Scene Report: Positive Jam Festival

There was a stage and a PA...

One of my first years at Union, I hired a summer research student to work in my lab who was from somewhere on the West Coat. He used to use the networked computer in the lab to play music by streaming the independent Seattle station KEXP. They played a pretty good selection of stuff, so I started listening to it in my office, and discovered a bunch of bands that way.

That’s how in mid-2005 I ended up being struck by a very unusual song with lyrics as much shouted as sung, highlighted by a brief chugging guitar break in the middle of the chorus. I wrote about it on my original blog, in fact, and soon after bought the record.

Which, in turn, led to me being in a barn with a disco ball some seventeen years later:

The band in question was the Hold Steady, and they’re one of a very few acts I like enough to have seen multiple times (the others are the Afghan Whigs, Bob Dylan, and Bruce Springsteen). They hosted a day-long music festival this past weekend at Arrowood Farms in Accord, NY, down the Hudson Valley into the Catskills, and I went down for both the festival and the “prelims” party the night before, at INNESS, another swanky-but-rustic place close by. That was supposed to be a pool party, but there were thunderstorms rolling around that whole day, so it ended up being in the aforementioned disco-ball-equipped barn.

When I rolled in for the Friday show, I saw a sign saying “Event Parking” that seemed to point into a gravel lot. I pulled in next to the one other car, but it was clearly hell and gone from any actual event space, so when I got out I said “This is not remotely the right place to be parking, is it?” The driver of the other car turned out to be Tad Kubler, the lead guitarist of the band, who was down there changing clothes in the parking lot because they wouldn’t let him smoke in the main property. (He’s a very nice guy, and we laughed about it when I talked with him later. I was at least not the only person to make that wrong turn…)

The evening was mostly just hanging out, having a few beers and some tacos, with members of the band mingling with the assembled fans. There’s an expansive but tight community around the band— people who travel hundreds of miles to see every show in a four-night stand— that I’m not super plugged into, but I had a fun time chatting with various people. They followed that up with a “Storytellers” set, which wasn’t exactly unplugged, but was toned down a bit— some of the arrangements, most notable “Multitude of Casualties” were tweaked to make the guitars less aggressive. They did close with “Oaks,” though, which allowed some epic soloing.

Friday’s set list, from the band’s Twitter feed

The set list for Friday night was heavy on new songs—four of the twelve from the new album, plus a fifth that hasn’t been released yet (“Death of a Punchline”), and two others from the album before that. Craig Finn introduced each song with an anecdote associated with it, including admitting that he was reaching for “Sonora” when he wrote the line “We spent a few months wandering the Sonoma, high as hell and shivering and smashed,” but ended up setting it in wine country. (Though I’ve always sort of liked the thought that they were so smashed that they thought wine country was the desert…)

It was a pretty laid-back scene, but a nice way to ease into the weekend. If I had a quibble it was that the venue didn’t really have the bar and food service figured out— after tax, a beer cost something ending in “.04,” and their credit card machine required an actual signature on paper for every transaction, which slowed everything down. But then, they seem to be a pretty new operation (apparently owned by a friend of the band, though according to Kubler they didn’t know that when they booked it).

The next morning, I killed a few hours walking around the waterfront in Kingston, NY (where my hotel was), taking photos of various things, until it was time to get dressed for the show. Which in this context meant leaning into my full middle-aged-dad nature:

This did not stand out at all, for the record— this might be the highest fraction of collared shirts I’ve ever seen at a rock show. But this is pretty much how the band dresses, so it’s all good.

(My one rock-show affectation is the T-shirt, which I got for backing a Buffalo Tom album on some Kickstarter analogue (it’s the cover image from Let Me Come Over). I figured this was one of the very few places I would be this year where somebody might recognize the shirt, and in fact, two different people stopped me and asked “Is that a Buffalo Tom shirt?” So, you know, mission accomplished…)

This weekend’s events were to mark the 20th anniversary of the band’s official start, as a bar band in Brooklyn after Finn and Kubler’s earlier band, Minneapolis legends Lifter Puller, broke up and they moved to New York. It really says something that they’ve lasted as long as they have, and ended up organizing their own multi-band festival upstate. And also that their fan demographic now supports a festival vendor selling replacement windows:

(I saw people actually signing up for the window information, too…)

The operation at Arrowood Farms is a bit more than the “stage and a PA” from “Chillout Tent,” but it was a pretty compact space, as you can see from this shot of Laura Stevenson’s mid-afternoon set:

The fenced area to the right is the “VIP” area, which had real bathrooms and a separate bar (though they didn’t have draft beer, so I mostly bought my drinks in the main pavilion). There’s a good-sized lawn area to the left, and a half-dozen upscale food trucks behind where I shot that from. (I got some very good Korean wings for lunch from a stand run by a real redneck-looking guy, and some jerk chicken for dinner from a couple of Jamaican guys who were not playing around— that stuff was viciously spicy.) They had a second bar area inside with air-conditioning and padded chairs, and a bunch of tables scattered around some garden area. Also, a big field of hops.

