If This is Friday, It Must Be Bunbury 2015: Day One (June 5)
Although this was the fourth edition of the Bunbury Music Festival along Ohio’s riverfront, in many ways it felt like the first year for the fest. And in many ways, it was just that. With founder Bill Donabedian selling a majority stake of the festival to Columbus concert outfit PromoWest, and the structural modifications that the new owners instituted (four stages instead of seven, resulting in a considerable reduction in the number of local bands on the bill), this year’s Bunbury had the feeling of a debut. In fact, the first PromoWest version of the festival had considerably more bumps and bruises than Donabedian’s three Bunbury’s combined, but we’ll leave that for later. On the first day, God created the heavens and earth, Bunbury came later. And we were ready.
A combination of a slightly late start, lane-clogging highway construction and navigating the crush of humanity trying to gain entrance to the festival resulted in missing all but the final two songs from my beloved Wussy, who opened the festival on the main stage at Yeatman’s Cove. But once you’ve experienced the quartet’s feedback baptism, it only takes a taste to refresh your soul, bring your blood to a bubbling simmer and lead you to the exultant halleleujah conclusion that Wussy is among the best bands this city has ever produced and is well on its way to being the world-class outfit we always knew they could be.
For a band that has exactly one song circulating on the internet, Machineheart knows how to fill a set with engaging and fist-pumping tunes. It’s a testament to the infectious energy of its lone-posted song, “Circles” (which showed up early in the band’s 30-minute set), that Machineheart packed the Serpentine Wall nearly solid as the group ran through a half dozen or so tracks that will likely be featured on the imminent full-length album that frontwoman Stevie Scott reported the band had been working on in the studio. Tall and thin, Scott sings with authority onstage and moves with the lanky grace of Taylor Swift, albeit with an edgier sense of presence, while the rest of Machineheart pound out a soundtrack that is equal parts propulsive Synth Pop and chugging Indie Rock. If the band comes up with a full-length as magnetic as “Circles,” Machineheart — and all of us — are in for one hell of a ride.
After a quick stroll around the area to see what physical changes PromoWest had put into place, I headed back to the Yeatman’s Cove Stage to witness Multimagic’s Bunbury debut. Singer/songwriter Mia Carruthers has been a longtime and well respected presence in the scene as a solo act, but her new role as part of this quintet suits her well. The band – Carruthers, frontman Coran Stetter, former Bad Veins drummer Sebastien Schultz, Brian Davis and Benjamin Hines — swings and swaggers with a foundational sound that suggests the members have listened to a lot of ’80s New Wave film soundtracks and filtered them through a love of Modest Mouse, as evidenced by the wonderfully jittery tracks they released through Bandcamp last year, “Let Go” and “First Song,” and the new track they unveiled at Bunbury, “Move On.” John Hughes would have been more than proud, he would have been inspired to write a screenplay about a cool new band playing its first festival gig and the romantic hijinks surrounding it. Multimagic has been playing steadily for the past year and amassing a fervent audience, based on the healthy crowd that showed up for its brief but potent 30-minute set. Multimagic is going to be a fixture in the local scene for a good long stretch … don’t you forget about them.
After Multimagic, I hotfooted it down to the Sawyer Point Stage to catch Kid Runner, a wickedly fun Synth Pop band from Columbus, Ohio. The quintet from our state capitol has plenty of attributes to warrant recommending them — big tribal drums, a well-defined Pop sensibility that can be brightly playful or darkly intense, like a mash-up of Muse and Owl City, and the rare ability to be solidly grounded in a Rock aesthetic while appointing their sound with ephemeral Pop elements. All of these qualities are front and center on the band’s most recent EP, Wake Up Now, and are amplified and broadened in the live context. While I enjoyed Kid Runner’s set immensely, I honestly would have ducked out a little early to make the start of Father John Misty down at Yeatman’s Cove, but I left earlier than I might have simply due to the distractive nature of the soundcheck bleeding over from the adjacent Pavilion Stage. It was a clumsy arrangement that probably looked great on paper but was a little sketchy in the execution. At any rate, Kid Runner was an exceptional addition to the Bunbury lineup and we can only hope that the band will drop in for a longer stay (and better sonic circumstances) in the near future.
Father John Misty drew a big crowd to the Yeatman’s Cove stage , partially due to the serious and well-deserved airtime afforded him at Northern Kentucky radio’s WNKU. Misty, known to his mom as Josh Tillman and, before now, to most of the Indie Rock world as the former drummer for Fleet Foxes (Quit? Fired? Either way, ex-), was part Folk/Rock provocateur, part stand-up comic as he and his band offered up a super-chilled ’70s Pop vibe mixed with a bracingly contemporary “fuck anybody who ain’t on board” attitude.
Misty offered up songs from his two solo albums, 2012’s Fear Fun and his latest, I Love You, Honeybear, while peppering his between-song patter with a variety of pretty funny asides. Early on, he asked the crowd, “How’s everybody doing today?” After the requisite audience response, he followed up with, “Do you like being asked how you’re doing every hour on the hour? You’re the most looked-after people in Cincinnati right now.” Later, he doffed his suit coat in the soaring temperature, noting, “It’s too hot to be dressed like a waiter at the Olive Garden.” His most piquant observation came with the prediction that Bunbury would never thrive unless it had a slightly more offbeat name, offering in Bunbury’s stead something that sounded like Blipperscrim or Bluppershrimp or some other tortured variation on Bumbershoot. Through it all, as the band charged through a set that was simultaneously laid back and yet electrically intense, Misty delivered his delightfully twisted word puzzles (“I want to take you in the kitchen, lift up the wedding dress that someone was probably murdered in …”), looking and sounding like a laboratory gene splice of J.D. Souther and Peter Fonda while splitting his time between slinky snake charming gyrations and hipster kung fu. It couldn’t have been any more perfect if the whole thing had been svengalied by T Bone Burnett. Brilliant, and over way too soon.
With the end of the quiet roar of Father John Misty, it was time for the actual roar of Catfish and the Bottlemen at the River Stage (located, duh, right near the river at Yeatman’s Cove). After a soundcheck that rearranged at least three of my major organs, the band launched into a festival-scaled set of fist-pumping Garage Rock that showed the power and versatility of the Welsh quartet. CATB conjured up a perfect storm of anthemic Rock with the ambition of the Gallagher brothers (when they weren’t at one another’s throats) and the Indie Rock intimacy of The Kooks, played at an epic volume that could have altered the flight paths of low orbit satellites. Machineheart had pulled a sizable crowd for its set, but Catfish and the Bottlemen had fans standing three deep at the top of the Serpentine Wall, leading me to invoke the Bunbury catchphrase that I concocted when I saw the thousands of patrons lined up for entry at the festival’s start: “I didn’t see (insert name of band at overcrowded stage set-up), but I heard the hell out of them.”
Next up was Bleachers’ set, which inspired a casual curiosity from a compare-and-contrast perspective. I’d been fairly impressed by fun.’s first-day headlining appearance at 2013’s Bunbury, and guitarist Jack Antonoff’s little-side-project-that-could has since exploded into a major success story of its own. Although everyone involved says the band is still together, fun. frontman Nate Ruess mined gold with his Pink duet and the positive response to the first single from his imminent solo album could mean the band’s future is like an old Stooges chestnut — no fun.
At any rate, Antonoff and the Bleachers crew, which consists of a rotating cast of semi-regulars, were well armed for the packed Yeatman’s Cove field that arrived to see if the guitarist could match fun.’s fun. They proved more than up to the task, burning through an hour-long set that drew exclusively on their 2014 debut, Strange Desire, tossing in an amped-up and gloriously jagged cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “Go Your Own Way.” As Antonoff introduced the band, which includes drummer John Hill, his old Steel Train bandmate (and a successful producer), Bleachers launched into a brief “My Sharona” vamp, which may have gone unnoticed by the younger attendees. When the band closed with an epic version of its not-quite-a-hit single, “I Wanna Get Better,” the effect was striking — Antonoff, a crack supporting band, two drummers and a sax player, all wailing away on full tilt populist anthems detailing love and disillusionment. Holy shit, Jack Antonoff has created his ’80s-film-sountrack-meets-the new-Indie-Rock-aesthetic version of the E Street Band and he is its bespectacled Bruce Springsteen, humbled in the face of the success he has achieved, thankful to his fans for making it so and vocal in his gratitude for all that has come his way.
From the preponderance of Walk the Moon T-shirts roaming the grounds all afternoon, it was clear the quartet’s second Bunbury appearance would be packed. The Cincinnati band’s April show at Bogart’s sold out quickly, disappointing a lot of local fans, but there would be no disappointment for WTM lovers on Bunbury’s opening day.
Walk the Moon could have opened their Bunbury set with its 2012 viral video hit “Anna Sun” and closed with its Platinum-certified 2015 hit “Shut Up and Dance” (which it did) and then filled everything in between with Carpenters and Tony Orlando and Dawn covers (which it didn’t), and the band would have absolutely killed. As it was, the quartet offered up a perfect sampling from its two major-label albums and blazed through a set that unified and electrified the assembled multitude and perhaps did the impossible; made its hometown fan base fall in love with them just a little bit more.
While the band was effervescent and adrenalized throughout its 75-minute set, there was a moment when frontman Nick Petricca rhapsodized fondly about Walk the Moon’s early days in Cincinnati, days of small clubs, backyard/basement parties, lineup shifts and straight-up hustling. And when he credited the hometown crowd with helping him and his band to live their ecstatic Rock & Roll dream, and noted the beauty of the day and the surroundings and circumstances, Petricca audibly choked up. It was a wonderfully vulnerable moment, proof that Walk the Moon doesn’t take its success for granted and no matter how far the band go on this amazing ride (the group is soon be warming up the maniacs at The Rolling Stones stadium show in Detroit), the members will never forget exactly where and how the journey began.
All of the closers at this year’s Bunbury soiree have something in common; they all began their careers working within the parameters of particular genres, and then expanded, reinvented and transcended them, making sounds that were familiar and yet excitingly different and increasingly attractive across a broad spectrum of listeners. First up in Bunbury’s headlining Triple Crown was The Black Keys, a longtime local favorite because of the proximity of their Akron, Ohio, hometown and because of the frequency of their visits to town. Their enormous regional fanbase showed up in force, and I don’t imagine there was too much disappointment within the multitude (although admittedly the semi-psychedelic screen display was more distraction than cool accompaniment).
It was clear that the Keys were not going to use this opportunity to flog their latest album, last year’s triumphant yet polarizing Turn Blue; the album’s big single, “Fever,” didn’t show up until the final third of the show and it turned out to be the album’s only representative in the set. In fact, the band’s previous releases, 2011’s El Camino and 2010’s Brothers, may have been the best covered, with nearly 3/4 of the Keys’ Bunbury set list culled from those two albums, including a rousing rave-up of “Little Black Submarines” from El Camino to close out the night. And when guitarist/vocalist Dan Auerbach announced, “This is an old song,” he was good for his word as the band lurched into the Delta-by-way-of-Chicago slink of “Leavin’ Trunk” from the Keys’ 2002 full-length debut, The Big Come Up, which may have been the best example of how far the duo-turned-band has traveled from relatively straight Blues roots to the hybridized Indie Rock/Classic Rock/Psychedelic Pop that the Keys have spun into literal and figurative gold over the past dozen years. Given the dearth of Turn Blue material in The Black Keys’ current set list and the emphasis on crowd pleasers El Camino and Brothers, the underlying message could be that Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney are headed for a return to form on their next trip to the studio. Or this could just be the Keys’ festival strategy and their next album could be even further out than their last one. To the true Keys fans, who have embraced every twist and turn in their amazing journey to date, either way will be just fine.
DAY 1 NOTES:
Down at the Wussy show, I ran into the incredible Nick Barrow (from the CEA-nominated JetLab), his amazing wife Robin and their niece, Princess Genevieve Beyonciana. OK, that’s not her name. By the time I took notes, it had completely evaporated from my frontal lobe. Hey, if you’ve read this blog before, you know how I am. She needs to show up with an “I’m Stu” hat and then I’ll get it. Although it should have her name and not Stu’s. Otherwise, I’ll be calling her Stu. Hey, she started it. Anyway, Robin generously offered me some sunscreen, which I applied to my rapidly expanding forehead; this act of kindness would have interesting repercussions later in the day.
Also taking in the wonders of Wussy were my good pal Eddy Mullet and his daughter Jess, who is quickly becoming a local music expert on a par with her well-versed father. Eddy is still documenting the local scene with the Kindred Sanction show (which he inherited from the great Cynthia Dye Wimmers a few years back) on Class X Radio. And (get ready for the shameless plug) we’re working together on-air again on Thursday nights at 6 p.m. for a little thing I’m calling The Sixty Second Minute Hour, which includes “The CityBeat Report” (a brief compendium of shows taking place during the upcoming weekend), and the “Gang of Four Set,” a quartet of tunes that are linked together by a theme that is revealed at set’s end. It’s a fast hour (I know that’s a physical impossibility, but you know what I mean), so check it out — 88.9/89.1 FM on the standard radio dial, classxradio.com on your computer or Jetsons phone (there’s an app for that). We now return you to your regularly scheduled Notes.
On my trek over to Kid Runner, I ran into the always rambunctious Venomous Valdez, with a saga that will have to wait for another time. I can only say that I hate it when friends don’t get along. Make up and make nice, kids. Also spotted Goose frontman Jason Arbenz, who hopefully got right back to work on the new Goose album as soon as he returned home. And, as always, crossed paths with two of the best photo shooters in the biz, Michael Kearns and Steve Ziegelmeyer.
Heading down to Father John Misty, I chanced into the hardest working volunteer in any musical capacity and a guitarist who could make Segovia and Eddie Van Halen weep for mercy, Mr. Jacob Heintz (of the late, great Buckra). Somehow, everything’s better with Jacob around, and that definitely goes for Bunbury and the MidPoint Music Festival. The E Street Band had their big man and we’ve got ours. Long may he brighten our festivals.
Also caught up with my boss and compatriot for the past two decades, Mr. Mike Breen. We traded observations on Father John Misty and talked about the weekend ahead, then copped a quick pose for Michael Kearns. Now that I think of it, he may have been more interested in the tree we were leaning on. Or he’s starting a geezer section for his portrait portfolio (“If I can make this rusty old dumpster look like a reasonable facsimile of a human, think what I can do for you”). A bit later, I shared a moment with the whole Breen clan, including his lovely lady Amy and their delightful daughter Nico, who was on board solely for the Walk the Moon experience. Hope she had a good one.
It ain’t a party until Wes Pence shows up, and I ran into The Ready Stance guitarist/vocalist on the Yeatman’s Cove concourse on my way to the Bottlemen show. Three things happened simultaneously — I stopped to jot down a T-shirt notation, I spotted Wes and we hugged it out and the sunscreen that Robin had so generously shared sweated itself into my eyeballs. As I was telling Wes about my recent travails, which included the death and funeral of my cousin, tears were streaming down my cheeks as though I were mincing the world’s strongest onion while enduring a pepper spray eyewash. I said, “I’m not crying,” to which Wes answered, “I was wondering when you’d turned into such a woman,” which prompted my response of “Call me Caitlyn.” Having just quaffed his beer, I almost got an honest to God spit-take from Wes. It’s the little things that mean so much.
Now allow me to take a brief break from the notes for a public service announcement in an effort to stave off the avalanche of comments likely to follow. I have the utmost respect for Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner in his/her journey to actualize the life he/she has always wanted to lead. The above quip was about me, not about Ms. Jenner. And for the record, I have always confronted life’s realities with a rather twisted sense of humor and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. I told my father when he woke up from quadruple bypass surgery that he looked like Nick Nolte’s mugshot, and when my grandmother was feeling down after a radical mastectomy, I told her to look on the bright side, she could use her right bra cup for a candy dish. She nearly spit out her teeth laughing. And for the record, last year at this time, when Jenner’s features were softening but well before intentions were announce, late night comics were regularly dropping comments in their monologues to the tune of, “When Bruce Jenner powders his nose, which bathroom does he use?” Now you can’t even mention Jenner (gaaaaa…pronouns) without the PC Police writing you up for a moving violation. So save your outrage and maybe grow either a thicker skin or some version of a sense of humor. You’ll feel so much better.
Just before The Black Keys took the stage, I headed down to the food court to grab a bucket of Island Noodles, a perennial fave during my Bunbury activities. Just as I hit the seating area, a girl walked past bemoaning the fact that Island Noodles had just run out of said noodles. Crushed, I got into line at the Hamburger Wagon, where I’d had lunch earlier in the day. The Miamisburg joint was enjoying a brisk business at its Bunbury debut; they offer no condiments and no cheese with the burgers, just onions and pickles, and they are correct in their assessment that their burgers require nothing else.
Within moments of getting into line, the rain that began as a mist during Walk the Moon’s set returned with a little more vigor. Inside of a minute, it was raining hard enough to beat a cat’s ass. The downpour continued for several minutes unabated until those of us without any protection were drenched from angel wings to asscrack. A young man in line behind me said, “How’re you doing, sir?” The “sir” threw me off a little; for a moment, I thought he was smartassing me, but I quickly realized it was merely the manners of a good upbringing. His name was Dylan, and he and his brother Jordan and their friends had come up from Louisville, Ky., for Bunbury and were having a great time at our festival. We talked about Forecastle (they invited me down), Bruce Jenner (I will not share my comments because they will be misconstrued as disrespectful, because they probably were, but they were unapologetically funny as fuck), and the imminent Black Keys. The rain stopped and then started again, even harder the second time, making us almost impossibly wetter. And as we approached the Hamburger Wagon, it was announced that they too were running out of food. Thankfully, we got our orders in before they completely ran out. With no Mr. Hanton’s to be seen this year, I traded my hot dog for a meat patty. And that was not a Jenner joke.
Sunburn on My Forehead Makes It Saturday: Bunbury 2015 Day Two (June 6)
Finally dried from the drenching of the previous night, I once again ventured into the land of Bunbury by way of the magical media entrance, apparently a much quicker way in than the public’s points of access. At last, my vow of writing poverty pays a dividend.
My first stop was the Sawyer Point Stage where Columbus, Ohio’s Playing to Vapors was firing up the crowd, some of whom had run full-bolt from the entrance in order to get a spot near the front of the stage. At this point in my life, the only way I’m running in any significant manner is if I’m being pursued by a bear or someone with a weapon. Barring that, between hip, knees, back and inclination, a brisk walk is about the best I can manage, but in another time, I would have run to see Playing to Vapors. Its synth-driven Prog/Pop exhibited a sugary, shimmery sweetness but there was an edge, typified by shifts in time signature, a certain lyrical intrigue and moments of purposeful dissonance — “You Never Seem Sorry When You’re Gone” from the just-released EP A Glitch in the Void was a particular case in point — and it added up to a fairly compelling set. We can but hope that Playing to Vapors might be amenable to more frequent trips to the area.
After Playing to Vapors, it was a bracing 20-second stroll over to the Pavilion Stage to witness the effervescent (and local) wonder of Daniel in Stereo, In just over a year, Daniel Chimusoro has dropped a world-class EP, 4 Years, with the power of early U2 and Foo Fighters at their most melodically straightforward (and if you’re a fan of Police drummer Stewart Copeland’s quirky Pop alter ego Klark Kent, you might detect shades of that as well) and began building the kind of grassroots following that could eventually take him on a Walk the Moon-style magic carpet ride. Daniel’s latest single, “Lipstain,” released just days before Bunbury, has the same kind of summery bounce and infectious hookery that pushed “Shut Up and Dance” to the top of the charts, and it was certainly a highlight of his Bunbury set, but it was hard to pick out favorites in a deck stacked this solidly. There is the obvious novelty of Daniel’s band, the by-now familiar guitar/drums duo, but Daniel’s use of backing tracks, loops and pedals means he can rise above the three-chord Garage stomp that usually results from this pared down lineup. For Bunbury, Daniel’s beatkeeper of choice was solo-artist-in-his-own-right Colton Jackson, who proved he was more than up to the task of keeping up with the billion-watt smile and unstoppably joyful force that is Daniel in Stereo.
After DIS, I hotfooted it down to the River Stage to take in Bummers, whose preview I’d written for our Bunbury highlights. Also hailing from our state capitol, Bummers plays a reverbed sampler platter of Garage, Pop, Classic Rock, Psychedelia, Surf and Doo Wop, and blenderizes it into a chunky melodic salsa that delivers a compelling bite and pretty effective wallop. It also draws an overflow crowd; the Serpentine Wall was once again packed from stage to top level and fans were three-four deep on the concourse behind the top step. I caught glimpses, but I heard the hell out of them.
Then it was back down to the Pavilion Stage to catch the glorious twist and twang of Cincinnati’s Motherfolk, which could effectively be described as Mumford & Mannish Sons, or a mash-up of Death Cab for Cutie and Modest Mouse with a deep Americana streak. Vocalist/electric guitarist Nathan Dickerson noted that Daniel in Stereo had classified the band as “a Folk band with balls.” Leave it to Daniel to distill the truth down to its absolute essence. And like Daniel, Motherfolk seemed to be having as much fun as the enormous crowd it drew. At one point, Dickerson pointed out the band’s fairly consistent local profile and the fact that the band doesn’t normally attract nearly the multitude that filled the field in front of the Pavilion Stage (although, as Dickerson admitted, the 40-50 screaming faithful in front of the stage were definitely regulars). Well, the band went a long way toward converting more than a few new souls into the congregation of the First Righteous Church of Motherfolk. Between songs from its eponymous debut album (including the brilliant “Salt Lake City,” and its impassioned lyrical wish: “I hope your organs fail you before I do…”), and follow-up EP, Trying to Kill the Moon, both released last year, and an impromptu run through “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” Motherfolk proved to be not merely a great band but a great band of entertainers.
Another leisurely 15-second promenade to the Sawyer Point Stage put me squarely in front of the greatest Bluegrass/Rockabilly/Punk riot known to man, The Devil Makes Three. No one could ever have guessed that an acoustic guitar, a banjo and an upright bass (and eventually a violin) could create such a beautifully and unholy racket. Of course, it helps if you have the songs, and great googly moogly, The Devil Makes Three has the songs. Blowing through selections from its four magnificent albums — particularly its 2013 New West debut, I’m a Stranger Here — the trio/quartet cast a rootsy spell over the voluminous audience, a good many of whom had clearly had a previous taste of The Devil Makes Three’s addictive moonshine Kool-Aid.
From there, it was back down to the River Stage to catch a few songs from The Secret Sisters, who came highly recommended from the aforementioned Mr. Roberts, who has some spongey brain issues of his own, but whose musical taste I have found to be generally trustworthy. And so it was with The Secret Sisters, a pair of Alabama siblings that warble with the kind of connective harmony that can only be explained by DNA. Like the Everlys on estrogen therapy, The Secret Sisters’ voices seem to meld in the air on a molecular level to create a harmonic presence unlike any other musical convergence. So far, Laura and Lydia Rogers have a pair of albums — their eponymous 2010 debut and last year’s incredible Put Your Needle Down — to flesh out a set but it hardly matters; Laura and Lydia could sing the tax code and raise your neck, arm and back hair without any trouble at all.
After overhearing a number of people talk about their schedules, I ducked out of The Secret Sisters to check out a bit of Lindsey Stirling on the Yeatman’s Cove Stage. Sterling became a YouTube sensation by posting videos of herself playing Prog/Rock violin while performing rather physical dance routines. At first blush, Stirling’s stage routines seemed a little mechanical and repetitive, and almost took on the aura of Cheri Oteri’s spirit cheerleader routine, but at one point, I just closed my eyes and listened as she blasted through an instrumental number that could have been a Kansas outtake from the mid ’70s. Without the visual element, Stirling’s playing was accomplished and propulsive. With that baseline established, her total presentation gained a little more heft, if only for the obvious fact that the overwhelming majority of humans cannot coax even the rudiments of a melody out of a violin when they’re standing stock still, let alone while leaping about the stage in tights and a tutu. In addition to Stirling’s often epic Muse-like soundtrack, there is a modern dance component with choreographed hoofers weaving their way around the stage. All in all, a pretty impressive display of musicianship and pure entertainment.
I bailed toward the end of Lindsey Stirling’s set to make my way back to the Sawyer Point Stage to catch The Decemberists, who I have long enjoyed but never seen. With a history stretching back a decade and a half, The Decemberists were among the first wave of Indie Rock bands pursuing a Neo Folk direction, although the Portland, Ore., collective, led by Colin Meloy, factored in Prog/Chamber Pop components and definitely tapped into the storytelling aspects of British Folk for their creative purposes.
In the studio, The Decemberists rely on an almost Art Pop sense of subtlety and nuance to get their sonic point across but in the live context, volume and power are at the forefront of the band’s presentation. Per the standard festival, The Decemberists weren’t necessarily touting their new album, What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World (although it was the best represented, with five of the set’s 13 songs coming from Beautiful World), with the larger portion of the set offering a crowd-pleasing sampler platter culled from their triumphant and often misunderstood catalog; a trio from their polarizing 2009 song cycle, The Hazards of Love, another three from 2011’s well regarded The King Is Dead, including their Grammy-nominated “Down by the Water,” and ultimately finishing up with a rousing version of “O Valencia!” from 2005’s acclaimed The Crane Wife and then dipping even further back with “16 Military Wives” from 2003’s Her Majesty the Decemberists.
If anyone was thinking they’d slip down to The Decemberists show for a chill vibe and a little downtime, they may have been surprised by the amount of volume and aggressive energy emanating from the Sawyer Point Stage. Even in the moments when the band slid into their patented beautiful Folk reverie, there was still an underlying power and potency to their delicate touches, which heightened the bracing Indie Rock profile of the rest of The Decemberists’ show.
Still dazed from The Decemberists’ unexpected onslaught, I decided to forego the always awesome Reverend Horton Heat experience, which I have witnessed twice before, and instead headed down to the Yeatman’s Cove Stage to check out Kacey Musgraves. Like every other right-minded music fan, I’d been completely charmed by Musgraves’ 2013 breakthrough album, Same Trailer Different Park, and I was more than curious about her live presentation.
Musgraves took the stage in a short denim skirt with gold-tassle trim that looked like something remaindered from Dolly Parton’s wardrobe when she and Porter Waggoner were shilling boxes of Breeze on TV. And there wasn’t a thing wrong with that. Musgraves mixes authentic Country with a buzzy Roots Rock to create a sound that twangs like a Tennessee cousin and hits with the authority of a 300-pound middle linebacker.
The majority of Musgraves’ set was populated with tracks from Same Trailer, including the loping groove-and-stomp of “Blowin’ Smoke” (which she prefaced with “I smell it out there already … are you ready to blow some smoke?”) and her platinum single, “Follow Your Arrow,” which Rolling Stone cited as one of the 100 Best Country Songs of All Time. Although Musgraves’ new album, Pageant Material, would drop two and a half weeks later, she kept things fairly close to the vest in that regard, previewing just three new songs, the single “Biscuits” (she resolutely refused to bow to label pressure to change the lyric, “Pissing in my yard won’t make yours any greener …”), “This Town” and “High Time.”
Musgraves fleshed out her 75-minute set with her familiar mind-your-own-business themed single, “The Trailer Song,” her solo spin on “Mama’s Broken Heart,” the song she co-wrote with Miranda Lambert (which Lambert rode to the upper reaches of the charts in 2011), and a trio of amazing and unexpected covers.
