For the last few years, I have aspired to write about every show I see. In reality, I have not even come close to doing so, I have barely written anything, which is a shame… for me, at least. So, I’ve tried to recalibrate my expectations of myself and am going to try and summarize each month of livemusic’n, hit some of the high points and try to wrap it up in a single theme that captures both the music and my thoughts on music and whatever. We’ll see how it goes!
ICYMI: October 2023: Nostalgia Acts
ICYMI: December 2023: Holiday’d
ICYMI: January 2024: Winter Jazzqueens
ICYMI: February 2024: Lil’ somethin’ extra
ICYMI: March/April 2024: Multiplicity
May brings the first hints of summer and, when it comes to livemusic, summer often means music festivals. I think my feelings about music festivals has bounced around a bit over the last two and a half decades, but for the most part I’m pretty pro-fest. Looking back through my Medium archives of the past few years, I can see some rather glowing write-ups on Big Ears, Newport Folk, Desert Daze, and Peach Fest. Differents festivals bring different personalities and focus, often centered on one aspect of music or seeing music and as a student of the game, I cherish the opportunity to give my entire day or weekend over to the pursuit of livemusic bliss. Yeah, sure, there are almost always annoyances associated with a music fest, but that’s true of almost anything these days.
In May of 2024, I went to three different music festivals. Or two, depending on how you count them. They were actually very different and capture a lot of the myriad reasons why they’re so fun/interesting/cool. So, felt like a good topic to get into this month. As it so happens, my upcoming calendar is dotted with several more festivals throughout the summer, so it feels like an apt thing to deep-dive.
I missed Big Ears this year for {reasons}. Big Ears is really the fest of all fests, in my opinion, so mixed feelings about not being there after two life-affirming/altering years down in Knoxville. Thankfully, there’s a very similar festival that is now in its third year that takes place, literally, in my neighborhood. It is called Long Play Festival, it is put on by the Bang on a Can folks, and it is held in various venues in Brooklyn that are more or less geographically centered on my apartment, all within a short walk of each other and my home. The festival feels like it is being put on for me and after checking out some of the free fare last year, I went all in and bought the weekend pass.
Like Big Ears, Long Play really explores the fringe of musicmaking, highlighting the composers and players who are the true creatives and groundbreakers of the moment. I think it may be nominally considered a classical music festival, and yes, there are classical shows, but there is so much of the avant garde over jazz, rock, and, yes, contemporary classical. One ticket gets you into all the shows which are held in different venues, very often venues I do not usually go to, rooms at BRIC, BAM, and other spots in Fort Greene and Downtown Brooklyn. It’s a real treat for to see music in new places, so part of the fun of Long Play was the spaces themselves, which then take on an oversized role in the listening experience. I love that shit.
Saturday I saw 7 different sets, in part or in full, in 5 different rooms without even working too hard or running myself too ragged. Sunday was 9 acts in 5 rooms. Everything I saw was either excellent or cool or interesting, but mostly all three. I’ll just hit the highlights in the interest of your potentially waning interest:
- Sylvie Courvoisier & Mary Halvorson (Sat) doing a guitar/piano duet in the BRIC Ballroom. Tremendous two-woman improvisation out of set compositions, almost jamband-y in sound at times, which is to say accessible and joy-inducing.
- Rebekah Heller (Sat) doing a solo bassoon set in the BRIC Stoop space. The set was largely Steve Reich pieces, the minimalist composer being a focus of the festival this year. He was there. Not often you see a moving, engaging solo bassoon set, so I’ve got that going for me. That’s the best thing about festivals, if you’re doing it right, you will discover and experience things and music that weren’t even on your radar and that’s what festivals like Long Play do best.
- Dither (Sat) playing in a space called Irondale which is a performance space above a church in the middle of Fort Greene, a I-had-no-clue-this-was-here hidden-in-plain-sight spot with a cool balcony filled with found-object couches and comfy chairs. Dither is a guitar quartet and they were playing the seminal Laurie Siegel album The Expaning Universe. I was unfamiliar with the album, which really didn’t matter. This set blew my mind as I sat in one of those cozy chairs and let my mind drift to this wildly amazing minddrift music. Music very often takes you places, but it’s not so often you get taken to that place. This one did. Again, the composer was in the room. She seemed to enjoy this awesome 4-guitar version of her music.