There were five acts before the Hold Steady’s headline set; brief comments on each of them:

— Oceanator: I spent a while dithering about when to go to the festival site— gates opened at noon— but after searching up some example songs from the various bands, I was actually impressed by this group, and made sure to get there in time for their opening set. Three-piece guitar rock, very well done.

— I Get Wild: The principals in this band are apparently friends with the Hold Steady, but I was pretty dubious about the idea of a Talking Heads cover band at this show. They won me over with two things, though: 1) They didn’t just play the super obvious hit songs, but some relatively deep cuts, which I respect, and 2) The front man was absolutely 100% committed to the bit, wearing a three-piece suit despite it being 80-plus degrees, and dancing like a lunatic. A surprisingly fun set.

— Laura Stevenson: Another friend of the band, whose music worked really well in this spot. Not sleepy by any stretch, but relatively mellow and just what you want for hanging out on a sunny day.

— The Tallest Man on Earth: Actually a small Swedish man; his earlier stuff is solo singer-songwriter material, but he had a drummer and two multi-instrumentalists backing him (one playing bass and violin, the other guitar and keyboards and maybe something else (he was mostly behind the speaker stack from where I was standing)). This set was surprisingly awesome, because the lead guy has massive charisma, and just absolutely had the audience from the very start. At one point, he forgot the words to whatever song was next, and said “Who has a phone? You, in the front row! Google the lyrics for this!” and it worked as a bit. Really impressive performance.

— Guided by Voices:

“Bucket list” would be a little strong for this, but these guys have a legendary reputation as a live act, so I was pretty psyched to see them. I remember hearing about them when Bee Thousand was new and having to visit like five different record stores to find a copy. I’m about fifteen albums behind at this point, since they release like three a year, but their best stuff is amazing.

Someone I know in the Hold Steady circle stopped by where I was standing in mid-afternoon and said “Well, I can confirm that the GBV guys are here, at least.” I said “Was that in question?” and he replied “Well, they do things on their own terms…” When it was their turn, they spent what felt like an inordinate amount of time dicking around with the sound system— checking mics, asking for things to be added to stage monitors, etc. It seemed really out of place, given that their early-90’s aesthetic was extremely ramshackle and lo-fi.

Once they actually started, though, they’re a really tight band, and front man Robert Pollard is weirdly compelling. He’s pretty old— pushing 70— and not super mobile, but really holds attention with semi-ironic rock-star moves and an oddly British accent for a guy who’s famously from Dayton, OH. He had some good stage patter, too. (“Everybody wants to hear the hits. The problem is, we have 135 albums, so we can’t play them all. You get one hit per record!”)

This has to be a hard band to join late in the game— the current lineup has only been playing for a few years, and I would not be surprised if the bassist was born after Bee Thousand was released— because of that sheer number of songs. They powered through a lot of stuff in a 90-minute set— I’d guess 20-plus songs— with a considerable variation in styles. I don’t think this was a peak performance for them, but I’m glad to have seen them, and would happily see them again.

And then there was the main event:

The Hold Steady took the stage a bit behind schedule (a fact which will come up again later), as the sun was setting, and played a full set. They’re famous for not playing the exact same list of songs twice in a row, and aside from opening with “Positive Jam” (the “Free Square” on the setlist Bingo card for this show), it wasn’t super predictable.

Saturday set list from the band’s Twitter feed

This was pretty much exactly what you want from a Hold Steady show— that first five-song block is a great opening— and they were in fine form. I was slightly surprised by how thin it was on new songs— only one from the most recent record, and three from the record before that—but it made sense as a celebration of the band’s career.

Given setting and the presence of Laura Stevenson I would’ve given decent odds for there to be a “Chillout Tent” performance as part of the encore, but that’s where the timing issue comes back. They went straight from “How a Resurrection Really Feels” (at the end of the printed setlist) into the show-closing “Killer Parties,” which was surprisingly abrupt. I suspect they may have had a hard out from the venue, and the late start led them to drop a few songs so they could wrap on time— I absolutely would’ve expected a brief break after “Resurrection” then one slower song (maybe “Chillout,” or “Certain Songs”), then “Stay Positive” before “Killer Parties.”

But that’s a relatively minor quibble about the ending of what was otherwise a really fun day. All the acts on the bill were good, the food and beer were very nice, and the general vibes were terrific. It didn’t seem like an enormously huge crowd, but definitely enough to feel like a real show; I hope it worked out financially for the bands, and would definitely be up for them doing this again.

And I’ll leave you with this brief clip of Craig Finn closing out the night with a bag of confetti he got from a fan in the front row:

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I’m not convinced this will actually be interesting to anyone who’s not already a fan of the band, but, you know, it’s my blog, so you get the occasional self-indulgent nonsense. If you like that, here’s a button:

And if you recognize any of the bands I mentioned enough to want your own say, the comments will be open: