It's time for the sixth edition of the Shaky Knees Music Festival. It's an annual Atlanta event, but yesterday we met people all the way from London, England, Thunder Bay, Canada, and Detroit Motor City who travelled all the way to Georgia just to attend this festival.
The festival was held this year at Central Park, the same location as the 2015 event. In 2016 and 2017, it was held downtown at Centennial Olympic Park, and prior to 2015, the inaugural festival was held at the Old Fourth Ward Skate Park and the second year in the Atlantic Station parking lot.
For the third year in a row, we splurged on VIP tickets for the free beer and food, as well as the so-called "preferred" viewing areas, which were generally over-crowded and at odd angles to the stage - we viewed a lot of the bands with the hoi polloi in the General Admittance area.
The festival continues through the weekend, so no time to post much more here today except to share some pictures of Friday's performers with you. As you'll see, the lineup was stacked, and most of the performers that we wanted to see this weekend were all playing Friday, resulting is some tough scheduling choices.
Amasa Hines
Don't worry - we had never heard of them before either, but they were really quite good and impressed us considerably.
Welles
Rock 'n' roll music.
Rolling Blackout Coastal Fever
Not the only band from Melbourne, Australia we would see yesterday. It was our first time hearing them and wow, these guys are great!
Ezra Furman
First tough choice of the day - Ezra Furman at the big Peachtree Stage, or The Ghost of Paul Revere at the smaller, and distant, Criminal Records Stage? We went with the cross-dressing Ezra, and don't regret it. Great show.
Waxahatchee
We finally did make the long trek over to the Criminal Records Stage and beyond - to the tented Ponce De Leon Stage to see Waxahatchee. We were out of the sun but there was no air circulation in the tent, and Katie Crutchfield said the on-stage thermometer said it was 86 degrees. In the audience, it felt closer to 100 degrees in the tent.
Courtney Barnett
The second Melbournian of the day. It's Courtney Barnett, so it would be redundant to say that it rocked and rocked hard.
David Byrne
An even tougher decision than Ezra Furman vs. Paul Revere - the promoters put David Byrne (Talking Heads) and The Brian Jonestown Massacre on at the same time, and that time was also the scheduled dinner hour for the VIP guests. We went with Byrne and don't regret it, as he put on one of the best and certainly the most theatrical shows of the year. Video coming soon!
Fleet Foxes
Fleet Foxes are back together again after a long hiatus, and live sounded even better than they do on their comeback album. Only criticism - the festival had the volume up way too high for a folk rock band, cranked up to the point of distortion. I got close to the stage for a few pictures, but had to retreat way back to the rear of the crowd in order to enjoy the sound.
Jack White
I don't know what to say - a crowd pleaser for the normies and a box-office draw for the promoters? I'm not a fan, and White's simplistic blues rock sounded out of place at a mostly indie rock festival. But the big Peachtree Stage was packed and we not only couldn't get close, we could barely find a line of sight to the stage. But they swear to me that the little figure below actually is Jack White.
So that was Friday. We're back off to Central Park for Day Two today and then Day Three on Sunday. Tune in tomorrow for more Shaky Knees coverage!
No comments:
Post a Comment