First up was Musgraves’ delightful left field Country spin on TLC’s “No Scrubs,” followed a little later by a lovely reading of Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds” and finally her chugging Roots Rock take on Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Are Made For Walkin’,” which closed out the set in fine fashion. With the fabulous one-two punch of Same Trailer Different Park and Pageant Material, and an absolutely iron-clad reputation for moxie above and beyond the call of duty, Kacey Musgraves is looking at a long and successful Country career, on her own damn terms.
Rather than race down to check out Old Crow Medicine Show (who I later heard put on one of the best shows of the weekend — next time, for sure), I hung around so as not to miss a single second of The Avett Brothers, who I had never seen. On the plus side, I’ve done phone interviews with Scott Avett three times, so that has to count for something, but I had been looking forward to this particular show since PromoWest announced the initial lineup at The Redmoor back in February.
The one big question mark in all of this was the Avetts’ ability to translate their very intimate club/theater presence to a stage and a crowd of this size. It should never have been a concern; from the opening note, it was crystal clear that The Avett Brothers are completely comfortable in any proportional situation, and it was obvious to seasoned Avett attendees and newbies like me that the Brothers came to play.
Kicking off their set with the propulsive “Satan Pulls the Strings,” the Avetts threw down the gauntlet and announced to the assembled multitude that this would be the Brothers on an epic scale. The range of that scale was no better displayed than on the hair-raising whisper-to-a-shout magnificence of “Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise,” and the line that always makes me swallow hard and squeeze out a tear; “There’s a darkness upon me that’s flooded in light/And I’m frightened by those who don’t see it.”
And even in this oversized context, the Avetts had little difficulty bringing their presentation down to an intimate and personal level. Even with thousands of drunk, loud and inattentive patrons in the mix, the band found a way to connect on an improbable one-on-one basis with the thousands more that were laser-focused on the stage and everything emanating from it.
A good part of The Avett Brothers’ increased sonic profile, particularly in festival surroundings, is the increased personnel joining the original trio of Scott and Seth Avett and bassist Bob Crawford and their latest permanent member, cellist Joe Kwon (who whips his long hair during the band’s more frenetic moments with a vigor that would make Willow Smith cheer). On the road, former Duhks violinist Tania Elizabeth helps create an exquisite delicacy, keyboardist Paul DeFiglia adds beauty with his piano and an expanse with his Hammond B3 and drummer Mike Marsh provides a rock-solid foundation for the whole entourage, shouldering the set’s weight and shifting it from gear to gear like a rhythmic Atlas.
In the same fashion as The Black Keys on the previous night, The Avett Brothers have found an interesting blend of the Bluegrass/Folk genres that informed their earliest work and the Pop/Rock heart that has always been beating underneath their flannel work shirts. Without abandoning the honesty and beauty of the music that led them down this path originally, The Avett Brothers have added a muscular melodicism that rings through their songs like an uncracked Liberty Bell. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the band’s stunning two-song encore, which began with the rousingly energetic “Slight Figure of Speech,” a peppy little ass-shaker in the studio but a full blown Rock anthem in Bunbury’s closing minutes. The Avetts concluded with a breathtaking run through the absolutely (and literally) showstopping “I and Love and You,” perhaps the best example of their transition from Bluegrass miniaturists to Twang Pop orchestra and a hyperemotional way to end a near perfect set. Like Wilco, The Avett Brothers are actively trying to break your heart, but only so they can have the opportunity to patch it back up again.
DAY 2 NOTES:
I presented my press pass and secured my daily wrist band (at one point this weekend, a civilian asked me what my press pass got me into and I said, “Conversations exactly like this”), and then devoured a box of Island Noodles. On a quick stroll before my first show, I spied Paul Roberts, a prince of a guy and a true knight of the musical round table, headed up the path toward the food court. I immediately whipped out my notepad and scribbled this hasty entry: Paul Roberts is a Big Bunbury Ass. I then showed him the scrawl and assured him it would wind up in the blog. Which it has. Further proof that I’m good for my word, even though my word is tainted by the spongey brain that has resulted from age, chemicals, alcohol, moral turpitude and the ’70s, in no particular order. What were we talking about? Oh, right. I like Paul. He’s a good guy. We saw Playing to Vapors and Daniel in Stereo together. I think.
As Daniel in Stereo’s set was coming to a close, I did a quick survey of the crowd as I normally do at these things, and noticed a woman heading out for another set somewhere that looked amazingly like our friend Karen. She had been my wife’s best friend at U.C. and when Melissa and I started dating, I gained two best friends, Karen and her boyfriend-then-husband Mark. We were thick as thieves for a good many years, but kids and jobs and family and life intruded. We kept in touch via calls and Christmas cards, which was how we found out about Mark’s cancer diagnosis. He battled valiantly until April 17, 2009. We’d spoken the previous month and then saw him at a party his sister Becky threw for him; he said he had fought his best fight and was not ready to go, but he was tired and it felt like his time was at hand. I’m pretty sure I cried; I’m pretty sure he didn’t. I hope my balls have that kind of brass content when it’s my turn.
Anyway, I see a half dozen women at events like this that look like Karen, and this one looked like Karen because it was Karen. I took off after her, but the natural aisle of humanity led me away from her, so I ducked between people, caught up to her, grabbed her by the shoulder and spun her around. First she looked at me like I was an insane person (which is, in fact, true, I’ve been checking that box on forms for years; “Crazy? Yes, please”), then slow recognition crept in. “Brian?” she said hesitantly. I said, “Yeah,” and with that, she squealed “I haven’t seen you in a hundred years!” and leapt onto me, grabbing me around the neck, and wrapping her legs around the thighs I desperately hoped would keep us both upright. That’s when I noticed her boyfriend Chuck, who was eyeing me with understandable concern. I stuck out my hand and shook his, saying, “You must be Chuck,” which he affirmed tersely. As his girlfriend was still attached to me like a human baby carrier, I noted, “She doesn’t do this with everyone,” and he said, “She doesn’t do that with me.” I smiled and said, “There you go.”
Once she dismounted, Karen and I had a quick catch-up session. She said her kids, Hannah and Paul, were there — they’d given her the Bunbury Saturday ticket as a Mother’s Day present so she could see The Avett Brothers, who she loves. We talked for a few more minutes but they were headed elsewhere, so we hugged it out one more time (Karen wisely kept her feet on the ground this time) and went our separate ways. I looked for her and Chuck that night at the Avetts’ show, but the crowd was way too massive. But we’ll be seeing her again soon, that’s a fact.
On our way over to Bummers, Paul and I ran into Big Jim, the easiest guy in a crowd to spot; you just look for the vegetation falling down in every direction around him. After complaining about the long lines for water, Big Jim hipped us to a relatively overlooked water fountain in front of the bank of Port-O-Lets at the back of the Yeatman’s Cove Stage field. It was particularly temperamental, giving up a little liquid before gurgling to a halt. Paul wondered aloud why the fountain would be so weirdly intermittent, and I responded, “Maybe it’s just waiting for the reservoir to refill,” motioning to the row of Port-O-Lets. Paul then made an observation that has been directed at me since my misbegotten childhood: “You are not right.”
