Now this is the way to spend a weekend: beautiful weather and dozens of cool local bands playing four stages spread out on the agricultural grounds of the Intervale on the outskirts of Burlington. It’s the best of what Vermont has to offer – sustainable outdoorsy-ness and interesting, fun, challenging music.
All these photos came from my iPhone. This one, as you may have already guessed, features Vermont Joy Parade.
The event was The Precipice, a first-ever festival presented by Lee Anderson and Joe Adler of Radio Bean, the coffeehouse and creative juggernaut on North Winooski Avenue. I spent part of three days there, and it was awesome. Here’s a snapshot:
Friday:
- I was into The Precipice even before I arrived there Friday evening. As I walked to the Intervale I heard energetic, shambolic punk energy coming from a new Burlington band called Nancy. They finished their set just as I got to the tent they were playing in, but I’m already looking forward to hearing more from them around town.
- The first band I actually got to see playing was Vermont Joy Parade, who started around 8:15 p.m. on the main stage, outdoors behind the barn. There wasn’t a huge crowd at first – the spotty attendance (more on that later) was the only real downside of The Precipice – but once dusk arrived the music listeners (and the mosquitoes) came out in full force. It turns out that if you’re going to place a festival near the sluggish Winooski River, and even closer to a scum-topped pond, biting insects will ensue. The band gave the crowd permission to slap them to kill the skeeters, or just to slap them for the fun of it. As always, it was a fun, vaudevillian set from the Joy Parade, and as I’ve mentioned here many times before, Anna Pardenik’s voice is killer; even on the spacious grounds of a farm, her presence commands attention.
This is Hello Shark, a toothier variation on Hello Kitty.
- I went to the tent presented by local promoters/taste-makers Angioplasty Media to hear Hello Shark, a band I knew by name but hadn’t heard live before. The trio had a cool, laid-back Galaxie 500 vibe going, which was briefly interrupted early in the set thanks to a power outage. They didn’t miss a beat once the power came back on, revealing among the simple pop tunes some surprisingly piercing lyrics, as in one song about Halloween (“Everyone pretends to be a monster/And I’ve felt like one my whole life”).
The lighting and visual attributes of the Intervale made The Precipice a multi-media treat, as was the case for this set by Kat Wright and the Indomitable Soul Band.
- I heard a little bit from the Brett Hughes Honky Tonk Hoedown, appropriately inside the Intervale barn, before heading outside to the main stage for Kat Wright and the Indomitable Soul Band. Both are Radio Bean staples – Brett and the gang on Tuesdays and Kat and the guys on Thursdays – and while the music sounded good the energy wasn’t quite the same in the expansive outdoors as it is in tiny little Radio Bean. That’s the price you pay for a summer festival; unless it’s Phish playing before 60,000 insane fans, more often than not what you’re getting is a relaxed party feel and not that sweaty club intensity that so often makes music so powerful.
Bobby Hackney getting all mellow with Rough Francis.
- I ended the night back at the Angioplasty tent to hear Burlington hard-rockers Rough Francis, but by this time (after midnight) the festival was becoming more of a social occasion than a listening room, so I chatted with friends and acquaintances more than I heard music familiar and new. But from what I heard, the band was as fierce as always, Bobby Hackney was an appropriately manic front-man machine and the small but crazed crowd was in mosh-pit heaven.
Ah, yes, the small crowd. As I made the long walk back to my car on lower Church Street I squeezed through the crowds of young partiers visiting downtown clubs offering recorded dance music and realized The Precipice had some things working against it, one being it’s relatively remote location on the edge of town. There’s also a fact I have trouble accepting every now and then, that the majority of young people might prefer a night of drinking and carefree dancing along with music they already know to a night of listening to interesting, creative music they might not know, with some drinking and dancing thrown in. Those of us who prefer the latter might have been in the minority down in the Intervale on this night.
Saturday:
Vedora raisin’ a ruckus in the barn at the Intervale.
