jam-band

I love how they describe the location for the new Hangout Beach Music & Arts Festival—"on the beach, next to the Hangout restaurant, at the southern end of Alabama Highway 59. If you hit the Gulf of Mexico, you went just a little too far."

Word first came out in December that a new festival was planned was planned for May 14-16. Now the festival is out with its first round of announcements, and it is a pretty impressive start.  The first batch of artists named suggest an edgier outlook than might have been expected. Zac Brown Band, John Legend, and Alison Krauss and Union Station lead the initial slate of acts named.

Other notable names include The Black Crowes, Brett Dennen, Guster, Girl Talk, The Whigs, Rodrigo y Gabriela, Keller Williams, Matisyahu, Jerry Jeff Walker, Ozomatli and the Blind Boys of Alabama. The festival says there will be more than 60 acts. This batch was about one-third of that.

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Although we came to Turin for moe., The Heavy Pets and CAKE — all of whom fulfilled expectations — it was Ani DiFranco who truly intrigued us. After catching her at Bonnaroo and again at the All Good Festival, it was a pleasure to see her at a "venue" where, as she said, she "felt some rapport." In truth, moe.down is but a stone's throw from her hometown of Buffalo, but the attentive late Saturday afternoon crowd at the main stage also didn't have to travel far to be enraptured by her presence. She mused in appreciation, "you are an audience that really understands me," and indeed, her quirky, upbeat, and very personable onstage demeanor established an intimate connection with all in attendance.

It was a mere month ago that I was awed by The Heavy Pets for the first time when they played a 'tweener at the Dancin' In The Streets festival in Denver, so I was curious to see what they could do in an extended slot at moe.down. They didn't disappoint as they gave us plenty of hard-core jams in three full sets on Saturday. Having played together for less than four years, they have amassed a large repetoire of quality, original material covering only a handful of songs from "Whale," their acclaimed debut double CD.

At the mouth of the still summer green Adirondacks in the great state of New York, moe. celebrated its tenth year of moe.down and its nineteenth year as the band moe. With a spirited group of fans celebrating the Labor Day weekend, the music never stopped and neither did the dancing.

Sounding somewhere between a jazz Kimock and the funky Meters, the British New Mastersounds opened moe.down 2009 with songs from their jazz portfolio.  Subsequent of promises to entertain the crowd with funk and heavy metal music in the next two sets, lead guitarist Eddie Roberts remarked the dancing crowd resembled a 1950s British porn film. Which is where this story wants to go - not to international blue movies but rather the dancing crowds of music festivals past and present.