Last year, Hamilton, Ohio native and Revivalists frontman David Shaw founded the Big River Get Down, a one-day music festival intended to celebrate the city’s civic pride, display the beautiful RiversEdge Amphitheater and to benefit the city itself. This year’s second-annual BRGD will again feature Shaw’s Revivalists as headliners (and an acoustic set by Shaw himself), and a slate of great musical talent. Proceeds will help fund next year’s Fourth of July fireworks in Hamilton and additional free RiversEdge concerts. This year’s lineup includes:
• The Revivalists, David Shaw’s multi-genre septet, is a shiver-inducing blend of Folk, Jazz, Jam, Indie Rock, Reggae and Pop, born in New Orleans and steeped in the city’s traditions and unique musical atmosphere. Since 2007, The Revivalists have made their bones through tireless touring and three strong albums, including last year’s joyous Men Amongst Mountains, which earned them a spot on Rolling Stone’s “Ten Artists You Need to Know” list. Onstage, the band lives up to its name, with tent-revival fervor rippling through an audience of believers and imminent converts.
• Formed in Nashville in 2010, The Wild Feathers blend propulsive Indie Rock with distinct southern Soul hearkening back to ’60s Pop and ’70s Rock. The quartet’s eponymous 2013 debut and this year’s Lonely is a Lifetime offer visceral, twangy Rock energy sweetened with Everly Brothers harmonies.
• The Temperance Movement is a UK quartet with the soul, grit and gutbucket determination of early British Blues (Savoy Brown, et al) and a contemporary energy. With one album under its belt, the band was invited to open for The Rolling Stones’ 2014 Berlin and Vienna shows. The Temperance Movement’s thunderous White Bear was released earlier this year.
• As a teenager, Marcus King played guitar with his father’s Blues band, and at 20 he’s ready to drop his second slab of Psychedelic/Soul-tinted Southern Rock with his gifted band. Outdoors is the best venue for The Marcus King Band — no possibility of door/roof damage.
• Maggie Koerner is a Louisiana native who could be a high-magnitude Pop star, but she uses her estimable talents to present her Soul/Blues Pop/Rock songs with a swampy swagger and an atmospheric edge. Koerner sang lead for Galactic on its last two albums, has two solo albums of her own and is working on a third.
• The Trongone Band hails from Richmond, Va., and has earned a sizable East Coast fanbase with packed shows and ecstatic reviews.
The band is preparing to unleash the studio translation of its formidable live skills, deep fried in funky Southern Rock and frosted with sweet Americana Jam.
• Roosevelt Collier is a former member of Gospel/Blues sacred-steel group The Lee Boys, and was a finalist in Guitar Center’s 2009 King of the Blues competition with a band as tight as a gnat’s ass and a squalling, blistering mastery of the pedal steel. Collier and his ace band opened for The Allman Brothers during their final circuit.
For complete info, visit bigrivergetdown.com.
This article appears in Sep 7-14, 2016.