Severe weather probably plays a big part in the nightmares of music festival promoters. Leading up to an event, everything can be perfectly in place — every t crossed; every i dotted — but rainstorms are the one thing no one can control.
That nightmare hovered throughout this weekend’s Bellwether Music Festival, the latest offering from Cincinnati promoter Bill Donabedien, located about 45 miles north of Cincinnati in Waynesville, Ohio. Reflective of Donabedian’s experience and past success, the two-day festival was otherwise run perfectly — well programmed and fan friendly, Bellwether’s first weekend certainly qualified as another success. The only major blight came from Mother Nature.
On Friday’s opening day, on/off, non-threatening rain showers would prove an ominous predictor of things to come. Friday night’s headliners, the psychedelic AltPop act MGMT, had their set delayed due to the threat of more severe storms. By around 11 p.m., Bellwether announced that it would have to cancel the group’s performance.
Organizers offered early-bird discounted passes for next year’s Bellwether to disappointed fans, as well as free Day 2 tickets for this year’s event to anyone who had bought single-day tickets for Friday. MGMT fans — some who’d traveled hours just to see them — were understandably disappointed and expressed it on social media. Not all of them were understanding of the obvious fact that Bellwether doesn’t control the weather and canceling was in the best interest of the safety of all involved. Though perhaps the lashing out was just in the heat of the moment, it seemed like some wanted Bellwether to force MGMT to stick around and perform at a rented conference room in a nearby hotel or something, or perhaps alter their entire travel itinerary and play Saturday. (That’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works.)
A music festival veteran, Wayne Coyne of Saturday night Bellwether headliners The Flaming Lips certainly understood MGMT and the festival’s predicament. Early in the band’s colorfully explosive, wonderfully-odd and over-the-top performance, Coyne began talking about how weather-related cancellations are an unfortunate, uncontrollable aspect of playing, attending and organizing music festivals. He then said MGMT left The Flaming Lips a note backstage.
“Control yourself, take only what you need from it,” Coyne said, reading — spoken-word-poet style — from a piece of paper and suggesting that he didn’t know what it meant, but perhaps the audience did. “A family of trees wanting to be haunted.”
The words from the cryptic note were from the chorus of MGMT’s defining early hit “Kids,” which The Flaming Lips proceeded to partially cover before continuing their headtrip performance, which was loaded with disorienting lights, insane stage props, gleeful confetti explosions, an array of balloons (I’d be curious to read their per-concert budget for confetti and balloons) and a mix of the group’s Orchestral and Freak Pop hits, plenty of their less accessible experimental music and covers of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” and “The Star-Spangled Banner,” which guitarist/keyboardist/noisemaker Steven Drozd played through his talk-box guitar set-up.
The Flaming Lips have crafted a perfect festival-headlining set — their audio/visual sensory assault seems alternately designed to thrill and baffle viewers. Not everyone might have left as giddy as most, but the band certainly leaves an unforgettable mark on all who experience a live show. I saw a person earlier in the day who was tripping balls and I thought of him often during The Lips’ show — it was either the greatest or worst experience of that young man’s life.
Nobody around me took a knee when The Lips did their instrumental take on the National Anthem Saturday night, but that might have been because of the state of the earth beneath us. Because of Friday’s rains, the fields that housed the parking area and the two Bellwether stages were soggy and water-logged, making it feel like you were walking in one of those inflatable bouncy houses while trudging through the festival grounds. Those who chose to camp Thursday through Sunday were the best prepared — there were lots of rain boots, sandals, flip-flops and bare feet. I’m just glad I didn’t wear my high heels.
It was overcast for some of Saturday, but the rain stayed away and bursts of sun shone through intermittently, hardening some parts of the grounds gradually (though soft and mud spots remained, which made loopily moving around during The Lips’ set seem like part of the show). Former Cincinnati musician Erika Wennerstrom (the Heartless Bastards leader now lives in Texas) seemed to bring out the sun early on when she played a mid-afternoon set of songs from her recent debut solo album. Wennerstrom’s soul-stroking, mid-tempo rockers seemed to ease festgoers into things. She was backed by a fantastic touring band that included Beth Harris, a Cincinnati singer/actress who also runs Northside’s Listing Loon, which hosted some intimate Wennserstrom performances early in her solo album’s touring cycle. (The whole band played a low-key show at Northern Kentucky’s The Lodge on Friday night.) I never thought Wennerstrom’s dazzling, stop-you-in-your-tracks voice could be improved upon, but it turns out that in concert, Harris’ equally remarkable abilities add a whole new dimension to its power. Alone, Wennerstrom’s singing soars — the craftily-arranged harmonies, as delivered by Harris, send it beyond the stratosphere and into deep space.
An example of Donabedian’s experience running festivals could be found in Bellwether’s stage setup. The Sunset Stage and Sunrise Stage were located on opposite sides of the large field, which was about the size of one and a half football fields, with various vendors and other amenities dotting the sidelines. There was about a 15-minute pause between performances, which allowed fans to take their time walking to the next show. You could get food, use the restroom, run to your campsite or do some people-watching and not miss a note of music. It also did away with the dreaded bleed-over of some festivals, where the music from one stage can interfere with the sound on another.
Before British AltRock legends The Psychedelic Furs began their set on Saturday, the cloudy skies returned, which seemed fitting. The shadowy, moody aesthetic and sound of the Furs (and of fellow Brits Echo & the Bunnymen, who were up next) doesn’t exactly align with sunny skies in rural Ohio. Perhaps it was a rider request from the bands — “three cases of water, 12 boxes of imported British tea, four cartons of cigarettes and any sunlight must be partially obstructed 15 minutes before the artist takes the stage.”
