa:

Oh, nice.

Sunny:

Because we were there longer on Saturday, we decided to focus on our montage video. We've done this in the past. We've gone around to people at festivals and we asked them to give us one word describing the festival, or we've done what's your favorite instrument. This time we asked people, what are you thankful for? Thank you to everybody who took the time to talk to us.

Clark:

Yeah, seriously. Had a lot of really nice conversations. It's always the full-on like friend groups that we end up chatting with. It's such a cool thing, you know, like people flying in from different states.

Vanessa:

Oh.

Clark:

That was like one of the friend groups where they're like, I'm thankful for the airport workers and stuff, you know. People traveling.

Vanessa:

I think he was in the group with the guy that said healthcare workers, shout out to you.

Sunny:

Yeah, yeah.

Clark:

Yes.

Sunny:

That is the guy who said that he listens to our podcast.

Vanessa:

Oh shout out if you're listening to us now.

Clark:

Yeah.

Sunny:

T hat brightened our week.

Clark:

Yeah, seriously. That was definitely um a highlight, just meeting these different groups of friends. Yeah. And family.

Vanessa:

Festies.

Sunny:

Festies, yeah. Towards the end of the night, we got to enjoy a little bit of Illenium doing the back-to-back set with Dabin, which was a nice way to close out the weekend. And then uh we left.

Clark:

And then we went home.

Vanessa:

Oh no.

Sunny:

The end.

Vanessa:

So which venue, Sunny, since you've been to two now, did you like Cow Palace better or did you like it in San Jose?

Sunny:

I hate this answer because I feel like it's a cop-out, but they were just different.

Vanessa:

Oh, okay.

Sunny:

The Cow Palace feels like everyone's moving all the time because it's a big circle. So outside the actual venue where the music is, people are just constantly like walking back and forth, and it's kind of crazy.

Vanessa:

Yeah.

Sunny:

But the convention center wasn't laid out like that, so the energy felt way less chaotic. But you just had to get into the crowd for that energy.

Vanessa:

I see.

Sunny:

At the same time, though, the Cow Palace has a second level that you can go up and sit in like a real comfy stadium seat and get a good view of the lights.

Vanessa:

There was no seats in San Jose?

Clark:

No.

Sunny:

No. There was a lot of floor chilling.

Clark:

Yeah.

Vanessa:

Oh, got it.

Clark:

I think it was just interesting to be at a festival that has been held at different places over the 20 years it's existed.

Sunny:

Yeah.

Clark:

Can you imagine if outside lands had been at multiple different places?

Sunny:

Yeah.

Clark:

You'd have all these different flavors. And I feel like we had multiple conversations with people at the festival and hearing, like, oh yeah, I really liked it when it was at this venue. We heard a couple different things. I thought the convention center was cool. And they have a website that tells you how full all their San Jose City parking lots are.

Vanessa:

Oh, the parking lot.

Clark:

Which is kind of nice.

Vanessa:

Yeah.

Clark:

Uh, and that information was definitely helpful.

Vanessa:

That's a separate app on its own, or it's through the festival.

Clark:

It's just a web page.

Vanessa:

Oh, a website.

Sunny:

That they had a link to on the Give Thanks page.

Vanessa:

Did you see any cool rave fits that deserve uh mentioning?

Clark:

Especially on Saturday, tons of jerseys because that's Illenium's thing.

Vanessa:

Yeah.

Clark:

Two or three of the other DJs also

Vanessa:

had jerseys?

Clark:

Have jerseys too. There was a Yabai jersey from Yetep and Savai.

Sunny:

It looked really fun for some people because there's two hotels right there that are like built in kind of with the convention center.

Vanessa:

Uh-huh.

Sunny:

So as we were walking by, I was like, oh, that's so fun for people that they come here, stay at this hotel, and then go to both days of give thanks.

Vanessa:

Yeah.

Sunny:

Got ready together.

Vanessa:

We just recently went to our first casino show and like we stayed at that casino where it was happening. I was like, I love this. What's so funny, Sunny?

Sunny:

It's no secret that we have outlines that we all follow. And so when I don't see what Clark puts until we get to the actual thing, uh, what was the best food you tried? And he put Pringles

Vanessa:

once you pop the fun, don't stop. Yeah.

Clark:

Well, it's just because there wasn't like it was either you're gonna get chicken tenders or chips and a couple different candies.

Vanessa:

Pringles.

Sunny:

If I had to make a complaint, it would be the food options. There was literally only chicken tenders and like candy and chips. So

Vanessa:

that's because they know ravers don't eat.

Clark:

I mean

Sunny:

but they need to eat.

Vanessa:

Yeah, what do the vegetarians do? Just eat fries?

Sunny:

There wasn't a fries. It was just chicken tenders.

Vanessa:

Pringles. Oh, really?

Sunny:

Yeah.

Clark:

Peanut MMs.

Vanessa:

So that's what you would change for next year Sunny is more food options?

Sunny:

Yeah.

Vanessa:

Yeah.

Sunny:

For sure. More food options. Um, if I had to say something. I just want to say again, thank you to the Give Thanks team for taking a chance on us. You didn't have to take the extra effort to do that.

Vanessa:

Year after year.

Clark:

Yeah. And yeah, I hope we can continue collaborating

Sunny:

and be back next year.

Clark:

Yeah.

Sunny:

It's really fulfilling for us to be able to walk around and ask people what they're thankful for. Um, and this is the perfect event for it. So

Vanessa:

I will go one year. I promise.

Sunny:

All right. That's our uh wrap-up on uh no not wrap up, that's our recap on give thanks.

Vanessa:

That's wrap on our recap.

Sunny:

Yep. Say wrap again.

Vanessa:

Wrap. All right, festies. Thank you so much for listening to Oh wait, I was gonna say something. It was something to do with it was like a shout-out to somebody, I think. Oh we're recording this on what is it, December 4th. So the Spotify wraps have come out and I love that people, mostly our friends, friends and family, are tagging us because we're coming up as like their number one podcast. So thank you to all those people. Shout out to you guys for supporting us and listening to us. If that's also you and you haven't posted it and tagged us, we'd love to see it.

Clark:

Yeah,

Vanessa:

please post and tag us, and we're just very thankful for all of you guys.

Sunny:

Yeah, I wasn't prepared for that.

Vanessa:

I know, right? Me either. I saw my sister tag us in something, and I was like, what is she tagging us in? And that was when I realized that the Spotify Wraps was out.

Clark:

Yeah, that was awesome to see.

Vanessa:

Thank you, thank you, thank you so much. And please follow us on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube at Festies Podcast, and please leave us a rating and review wherever you listen to your podcasts. And we'll catch you on the next one. Bye.

Sunny:

Bye.

Clark:

Bye.