Back at Bummers, Paul and Big Jim hailed their pal, who they introduced as Kevin McKeehan, the mayor of Oxford. I thought they were dicking with me, or making that joke where a guy who drinks in every joint in town is “the mayor” of that town, like my father is the mayor of, well, just about everywhere. Turns out he is the actual elected mayor of Oxford, Ohio. Now that I know this, it is my mission to try to get the nation’s most ridiculous law passed in Oxford, something on the order of “every three-legged horse must wear a Carmen Miranda wax-fruit turban when using the crosswalks downtown between 4:35 and 5:12 a.m. on alternate weekdays.” I have no idea how drunk Mayor McKeehan would have to be to go along with something like this, but I’m willing to figure out a way to a) expense out the bar tab to reach that point, and b) git ‘er done.
As I was headed down to Lindsey Stirling, I realized my water bottles were a little low, so I headed to the fickle water fountain where people were trying to snake charm some H2O from the spigot. I mentioned the trouble that we’d had earlier, but the woman who was working on it gave up and walked off; I thought maybe no one had heard me, so I repeated my warning to the guy who stepped up to take her place. He finally got a little dribble; “Maybe it’s a prostate problem.” He laughed and we started making small talk, when it struck me; I knew him from somewhere. I kept him talking and finally it hit me; he and I had gone to Lollapalooza together in 1993, when the festival was at the Deer Creek facility near Indianapolis. We didn’t know each other before the festival and I don’t think we ever talked to other again afterward. He was a friend of John James, then owner of Wizard Records, and they were going to Lollapalooza together, but there was trouble at the store and John couldn’t go, so he gave me his ticket and said, “Go with Michael, he’s a good guy, you’ll have fun.” It turned out to be a great day; we just got in the gate at Deer Creek and I ran into a buddy from my Bogart’s days, who was working the festival for the promoter. He set us up with VIP wristbands so we could get water and decent food and regular trips to a clean bathroom without having to wait in line. It was magical. I said, “Are you Michael?” He said, “Yeah …” I introduced myself, and reminded him of Lollapalooza. He said, “2005? 2006?” I laughed. “No, 1993. Deer Creek. Primus. Alice in Chains. Tool.” His jaw dropped and he cracked up. We caught up briefly before heading in different directions, but I ran into him and his friend — whose name skated out of my head almost immediately — several more times over the next two days. And here’s the dichotomy of growing older; I can remember a guy from 22 years ago that I spent one amazing day with, and I can’t remember his friend’s name 30 seconds after hearing it. Someday I will be the goldfish and the world will be my bowl.
Happy birthday to Jay Metz!
Just before Kacey Musgraves got started, I ran into Daniel Chimusoro and congratulated him on his stellar set. Daniel was imploring the sizable crowd he had drawn to drop a little coin of the realm at his merch table so that he could afford a belated Mother’s Day gift and a then imminent Father’s Day present for his parents (who were both in attendance, by the way). I certainly hope that Daniel met his Giftstarter campaign goal and got them both something nice, and barring that, I trust that he took my practical suggestion of making a lovely macaroni frame for his Bunbury Artist laminate. A memento of his professional triumph with a personal touch. It doesn’t get much better than that.
A few minutes later, I turned just in time to see Kyle, the magnificent friend of my magnificent friend, Matthew Fenton. Kyle confirmed what I had suspected, namely that Matthew had not been particularly wowed by this year’s Bunbury lineup and chose to stay in Chicago. Using his space-age Jetsons phone (I really do have to get one of those), Kyle took a photo of me and e-mailed it to Matthew, opting for the pleasant caption, “Hi Matthew,” rather than his threatened “Fuck you, man.” I think he made the right choice.
Further proof of my descent into eternity. A quartet of young ladies was twirling about on the promenade during The Avett Brothers’ set in some passion-soaked variation on St. Vitus Dance, when one of them decided they should all head into the field to continue their gyrations. There were several loud stops and starts along the way, all of which took place to the left or directly in front of me. Finally, the ringleader who had thought up the full field dance assault shouted, “Let’s go!,” reached through the massed bodies and grabbed a hand. She had been aiming for the friend closest to her, but managed to latch onto my wrist instead. She pulled vigorously and, when I didn’t move, she looked at her friend and said, “Come on!” I lifted my arm, which raised hers, and said, “Really?” She couldn’t have looked more horrified than if she’d stuck her hand into a nest of copperheads during a forest fire and came out with a flaming fistful of shit-covered poisonous snakes. She opened her hand like she’d been tased and disappeared into the swarm, presumably to find a deprogrammer to help erase the memory of having touched a living mummy. I’d have given her a piece of my mind about fighting at Anzio in WWII for her freedom to make poor fashion choices but my feet, knees, hip and back were all in a serious state of revolt after my second full day at Bunbury. And I think she broke my wrist. Good thing the Avetts were in a healing frame of mind.
Going to the Church of Bunbury 2015: Day Three (June 7)
Once in the gate, I headed straight for the food area, where I chanced into good friend Brent, who I’d briefly crossed paths with on Saturday. He was Kat-less for the weekend due to the unfortunate vagaries of work scheduling; to avoid paying for his admittance, he had volunteered, which occupied him for a few short hours and left him free to see most of what he wanted. A good trade, I think. We decided that Eli’s was the best line to be in on this Sunday afternoon, and it turned out to be a good decision indeed.
Brent and I headed over to the River Stage to catch one of the day’s first sets from the always-entertaining 500 Miles to Memphis. As with a good many local bands, it’s difficult for me to maintain that journalistic objectivity that we in the media are supposed to exhibit in the face of our scene’s consistent display of world-class talent. It’s equally difficult to fashion a review that doesn’t sound like it’s coming from their press flack, but to that I can only say that the moment Ryan Mallott and any version of 500MTM that he brings to the stage begins to phone it in or dip their pens in the inkwell of suckitude, I will call them on it faster than a cheetah’s honeymoon. Given the results of their latest studio adventure, the patently amazing Stand There and Bleed (a brilliant lift from the dialogue of one of my favorite films of all time, Tombstone), which got plenty of attention during 500MTM’s short but breathtaking set. Given the brevity of the band’s stage time, there was no spotlight time for the always-great David Rhodes Brown, so he just remained in place, alternately sweetening and scorching the air with his pedal steel runs, while the rest of the band coaxed and commanded a soundtrack that would simultaneously produce and then shame the devil. At the front of it all, looking more than ready for his close-up on the giant video screens flanking the River Stage, was Ryan Malott, all flannel-and-John-Deere-cap homespun while churning out an intensity reminiscent of Kurt Russell as Snake Pliskin in a dual-eyed Midwestern prequel to Escape from New York. There are few bets any safer than laying down a few bucks to see 500 Miles to Memphis on any given occasion.
I caught a few fleeting bits and pieces of the rather incredible Front Bottoms on the Yeatman’s Cove Stage while catching up with Lollapalooza pal Michael Moore, his friend Sir Archibald Tuneage III (perhaps I’m subconsciously ignoring people’s real names when we’re being introduced in order to make up this goofy crap; I may require some active therapy) and dear old friend from back in the day Kip Roe and his amazing son Kip Jr. before heading down to the Sawyer Point Stage to witness the might and majesty of Cincinnati’s own Hip Hop mogul, Buggs Tha Rocka. Buggs’ performance at January’s Cincinnati Entertainment Awards ceremony was mesmerizing and although his half-hour set at Bunbury was only marginally longer, he packed an hour’s worth of intensity and invention into his all too brief festival appearance. Drawing on his latest album, Scattered Thoughts of an American Poet, and beyond, Buggs presented a full-frontal assault of musical ideas with a razor sharp band, finding the unlikely intersection of Hip Hop, R&B, esoteric Indie Rock and pure Pop that was baked to a turn in the afternoon sun and served piping hot to an eager and hungry audience. You won’t find a more passionate and enthusiastic booster of local music in general than Buggs, but as he noted more than once during his set, although the time for Hip Hop to be represented at Bunbury was overdue, he was more than happy to make up for lost time, which he did with a deliriously focused glee. If given the proper platform, Buggs could easily cause the kind of sensation within the national Hip Hop community that Walk the Moon has inspired on an Indie Pop/Rock level. No one has worked harder toward that end and no one deserves it more than Buggs Tha Rocka.
I tapped into the adrenaline from Buggs’ performance to steel myself for a lengthy water fountain refill wait, then it was a brisk walk back to the Yeatman’s Cove Stage for Manchester Orchestra. It’s an oft-told tale that I shared a buffet lunch with the MO boys a decade ago at SXSW, just after the self-release of their debut EP, You Brainstorm, I Brainstorm, But Brilliance Needs a Good Editor. I nearly melted that EP from overplay and the Texas heat; I couldn’t get enough of their amazing blend of Chamber Pop subtlety and Shoegaze decibelity. Ten years on, Manchester Orchestra is still working that familiar corner, finding the sonic sweet spot between howling, tribal, loud-as-God Indie Rock and vulnerable, melancholic and intricate Pop. In those quieter moments, Manchester Orchestra’s odd time signatures and swelling arrangements pulse with a vibration that feels every bit as contemplative and composed as their lofty name would indicate, but when they power back up, MO shreds and squalls with an intensity that could be mistaken for Black Sabbath’s homage to Nirvana.
At one point, frontman Andy Hull announced that he and guitarist Robert McDowell were going to attempt something different and prepared the crowd with an ominous introduction; “This might be weird.” Asking for quiet — a relative term at a festival of any size — the pair proceeded to peel off a duet solo that sounded like soul-possessed guitarists trying to snake-charm open the gates of hell. As the final notes shimmered to a halt, Hull concluded, “That did not go well,” and they launched back into more familiar territory.
Although MO concentrated on more recent albums — 2009’s Mean Everything to Nothing, 2011’s Simple Math and last year’s blistering Cope — the band didn’t neglect its early days, cruising through powerful versions of “I Can Barely Breathe” and the set’s closer “Where Have You Been?,” a pair of tracks from the group’s debut full-length, I’m Like a Virgin Losing a Child. After the soothing scorch of “Where Have You Been?,” the Manchesters closed out with a second run through their Surf Metal Folk anthem, “Barry Bonds,” thus ending yet another stellar appearance from one of the finest musical exports Atlanta has ever produced.
On the way over to the food court to grab some sustenance, I stopped by the River Stage for a quick swig of Alejandro Rose-Garcia, aka Shakey Graves, an intensely powerful Roots Folk shitkicker from the wilds of Austin, Texas. Graves combines the tremulous Americana swagger of early Steve Earle, the Indie quirk of Modest Mouse and the stompy Folk of The Lumineers, all rolled up in a ball of idiosyncrasy and volume. Like most things at the River Stage this weekend, the crowd was three or four deep at the top of the Serpentine Wall, and so I couldn’t see anything, but I heard the hell out of Shakey and his band.
I grabbed a handful of double burger from the Hamburger Wagon (see a fuller appreciation below) and listened to Minneapolis Hip Hop denizens Atmosphere weave their rhymes and tell twisted stories from the Sawyer Point Stage. I ran into Kip and Kip Jr. as they were wrapping up, and Kip made this cogent observation about young Atmosphere’s frontman Slug: “I think he might be broken, and I really want to know what happened to him.”
After communing with the Hamburger Wagon and Atmosphere, I hotfooted it back down to the Yeatman’s Cove Stage to witness the jet engine roar of Brand New. The Long Island, N.Y. quartet plays Punk/Metal with balls as big as planets with absolutely no perception of laying back, making certain that no discernible air exists between pedal and metal. About mid set, after a solid and unrelenting run of tunes, guitarist/vocalist Jesse Lacey was prepping to play “Mix Tape” from the band’s first album, 2001’s My Favorite Weapon, and vamped about how glad they were to be sharing the stage with the Front Bottoms, Manchester Orchestra and Snoop Dogg while trying to get his guitar into the proper tuning. When the guitar refused to cooperate, Lacey announced, “I’m gonna play out of tune,” and switched to “Seventy Times 7,” also from the first album. Just the fact that Brand New will offer up songs from its earliest evolutionary state, a time when they were critically dinged for perpetuating Emo cliches, shows how much the band trusts its fan base and how far the members have come in the intervening decade and a half. The band also dipped back into its sophomore album, 2003’s Deja Entendu — the album that redeemed Brand New in the critics’ eyes as a work of growth and maturity — with full bore blasts of “Sic Transit Gloria … Glory Fades” and “Okay I Believe You But My Tommy Gun Don’t.” The bulk of Brand New’s set came from 2005’s The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me and its last album, 2009’s Daisy, but the band’s opening song, “Mene,” provided hope that the members will get off the road long enough to write and record a brand new Brand New album soon. If anything, the band’s career-spanning Bunbury set proved they’ve got energy and chops to burn.
Finally it was time to close down Bunbury with one of music’s most singular talents, the man for whom the words “the one and only” may not even come close to being adequate: Snoop Dogg. How many artists have successfully duet-ed with Willie Nelson and Katy Perry? There aren’t many people who have successfully imagined duet-ing with Willie Nelson and Katy Perry. Snoop has done all that and more. As disparate as they are from each other, Bunbury’s three closers — The Black Keys, The Avett Brothers and Snoop Dogg — possess a certain commonality. All three artists have taken a root genre and remade it in their own image, investing it with their own personality and pushing it beyond its accepted parameters to attract a new and diverse fan base. Snoop Dogg crosspollinated Hip Hop with a whole world of music and recast the results as a completely new entity that exists only because he has made it so. It is Snoop music and while it bears all the identifying characteristics of Hip Hop, it transcends them as well, because Snoop is part Hip Hop impresario, part urban shaman, part street corner prophet, part loving father, part weed activist, part stoned anarchist, part visionary artiste, part populist man of the people. And because Snoop has found an ingenious way of blending these elements together without doing so at the expense of the people who love him for one or another individual quality, he has grown his audience exponentially and embraced everyone who has embraced him. That’s why there were easily 25,000 people at the Yeatman’s Cove Stage to witness the all-encompassing wildness of Snoop Dogg, and the Doggfather did not disappoint at any level.
I was blissfully unaware that cartilage could vibrate at low frequencies — shows you how much I know — but Snoop’s mega bass sound system had my nose twitching like a Bewitched rerun. It was reported after the show that people in Hyde Park complained about the rumbling bass sound coming from the river. Snoop wins! I won’t pretend to know a solitary thing about Snoop’s catalog; I’ve got a couple of his albums and I like them, but I couldn’t name you any of his songs without looking them up online. What I can tell you is that Snoop knows his audience and he works a crowd the way Muhammad Ali worked an opponent, floating like a butterfly and stinging like a bee. And he was in absolute control throughout the entire set. When he sought a response from his congregation, he knew what he wanted to hear and he knew how to get it, and he was an absolute master of pacing and attack, leading his followers like an incendiary preacher (albeit one who asked the obvious question, “Does anybody wanna get high wit’ me?”), conducting his crowd like a baton-wielding maestro, exhorting the faithful like a beloved monarch. And when Snoop was done with us, we were sweaty, delirious messes, exactly what he wanted us to be. And we couldn’t have been happier to oblige him.
DAY 3 NOTES
OK, first let’s address the elephant in the room … Bunbury was weeks ago. Where the hell you been, Baker? A shitload of life, my friends, and I won’t bore you with a minute of it, but it’s had me painted into a tiny corner and writing at a snail’s pace, hence the late nature of these missives. Look at it this way; the Pony Express used to deliver your festival reviews to you four months later, so three weeks or whatever it winds up being is a vast improvement.
I spent a good deal of Sunday in the company of my buddy Brent (when he wasn’t in full-metal volunteer mode) and the Roe boys, Kip and Kip Jr., and finer company I cannot imagine. I love talking life and music (like there’s a difference) and other ephemera with Kip the Elder and I never cease to be amazed by the wisdom and depth of knowledge of Kip the Younger. It all goes to show that great dads produce great kids, in most cases. My kids have turned out pretty awesome, in spite of my best efforts to screw them up, so thankfully they had the fortitude and good sense to overcome their upbringings.
Just as I finished the last bite of my delectable Wagonburger from my new pals at the Hamburger Wagon, I spotted 500 Miles to Memphis frontman Ryan Malott and his wife Gina, who I quickly surmised was either smuggling hams filled with cocaine for a dangerous Columbian cartel or somewhere in the neighborhood of fairly pregnant. Thankfully, it turned out to be the latter, and if ultrasounds are more reliable these days, the Malotts are having a boy, and will be welcoming their debut collaboration into the family band very shortly. Congratulations to them on the blessed event that will screw up their lives irrevocably forever. This may the kind of thing my kids have had to overcome; I should be a damn good father by my rattling last breath.
After running into our old friend Karen at Saturday’s festivities, I’d kept an eye peeled for her kids, Hannah and Paul, without luck. Kip, Kip Jr. and I were hanging at the very front of the barrier for the Yeatman’s Cove Stage awaiting the Snoop experience (the field had all but cleared out as people flocked to the 21 Pilots show), when Kip Jr. announced he was hungry. Kip and I headed for the food court area and he got in the pizza line; having just scarfed down another delicious double from the Hamburger Wagon an hour or so before, I was good to go (and may I just say that the good people of Miamisburg are the luckiest so-and-so’s on the planet to have constant access to the Hamburger Wagon … I will see you guys here next year, if not in Miamisburg well before). Just as Kip found the end of the line, I turned toward a mass of mobile humanity that, like a scene from a movie, parted ever so slightly to reveal the elusive Hannah. We recognized each other in a heartbeat, I navigated my way to her and hugged her for all I was worth. I was nearly speechless (and anyone who knows me knows how rare and strange that condition is for me). She introduced me to her fiance John, who seems to be absolutely perfect for her, and said they’d be getting married next summer. Another wonderful thing to look forward to in 2016.
And so, we bid farewell to Bunbury IV, and thank the thankless army of volunteers who make this happen each and every year. And to our new hosts, PromoWest, who had a pretty good first go round here, with a few minor bumps and scrapes but not bad overall — Bill Donabedian had less in his first three years than PW in one, but that would be quibbling. On the other hand, how will they learn if we don’t teach them? Next year, more entrances, more water/misting stations, more facilities. When you succeed in selling more tickets, that naturally results in more bodies, requiring more physical facilities to serve them. The planning starts now … see you next year, and thanks for a pretty awesome first crack at this thing.
And finally, for the fourth consecutive year, here are the results of my wildly popular (if you consider a half dozen hearty chuckles as evidence of wild popularity) Favorite Bunbury T-shirt Competition, judged and juried by a select panel consisting of me and the various voices that inhabit my brain pan. After getting a couple of shows into the first day, I was beginning to think that PromoWest had issued some sort of edict banning clever T-shirts as their first thumbprint on their newly acquired festival. I ran into Mike Breen at the Father John Misty show and he asked if I’d seen any cool T-shirts yet and I had to confess that I hadn’t; after two more strolls around the grounds, the most interesting things I’d seen were a kid in a satin wrestler/superhero cape and a handwritten sign held aloft by a guy shilling shirts at the Arnar booth; “Beer Lasts 4 minutes, a T-shirt lasts a lifetime” (which he changed that night, after the downpour, to “We Have Dry Shirts”). But fairly soon, the T-shirts began to appear and it was a steady parade of funny/brilliant/head-scratching chest graphics after that.
And so without any further adieu (or perhaps just a pinch of further adieu), here are my favorite T’s over the Bunbury weekend, in no discernible order until the winner at the very end.
Tree Frog Beer (a WEBN classic)
Some Candy Talking
Blessed Are the Cheesemakers (a sly Monty Python reference from Life of Brian)
Zapped (Frank, of course, with a nifty St. Alphonso’s Pancake Breakfast tagline)
Mouse Rat
Why Not Zoidberg?
Honey Badger Eats Beer
Let’s Get Handsome
Straight Cash, Homie
4 Out of 5 Great Lakes Prefer Michigan
Less Humans More Robots
I Will Cut You (with a graphic of an angry unicorn)
I Can Explain It To You But I Can’t Understand It For You
Be a Nice Human
There Are No Whales in Kentucky
Mock Yeah Ing Yeah Bird Yeah
Fish & Grits and All That Pimp Shit
Go Fuck Your Selfie
Smoke Like a Marley
and this year’s winner:
Driver Picks the Music Shotgun Shuts His Cakehole
CLICK HERE TO VIEW JESSE FOX’S PHOTOS FROM BUNBURY 2015
This article appears in Jul 1-7, 2015.