- I didn’t get home until after 1:30 a.m., and as I stagger inevitably toward geezerdom I can’t handle two late nights in a row, so I opted for a mostly matinee schedule today, starting in the barn with the recently formed band Vedora. I ran into bass player/vocalist Caroline O’Connor last month during the Burlington Discover Jazz Festival and she was telling me about the band, which sounded right up my alley. Not a surprise, as I liked the work she did with moody instrumentalists Tapis Bleu and as guest saxophonist with erstwhile Burlington dream-rockers The Cush. She and significant other/vocalist/guitarist Matt Hastings lead a trio that, on Caroline’s songs in particular, taps into one of my personal favorite possessed musicians, PJ Harvey. Vedora should have an album out later this year, Caroline told me after the show, and I can’t wait to hear it. Click here for a badly shot (by yours truly) but cool-sounding video of Vedora.
Maryse Smith, performing with bass player Pat Melvin, who I caught briefly earlier in the day with Burlington acoustic musician Zack duPont.
- I had to head back to the office to write for a couple of hours but went back to the Intervale around 6:30 to hear Maryse Smith, who regular readers of Brent’s Notebook will know I consider to be the best songwriter in town right now. Her set mixed old material delivered with her intriguing mix of shy confidence and newer stuff that sounded great if a bit tentative, as she later told me this was her first performance in awhile (she’s also working on a due-out-soon album I can’t wait to hear). I realized while listening to her set what makes her songwriting so powerful: She writes breakup songs like so many singer-songwriters do, but her songs aren’t about having broken up as much as they are about the act of breaking up. It’s as if she’s singing while the unraveling is taking place right before you. It’s very visceral and very powerful, especially coming from such an otherwise demure performer. Click here for more shaky, finger-filled video (but good music) of Maryse Smith.
Just in from Pluto, it’s Wave of the Future.
- I thought I’d leave after Maryse’s set in my effort to avoid another late night and pretend I have an actual home life, but the lure of the festival kept me there for another couple of hours. My friend Matt and I checked out a band we had never heard of before, Wave of the Future, on the main stage, and were way impressed. How many other bands, for instance, have you heard utter the words, “Here’s another song about ‘Back to the Future’” or reference both Men Without Hats and Ozzy Osbourne in song? It was kind of like a weird hard-rock/post-punk collision between White Zombie and The B-52s, with odd, space-age costumes and tremendous energy, musicianship and stage presence. They were the discovery of the festival for me.
The Wee Folkestra, who smartly covered one of my favorite Josh Ritter tunes, “Roll On.”
- The rest of the night was a bit of a Whitman’s Sampler – a snippet of Spirit Animal (extremely loud and tight rock ‘n’ roll), a fair dose of Barbacoa (Bill Mullins’ surf guitar is as extraordinary as ever) and Wee Folkestra, a rootsy, loosey-goosey band featuring the aforementioned festival co-organizer Joe Adler along with local notables Aya Inoue and Samara Lark. I tore myself away and managed to get home around 10:30 p.m., where my wife wondered what happened to my plans to get home early. Oops.
Sunday:
Luisa Maita brings The Precipice festival to a satisfying close.
- Speaking of that unfairly neglected wife of mine, she and I went for a hike Sunday afternoon up Snake Mountain in Addison. Needed that bit of fresh air and exercise before we headed to the Intervale for some fresh air and music. We heard the final show of The Precipice, featuring Brazilian singer Luisa Maita, whose album “Lero Lero” was released on the Charlotte world-music label Cumbancha and was heavy in my rotation when it came out a couple of years ago. The set was beautiful – mellow yet sultry and slinky – and was just the right capper for the first-ever Precipice festival.
I had a terrific time all three days at The Precipice. It’s a really well-organized festival – the shows go off almost exactly on time and generally without a hitch – but I’m not sure they publicized it well enough in advance, as the full schedule wasn’t even released until the day before the thing began. Summers get booked pretty quickly, so if Radio Bean does this again next year – and Adler told me yesterday he’s already planning to turn his attention to The Precipice 2013 – it’d be great if they gave everyone more advance notice so it’s not just the usual Radio Bean crowd writ a bit larger.
One of the best things about the festival was, especially compared to the average festival that hones in on a particular style, how varied it was. I heard vaudeville-styled music, indie-rock, Americana, soul, punk, hard rock, singer-songwriters, surf rock and Brazilian music, and even a smattering of hip hop (I missed the set by Lynguistic Civilians but did hear their guest appearance in Kat Wright’s set). I hope The Precipice comes back, because it’s an excellent way to experience the area’s best music in one pleasant, convenient location.