The sun did escape the clouds during The Furs’ performance, slowly setting behind the band as they played on the, yes, Sunset Stage. The band hit most of their ’80s hits, from opener “Pretty in Pink” to “Ghost In You,” “Love My Way” and “Heartbreak Beat,” their last big hit. Frontperson Richard Butler’s stage presence was as strong as ever, as he smoothly sauntered across the stage with his signature “arty Mick Jagger” swagger. (In my notes I accidentally wrote “Artie McJagger,” which will be my stage name if I ever start a Rolling Stones cover band.)
He pulled out most of his trademark moves — “Jagger-esque No-No-No Finger Wag,” “Pre-Creed Arms-Wide-Open, Palms-and-Face-to-the-Sky,” etc. — but sadly left out the Bowie-on-the-Cover-of-Heroes-like Arm-Bent-at-90-Degree-Angle. Still, Butler’s transcendent vocal gravel still sounds great and the group closed its set with a nice nod to hardcore fans, playing “India,” the first song off of their first album in 1980. Those who found The Psychedelic Furs via Pretty in Pink or a “That’s So ’80s” playlist on Spotify watched politely, but you spot a few fans geeking out in patches throughout the crowd.
The audience at Echo & the Bunnymen likewise amped up during the more widely known songs, while during Bunnymen-lover faves the energy level dropped. But not too much — the group’s music is still wildly enchanting and bewitching on stage and kept everyone engaged throughout. The band opened with a pair of big crowd favorites — “Lips Like Sugar” and “Bring on the Dancing Horses” — but dove deeper as the set progressed, delivering great versions of earlier cuts like “Rescue” and “Villiers Terrace,” from debut 1980 album Crocodiles. They also did a strong version of “Nothing Lasts Forever,” the underrated single that marked the reunion of McCulloch and Alt/Indie Rock guitar god Will Sergeant under the Echo and the Bunnymen name in 1997 (the song resembles hot-at-the-time band The Verve, an interesting twist of fate, as The Verve most certainly benefited creatively from the Bunnymen’s body of work).
Though someone recently told me his chain-smoking seemed to have made it harder to hit the higher notes, singer Ian McCulloch’s voice was golden at Bellwether; he consistently hit the low croons and soaring swoons throughout the band’s performance, a few times dropping a verses from The Doors, Lou Reed and David Bowie into Bunnymen’s gems.
McCulloch was also in classic form in terms of stage presence. Low key and relatively stationary center stage, he good-humoredly mumbled something about bad weather — something about how “weather” was in the festival’s name — which was met with blank stares and crickets. “OK,” he said sarcastically in response. As the band launched into the great “The Killing Moon,” McCulloch intro-ed it as “the greatest song ever written,” a joking (but perfectly justified) reference to his comments about the track in an interview with The Guardian a few years ago.
“The Killing Moon” is one of those songs that touches people deeply and it’s also a great Pop tune that has been used in a few movies over the years, so it brought a huge response from the crowd. Sergeant’s crucial array of tones and sounds were effective, but part of the power of songs like “The Killing Moon” (and the Bunnymen’s legacy overall) is the band’s orchestral additives. The group didn’t have a string section, but Sergeant and the keyboards/synths did an admirable job recreating the aura. “The Killing Moon” and many Bunnymen songs — including Bellwether-set-closer “The Cutter” — contain something magical at their core that, even when some of the decoration is missing, still shines blindingly bright.
The Bunnymen, Furs and Lips all have songs that touch me in that special place, alter my emotional chemistry and transport me back to feelings from various points in my life. So, as they say, I had “all the feels” during their Bellwether performances. But the spine-chills weren’t limited to those classics that have so moved me throughout my life. I got choked up at one point rather unexpectedly.
While I’ve been a big fan of Michelle Zauner’s Indie Pop project Japanese Breakfast for the past couple of years, I hadn’t developed the aforementioned type of relationship with her recorded music yet. But during the band’s Bellwether set Saturday evening, I found myself getting choked up as they played. The music — a powerful, weird, sometimes synth-laced brand of AltRock — was stellar, but what made moisture start welling in my tear ducts was the unbridled joy in Zauner’s face as she played, whether bounding across the stage in her sparkly hot-pant-jumpuit or looking into the crowd from the mic stand as she banged away on her guitar.
Outside of Broadway musicals, I have never seen a performer smile so much onstage. And unlike Broadway musicals, it’s not in the script. Zauner clearly loves her job and seems to revel in making other people happy. When the band played the Cranberries’ ’90s hit “Dreams,” the audience erupted and Zauner’s face kept cracking into the biggest smiles I saw the entire day — maybe this entire year.
It was a beautiful moment for a big old sap prone to tearing up not just by hearing music, but by merely thinking of the undefinable power that lies within. The vibe of Bellwether was a great conduit for that, literally setting the stages for those kind of experiences. It was smartly programmed — even if I may be saying that because much of it seemed to be engineered with my sensibilities in mind, the acts booked managed to hit buttons for fans of several different eras of Alternative music.
And it was well executed — even if Mother Nature made it hard on everyone’s footwear, most other factors that could have caused anxiety (long parking lot, restroom and vendor lines, $12 bottles of water, etc.) were non-existent. In the modern marketing world, talk of making events “immersive” and “experiential” is thrown around at an annoying rate. Bellwether enabled all of that without being overwrought or too try-hard about it, relying on the core music and performances to deliver the goods, while making sure there were as few obstacles to them as possible.
