Festivals

Day 2 of the 2018 KAABOO Del Mar Festival began as another gorgeous San Diego beach day. Head high waves had surfers up and down the coast flocking to the area beaches. Meanwhile, the music started early at the Del Mar Fairgrounds with bands playing before noon. By early afternoon Minnesota rockers Soul Asylum were lighting up the Grandview main stage with their high energy music. The Grammy-winning band was one of the first bands to be labeled alternative rock back in 1981.

The KAABOO music festival opened Friday, September 14th with an estimated 40,000 fans selling out the event for the first time in its 4-year history. The event, which takes place at the upscale Del Mar Racetrack just north of San Diego, took advantage of the last beautifully sunny weekend of summer. The festival grounds back up to the edge of the Pacific Ocean and surfers were actually visible, catching waves on nearby Del Mar beach.

Not much has been heard from Grace Potter since her appearance last year at her signature music festival, Grand Point North, a small-scale two-day fest staged on the edge of Lake Champlain in Burlington, Vermont. Potter was going through a host of personal changes in 2017 and had put music aside for much of the year. But she was back on stage this weekend, headlining both nights of the fest with a new – and very able – backing band, and debuting a handful of songs slated for a forthcoming album that Potter hopes to release in 2019. 

This weekend, KAABOO Del Mar successfully proved that it has shifted the festival paradigm by celebrating its 4th annual event in Del Mar, California with a sell out.

This review is going to read more like a sci-fi story. Do not adjust your grammatical eyes or correct the run-on sentences.  You are entering my Shoe Fest Vision. For only 72 hours, gates opened at 10 am on Friday and closed down at 10 am on Monday Labor Day.  Once crossed into Shoe Fest 2018 at Camp Shaw-waw-nas-see (affectionately known as Camp Shaw) in Manteno IL, you were greeted with unexpected twists and left with a good moral learned.  A fest like this is filled with instant karma.

Austinites and travelers around the world came to Carson Creek Ranch on September 7th through September 9th, to see some of the best jambands from around the world. Although the Waterloo Festival saw some rain this weekend, it didn’t stop anyone from dancing to their favorite musicians in the mud! Concertgoers were all different ages, from families, young adults, middle-aged people, and older generations combined. The diverse combination of festival-goers was refreshing and felt like a community affair.

The Motet

Chris Trapper, Caitlin Canty, PNDB, Ryan Lee Crosby, Analog Heart, Ill Supreme, and a special music performance inspired by Jack Kerouac have been added to the lineup for the inaugural The Town and The City Festival. Produced by Porter Productions with support from the Greater Merrimack Valley Convention & Visitors Bureau, the 2-day music and arts festival will feature both locally-based and national touring acts on Friday, October 19th and Saturday, October 20th in event spaces, bars, cafes and galleries throughout downtown Lowell, Massachusetts.

Returning to the scenic banks of the American River in Northern California on the last week in September, devotees of jam band/Americana music, nature, surprises, and bohemian goings-on – an environment one might call “Just Exactly Perfect” – will reconvene at the second annual gathering, dubbed the Just Exactly Perfect Festival.

The final day of Lockn’ 2018 dawned hot and sweaty and ended in spectacular fashion with two sets by Dead and Co., joined by master saxophone player Branford Marsalis. A cloudy sky kept the atmosphere steamy until the afternoon when the hot summer sun broke through. Keller Williams got the MainStage started just after noon with a different entourage in tow than from the day before. This time he appeared with a group he calls the Grateful Gospel. The idea was to play music in the spirit of Jerry Garcia in the tune of Black Gospel music. The concept was born at Lockn’.

The sixth annual Lockn' Festival got underway, Thursday, August 24th, with astonishingly perfect weather conditions. After weeks of torrential rains that caused evacuations in nearby Lynchburg because of flooding fears, the skies cleared with pleasantly warm temperatures and a chilly night creating a perfect backdrop for the festivals first day. The weather was all the more of a surprise following the cancellation of a three-day Phish music festival, held often in upstate New York, scheduled the weekend before Lockn'.

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