Lineup
Before we left home, I did some homework on the bands. Some previous years I had done that, but it has been a while since I had. With that homework came a pecking order or list of bands I wanted to see with one or 2 each day that I really wanted to see (marked with an asterisk). The list follows, with opinions following. The main stage only operates on Friday and Saturday, and interestingly, most of the bands I wanted to see were on the small side stage anyway. So, that small group who appeared on the main stage are noted.
Thursday
| Time | Artist | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 8:00 | *Lil Smokies | A blend of more bluegrass than Americana. They were good though, and it was a strong start to the music side of the festival |
| 10:00 | movie @TheJunction: UP! | Boo hadn't seen "UP", so we added that to the list. But, it was way too cold to sit out in the open watching a movie. When I say cold, it dropped into the upper 30F's, so, yeah, that's too cold to sit in a lawn chair in an open field so we sat by the buses with the propane heater instead |
Friday
| Time | Artist | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 11:00 | Swindler | Described as psychedelic meets funk, these guys were good, but we didn't make it all the way to the stage. 11AM was too early in the day for them, IMHO. They really could have benefited from the cover of dark and some crowd pre-funk. Our neighbor, JerseyPaul, liked them so much that he bought their CD from the merch tent as soon as they left the stage. Strong statement |
| 1:30 | Mestizo Beat | Afro-cuban beats. These guys threw it down. Lots of really good bump in what they were doing. Again, didn't make it to the stage, but the sound across the festival grounds was really really good. We walked the vendors nearest the stage for about half of their set |
| 4:00 | Polyrhythmics | more funk. more beats. more dancing. Not as strong as I had expected, but as the day gets later, the expectations rise. Right? |
| 6:45 | *Pink Talking Fish | These guys were the buzz of our festival. Everyone we talked to, we asked about Pink Talking Fish, and they were a huge hit. Boo made it to the front of the stage, but the tent was full front-to-back of dancing. Their set included a ton of Phish (including a really good, long Bathtub Gin), but very little Talking Heads. They hit a "Crosseyed and Painless" that stayed in my head for not just the rest of the festival, but for another week afterwards. That bass/percussion groove was mesmerizing. The topper? a Beastie Boys encore: Sabotage. Mind Completely Blown. We will go waaay out of our way to see these guys again. So fun. |
| 8:15 | Los Lobos (main stage) | Los Lobos was a tale of 2 bands in one long set. They played 40 minutes of traditional Mexican music (Mariachi/Ranchera) and then switched into groovy, jammy stuff. They closed with a "Not Fade Away" into "Bertha" that had us singing along. That's some fun stuff. |
| 10:00 | *Poor Man's Whiskey | It is rumored this was to be their last 4Peaks appearance, so this would be their last special / small stage performance. But, we missed it. After Pink Talking Fish and Los Lobos, we were spent. Besides, there were friends to visit, so we took the last band of the day off for some late food. We could hear them across the festival grounds though, and they hit many of our favorites from past 4Peaks visits. They are always solid as the last band of the first full day |
Saturday
| Time | Artist | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 12:15 | Maddie Carpenter (main stage) | I thought Boo would like her, since she has Bonnie Raitt and other strong female vocalist influences. I was right, and I really liked her too. It may have been a big stage for her, though, as she sounded a bit nervous, especially through quiet parts of her songs. She can totally belt though, and when she got her footing, she wailed. I had expected her to appear just by herself with a guitar, but she was backed by Poor Man's Whiskey, shy the lead vocalist, so it was an unexpected treat musically as well. |
| 1:30 | The Drunken Hearts | based a review, I had added these guys to the list. We missed them because of some unexpected, unplanned performances 2 camping spots away from us. I'll explain further down |
| 2:45 | *Sonny Mandreth (main stage) | based on reviews, I got excited about Sonny. Boo and I went down to check him out. The crowd was light, being early on Saturday, but the band was great. He started with a 25-30 minute acoustic set before launching into a full electric set. The acoustic stuff was really good, but during the break between instrumentation, Boo and I drifted away to the vendors and heard the rest of the set away from the stage. Again, the sound quality across the festival grounds is really good, so we could hear it all, but we just weren't as focused. |
| 4:15 | Sister Sparrow | I added this band for the lead singer's vocals, and she delivered. The band seemed completely designed around showcasing her singing, which is a minus. The solos were brief and just "okay", and there didn't appear to be a genre; they ranged from soul to gospel through R-and-B and blues. Had the group played like a group, the lack of style wouldn't have been such a thing. From the outside, the set was odd, but her voice is amazing. |
| 5:15 | Poor Man's Whiskey (main stage) | We tried listening to Poor Man's Whiskey through the radio simulcast. The radio fidelity was fantastic, but the delay from the stage flowing up the hill to the camp zone fought with the timing of the simulcast, creating an awful echo. It made the radio not viable for us. They were great, as they always are, but we were not "in the house" for their set, listening instead from GratefulEd's loft or by The Junction |
| 6:45 | Andy Frasco | I added Andy based on rumors. I had heard of Andy, and JerseyPaul raved about them ahead of their show. We chose to grab vendor-food and catch them in-venue. In terms of raw energy, Andy wins the 4Peaks prize. He was jumping all over the place, and whipping the crowd into a frenzy. He closed his set in his apparently-typical way: pseudo-bar mitzvah chair dance to "hora to Hava Nagila" which I thought was a little trite. It was a great show until he jumped the shark that way |
| 8:00 | Wood Brothers (main stage) | I had heard good things about the Wood Brothers, and they totally delivered. For only 3 musicians, we were very impressed for the breadth and complexity of what they were producing. Their sound was the most pure from distance, as compared to everyone else we heard from afar. I don't know if it was the reduced wind or what, but we could stand in The Junction and hear them absolutely perfectly. Every note crystal clear. And so good. |
| 10:00 | Billy Strings | based on review, we were going to go see Billy Strings. We chose to stay local, and visit with friends, thinking we could listen on the simulcast. Turns out, the simulcast ends when the main stage shuts down, so we missed them. Unlike some other bands playing on the small stage, they did not carry across the festival grounds, so we didn't hear much. Since the wind had died down, we should have been able to hear; we just couldn't. Our friends had conflicting feedback. JerseyPaul said they were "ok but lacking that special something". Another new friend, Jay, said they were "amazing, simply amazing". Further proof that beauty is in the eye, or ear, of the beholder |
Sunday
| Time | Artist | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 12:30 | Scott Law | We've been trying to catch one of his shows since the Black Sheep Family Reunion when he appeared with Ducky Pig. BUT, we missed him again. We could hear some from the small stage, and when we went down, we were able to hear about half of his set as we approached through the vendors, but arrived too late to catch any of the magic. We'll get to seeing him one of these days |
| 2:30 | Rising Appalachia | I had heard rumors of their sweet harmonies, and they delivered. There are few things as sweet on the ears as intertwined female vocals in a bluegrass / Americana / folk genre. We listened while we broke camp, and it was a perfect end to a music-intensive weekend |
The Junction
Unlike last year, there were performances at The Junction this year. The GoWesty folks have added a musical pod-cast to their array of offerings (see here). So, when you combine the 4Peaks interest for pop-up performances with this new pod-cast thing and then put the GoWesty folks at the Junction where the pop-up performances are desired, there's a musical storm brewing. And it stormed. There were at least 3 separate performances that we caught. In each case, the crowd was fewer than 20 people and the whole thing was located 2 buses down from us in a little performance area the GoWesty folks formed with 3 Vanagons.
Maxwell Friedman and CJ Neary
2 kids who each sat in with various bands over the course of the festival (Maxwell with Matador, and others and CJ with Los Lobos) set up as the first podcast. There were about 15 of us watching them set up and play through 4 or 5 songs. I learned after they finished that Maxwell is just turning 15, heading into his Sophomore year of high school which means that when he sat in with Karl Denson's Tiny Universe 2 years ago, he was 13 heading into 8th grade. CJ Neary may well be that old now.
Maddie Carpenter
Unlike her time on the big stage, Maddie seemed right at home standing on the lawn in front of a row of Vanagons, singing with a 4-piece backing band. Since her vocals were not amplified, some of her vocals were hard to hear from 20 feet away, but when she powered up, it carried very well. I don't know 100% who the backing band was, but I think it was Poor Man's Whiskey again. They were tight, and pulled CJ up for a song.
Unknown
There was a great 4 or 5-piece band that we didn't catch the name of. They didn't play any of the stages, but they got on the pod-cast. They had a mandolin player with a big voice and a harmony singer on a guitar who sounded so good together. Of the unscheduled, unexpected performances, I liked these guys the most, and stayed for their entire set, costing me the time to see the Drunken Hearts on the side stage.
The Drunken Hearts in a Late Night Pop-up
Saturday night, after the side stage closed up, we were visiting with friends. Boo and I wanted to stretch our legs and see the cold dark night sky so we wandered off from our camp zone. Across the fire lane, we were talking to NewTrailerRussell, and we heard about a pop-up show. "By the 4 flags" around 1:AM. Well.. it was practically 1:AM already, so we wandered towards where we knew there were 4 flags flying on one pole, and sure enough, tucked in behind 3 layers of tents there was a 10x10 with a band cranking. We worked our way to the front (Jerry's side) of the small crowd of about 40 people and caught 3 long jam-songs by the Drunken Hearts. They were great, and I was sorry that I had to make the choice between some random pop-up show and them on the small stage, but grateful that I ended up seeing both. Best of all, this set was one of their choosing for themselves, not for whatever audience they thought they were playing for.
That's it for the music review. Overall, the music was great. There is always a strong representation of bluegrass at 4Peaks, but this year it felt like the organizers were really trying to get more groove or funk happening. We liked it and we'll be back next year. I think doing the homework ahead of time gave us the means to make informed decisions about the bands, and gave us stronger reasons to get to the stages. I think I'll do that homework more as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment