It's the second closes festival next to Bonnaroo! Lt. Dan made the trek to Louisville last year. Hopefully Wells Adams and Brian "Web Guy" Waters will join him to bring you up-to-date coverage.
Flaming Lips
Widespread Panic Drive-By Truckers Spoon
Bassnectar
Heavyweight Dub Champion
Break Science
Dar Williams Minus the Bear
Cap’n Jazz
The New Deal Two Fresh
Mimosa Lucero
EOTO
Savoy
Boombox
Mucca Pazza
Company of Thieves Ted Leo and the Pharmacists Sara Watkins of Nickel Creek
Morning Teleportation
and plenty more to come!
After two absolutely beautiful days at the Hangout Festival in Gulf Shores, the sky opened up and unleashed quite a bit of water, temporarily postponing the festival. The rain started up around 2:00pm and quit around 4:30pm. The festival then became a free show to all.
Because of the rain, we missed our interview with Michael Franti but we did meet up with Keller Williams who played an electronica set at the Hangout bar the night before. Keller played a new song for us called “I am Elvis.”
After our interview with Keller we raced on over to the Playstation stage to catch a bit of the OK Go set. They played great versions of their hits “This Too Shall Pass” and “Here It Goes Again.” Later on in the show the lead singer Damian Kulash addressed the crowed and said “the thing about playing an outside festival during the day is this, hangouters, you don’t really feel like you're at a rock show, it's more like a picnic. So let's make this more like a picnic.” He then grabbed his acoustic guitar and a wireless mic and walked into the middle of the crowd and played a song amongst his fans. It was very cool.
After a great set of music by “OK Go,” we stuck around the Playstation stage and watched most of Needtobreathe’s set which included a great Tom Petty cover and wonderful versions of “Outsiders” and “Something Beautiful”.
As hard as it was to pull ourselves away from Needtobreathe we knew we had to see some of the Ray Lamontagne set. Ray played great versions of “Trouble” and “You Are the Best Thing”.
As Ray Lamontagne was finishing up his set, people started sprinting across the beach to see the final show of the festival, Trey Anastasio with TAB. The set included a great cover of “Devil Went Down to Georgia,” with the fiddle solos done entirely with a horn section and a superb rendition of Led Zeppelin’s “Black Dog.” Trey played his encore while a fireworks show blazed in the background.
The whole festival was great. Proceeds from the festival will be going to the clean up effort from to the oil spill in the Gulf. We also had a guitar signed by every artist we interviewed or ran into and that too will be auctioned off with the proceeds going to the relief efforts down in the beautiful gulf coast. Thanks to all the artists we interviewed, everyone was so helpful and kind and their attitudes really reflected the vibe of the festival. Thanks to the extremely helpful event staff who, on more than one occasion helped us out of a jam. And a special thanks to Hightide Blues who were our festival friends everyday. Until next year, for Brian the web guy I’m Wells Adams and we will see you all again next year for another Hangout Festival and don’t forget we will also be covering Bonnaroo!!!
Well here we are at the Hangout Festival day two. Day two seemed to be even more eventful than yesterday, which I didn’t think was possible. We started off our day catching a set by an emerging artist out of Birmingham named Jon Black. Some locals had told us his story the night before and actually got us his contact information for a interview. We wanted to do a a acoustic song by the beach similar to what we had done with Hightide Blues but as we were walking down the beach I noticed the rather large ferris wheel turning in the distance. I suggested, almost in jest that we record the song and do the interview on the ferris wheel. Jon loved the idea and a few moments later we were doing an interview and recording a song called “Gravity” 7 stories up spinning over the white sands of Gulf Shore.
After the coolest ferris wheel rides I have ever been on, we headed on over to catch a bit of Grace Potter and the Nocturnals set. We really wanted to see her performance because on Sunday she will in Music City playing Nashville Sunday Night and we were certain that we weren’t going to be back in town for that show. After her amazing set we went back stage and sat down with the beautiful Grace Potter. Her new album drops June 8th.
Still a bit weak at the knees from meeting Grace we raced on over to see Rodrigo Y Gabriella’s show, so far one of our favorite performances of the weekend. It is truly amazing how much music and energy can come out of just two people. We took a video of hippie dancing during their last song. Stay tuned for that video when we get some more editing time.
Now that our minds were completely blown from the guitar virtuoso duo that is Rodrigo Y Gabriella we had to race back to the artist area to meet up with Davy Knowles. He was pumped to be a special surprise performer with Gov't Mule later in the evening. We had about 3 minutes to prepare for the interview, but it turned out really well.
Nashville's local scene was in full force support of Moon Taxi on the Jam Base stage. I was reviewing my photos in the pit for a second, then looked up to see the band was missing a member. The lead guitarist had jumped off the stage to a platform table and performed his a solo in the crowd.
We then caught up with the guys from Wild Sweet Orange in the artist area and they were nice enough to sign the guitar we are auctioning off for the oil spill relief. They performed a quick acoustic song in the artist area for us. Check back for the video.
After the performance, we called it a day and went over to see The Roots perform on the main stage. They ended their set with "Who can top that shit." We answered that with "Not John Legend." We will keep adding updates, but our internet keeps going out. Check back later for more photos and videos.
Greetings from Gulf Shores Alabama, Wells Adams and Brian the web guy are on the beach for the inaugural Hangout Festival. Much has happened since we left Nashville at 10pm on Thursday night. We drove all night and arrived in Gulf Shores way too early to check into our hotel or get our media credentials. So we did what any poor mid twenties duo would do.... and that is to sleep in a very small Mazda and wait. But was the waiting ever worth it. It is a new festival, there is no precedent for a music festival of this size right on the beach. But I must say, everything is very well put together. It is easy to jump from stage to stage, the grounds are very clean and there doesn't seem to be barrels of oil washing up on shore. Aside from the esthetic beauty of the grounds the line up for this occasion is right on par.
Hightide Blues
Brett Dennen played a wonderful set of music. His sound fits perfectly with a setting like this. Great versions of "Heaven," "Ain't no reason," "Make you crazy," "San Fransisco" and a very spirited version of "Shes Mine" combined with an assortment pelvic thrusts were enjoyed by all.
Before Robert Randolph's set we visited with him in his tour bus. Apparently Robert Randolph and the Family Band have a new LP about to be released in mid to late June produced by T-Bone Burnett with musical contributors including Ben Harper, Robbie Robertson, Leon Russel and others. Check out the interview here. RRAFB set of music was spirited as are all his shows. Great versions of "Jesus is just alright" and "The word" were enjoyed by the twenty thousand Hangout fans . We are very excited to hear this new album of his.
GirlTalk
People often get caught taking photos on stage more than dancing during GirlTalk's set. We really should be calling him "the artist formally known as GirlTalk" after he became an MC for his on DJ gig.
Alison Krauss. What more needs to be said. Her set started at dusk and the wind swept stage only added to her angelic voice. The whole entire set was beautiful with great versions of "Lucky one," "When you say nothing at all," "Forget about it" and of course Union Station had to play "Man of constant sorrow." One interesting note, Nashville's Gabe Dixon played keys for the show.