- Sometimes at a festival you have to make a decision to leave one thing to catch another. It’s the love it/hate it dilemma of a fest. I faced that decision Saturday evening, and I did duck out of the Dither set a little early, wondering if I made the right choice. I will just say right now that I have FestivalADD and will almost always be constantly moving from one thing to another, not because of FOMO, more because I just want to experience as much as possible. And in that mode, I just couldn’t justify missing the saxophone and piano duo of Immanuel Wilkins and Jason Moran, two absolute masters of their instruments in the jazz realm, as much as I was transfixed with Dither. You never really know for sure, only the festivalgods know for sure, but I think I made the right choice. Wilkins and Moran took their individual talents to the next level as a duo, the second transcendent duo of the day and a great way to end my Saturday. [ed note, this was the end of my day Saturday, despite some great acts later in the night, because I went to see Kamasi Washington at the Beacon Theatre. Again, a tough decision, but no bad options here]
- Sunday was abound with more magic, my second set of the day was Kuniko Kato doing more Steve Reich. The repetitive minimalism of Reich’s piece “Drumming” was hypnotic as she moved from one instrument to the next. Very cool. Again, never would have seen a piece like this outside a setting like this.
- I have seen Yacouba Sissoko play many times, almost always at LunAtico which is a bit of a schlep and tough to get into. Always worth it, but effort nonetheless. So getting to see him play close to home with little effort as part of the Long Play was a special treat. He was playing with Moussa Diabate, not his normal band, and again, the results were just awe-inspiring. That’s another thing I love about festivals, getting to see old favorites, but often in new settings or arrangements. Seeing Sissoko is one of the purest livemusic expriences I have, he is a 70th (!!!!!!) generation kora player, a tradition handed down and down and down. 70! My mind boggles at the ramifications of that, but putting the brain-busting math away, we’re still left with some of the most beautiful, uplifting, happy music imaginable. This was such a treat. It always is.
- I’ve already listed so many highlights, but if a festival is doing it right, it has built up to a heavyweight headliner. As it so happens, there were two heavyweights at opposite ends of the spectrum in primetime Sunday night. The first was a performance of Reich’s “Music for 18 Musicians” which was held at the fabulous BAM Opera House. When you picked up your wristband they asked you if you planned to hit this show and then gave you a ticket, and since I picked mine up pretty early, I had a great seat near the front of the balcony. I thought that was a pretty cool way to give everyone tickets for the event (vs GA or whatever). Anyway, I know very little about Steve Reich or this masterpiece of his, so I was going in blind/deaf/dumb. I am beside myself giddy thinking back to my experience experiencing this for the first time in that balcony. Just an amazing feat of composition and performance. Words can’t do it justice, truly one of those things that you experience in the truest sense of the word, a full-body, live-and-in-person experience. Wow! Again, the festival delivers.
- From there I was back to Roulette to end the night with Deerhoof. Or is that, the might motherfucking Deerhoof. Seen ’em a couple times and they have never disappointed, the thinking man’s rockyourfaceoff. The seats at Roulette had been removed, not sure I’ve ever seen that, and it was a full on rock show and Deerhoof delivered in a big way. Felt like the release of all this pent up esoteria and musical brainfog. Not that they don’t make you think, because they definitely do. But a real good time and an absolutely perfect end to the festival.
Later in the month I found myself heading to London for another kind of music festival experience. My original Memorial Day weekend plans had kind of fallen through by my own doing and, I shit you not, an Instagram advertisement alerted me to this festival happening in a park in London, headlined by none other than the mighty King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. For all the skull-dragging you get at a Deerhoof show, any festival that ends with a headliner set from the Gizz is worth traveling for, no? I checked the other bands playing for this one day fest called Wide Awake and saw enough to make the call to go. After a little digging, I found that the fest was actually one of four distinct festivals held over the weekend, Fri-Mon, each with a completely different name, focus, branding, vibe, but all held in the same park. The Sunday festival, called Cross the Tracks was also intriguing. Booked the flight. Booked the hotel. London bound.
These festivals were more of the traditional festival we’re mostly accustomed do, with multiple stages of various sizes and configurations spread out over a large space, food vendors, staggered set times, etc. Getting in was super easy and the vibe on Saturday was very relaxed and enjoyable. The first day was kind of the rock/psych/counterculture day. I caught Babe Rainbow, Crumb, Model/Actriz, Bodega, La Luz, Dry Cleaning…. The weather was great, every band was in high spirits and played well. I caught Charlotte Adigery & Bolis Pupul for, I think, the third or fourth time, and they put on such a great show, joyous & groovy with some unexpected depth. They freakin’ killed it. Squid is a very cool band on the upswing these days, a kind of proggy, punky rock band with delightfully complex compositions and a band that can make ’em sound easy. I’m very high on them and was glad to see them again at Wide Awake.
With any festival, but particularly these types of fests spread over a sizeable ground, logisitics become key to your enjoyment. Every detail has the potential to make or break the day, from where you can get shade, to the distance between stages, the start/end times of sets, the number of toilets, the lines at food vendors and food options, the security patdown and the transportation options on the way home. Thinking back to my Saturday at Brockwell Park in the Brixton area of London, I’m hard pressed to find any dings as far as the logistics are concerned. They nailed most of it and what they didn’t nail, they were at least acceptable. Kudos to the organizers!
Of course, the whole day built to the headliner set and, again, it did not disappoint. Not at all. It felt like a million people packed in as close as possible to see King Gizzard’s incendiary set. What a glorious thing it was! While I consider myself to be a KGLW early-adopter and huge fan, I had not actually seen them in a couple of years, bad luck/timing mostly. This was my 10th Lizard Wizard show and it reaffirmed my absolute love for the band. I couldn’t speak intelligently about the setlist, but there were many moments of lost-in-the-music of the “didn’t they already play this song or are they actually still playing it” variety that very few bands can verifiably pull off. I didn’t even need this set to make the trip worth it, didn’t need any music, really, it was all butterflies from start to finish, but, yeah, this flamethrower Gizz set didn’t hurt. Didn’t hurt at all.
The next day at Cross the Tracks was a much different feel. This was the R&B/funk/jazz day with BADBADNOTGOOD and Erykah Badu headlining. The difference in crowd and vibe was similar to the transition from Newport Folk to Newport Jazz. Just an extremely chill, much more diverse crowd on Sunday, but it was a true sellout and people were amped for the music. Unfortunately, the festival app alerted us to the fact that Badu had canceled her set while we were waiting to get in, which was a bit of a bummer. I’ve heard nothing but good things about her live show and a festival like this was a perfect opportunity to catch it. Alas! The unpredictability of the festival is part of the fun. I guess. :(
The sets I caught were a lot of fun. Interestingly, Neal Francis was there, playing in one of the tents early in the afternoon, and I think the compactness of the festival set benefited him. Perhaps the most engaging set of his I’ve seen. The crowd really enjoyed. One of my favorite sets was from a young Brit jazzfunk band called oreglo. It was a mix of Jamaican and British players with a killer tuba player holding down the low end, a keyboard player that used a keytar to excellent effect, then drums and guitar. It was groovy, but also with a darkness and an intelligence. The kind of group you’d catch at Nublu and dance the night away to. A band I’ll be keeping an eye out for, although not sure they’d ever make it over this way. I was also super impressed with Jalen Ngonda whose voice and sound evoked Marvin Gaye and kind of knocked me out, like the first time I saw Leon Bridges perform. Ngonda is an American living in England and drew a large crowd and rightly so. Rapper Eve is definitely someone I would probably never see if not for a random festival in London, but man was she great! The best kind of nostalgia act. On the other end of the nostalgia spectrum was En Vogue who got moved up to the festival headlining set and felt old and not-headliner-worthy, like a soul and R&B revue that should have come with your choice of steak or salmon and two drink tickets. Something tells me Erykah Badu would’ve brought the fest down to end the night, but not to be. Still, making new friends, sipping too-expensive drinks and eating delicious grilled cheese, strolling an expansive grounds on a gorgeous London day, seeing bands I didn’t even know existed and others I never would go see on my own… that’s a damn good festival day.
Looking forward to more! (Stateside, of course)
May Roundup:
31 shows = $62 donated as part of the #livemusicchallenge to Mike Nozik Camp Seneca Lake Scholarship Fund
Five Star Shows seen in May:
! Long Play Festival (2 days) @ Various
! Psychedelic Porn Crumpets @ Webster Hall
! Mikaela Davis & Southern Star @ Baby’s All Right
! Willi Carlisle @ Baby’s All Right
! Sierra Ferrel @ Webster Hall
! Wide Awake @ Brockwell Park, London
! Brad Mehldau, Vicente Archer, Marcus Gilmore @ Village Vanguard
Reviews written in May (for Bowery Presents):
Kamasi Washington @ Beacon Theatre
Chicano Batman @ Brooklyn Steel
