Bumbershoot 2007 Day One

I recently spent three days at Bumbershoot, the Seattle based arts and music festival that occurs over Labor Day weekend. The event takes place on the 74 acres at Seattle Center and consists of seven music stages, three comedy stages, four performance stages, a film festival, an independent publishers’ exhibition as well as countless artisans peddling their wares, numerous street performers honing their craft and food vendors with a selection so ethnically diverse it’s like a trip around the globe. It is with bittersweet anticipation that I look forward to Bumbershoot each year. The conflict stems from the excitement of seeing many great performers in a small location over a short period of time for a reasonable price, but it is tempered by the fact that it signals an end to summer. In the immortal words of Robert Hunter, “Every silver lining has a touch of grey.”

Saturday: My wife and I arrive at the Mercer Street entrance courtesy of the Metro system and head straight to Horn of Africa for chicken, lentils and that wonderful, spongy, fermented bread. Over the previous few days I’ve scoured the Bumbershoot sections of the Seattle Weekly and The Stranger, two of Seattle’s weekly newspapers, and made notes on my schedule to determine which acts we should see. Once nourished we proceeded to the Wells Fargo Stage to see The Cave Singers (Seattle Weekly pick) an acoustic-based trio and veterans of Seattle bands (Pretty Girls Make Graves) who play some pretty nice stuff. Their sound leans toward folk but the stripped down arrangements have a somber, almost haunting tone. I imagine that this is what Woody Guthrie would sound like if he’d been exposed to punk, grunge, rock, seemingly endless precipitation and great coffee during his formative years. Invitation Songs, their release on Matador is scheduled to come out 25 Sept 07. I would recommend getting it. If you’d like to hear a few of their tracks you can check out their Myspace page.
After The Cave Singers we hustled through the crowd to the Mainstage to see The Shins (Seattle Weekly pick.) I know they are the most popular band to come out of the Pacific Northwest in recent years and they are quite talented, but my mood for the show was soured when Bumbershoot staff made me dump my water bottles out before entering Memorial Stadium because a full water bottle could be used as a projectile (I’m certain it had nothing to do with stadium vendors selling bottled water, evidently equipped with projectile-restricting technology, for $3 per half liter) and then shut down the line just as we were getting through the checkpoint. Inside the stadium was hot with nary a breath of air. We sought relief from the heat in the shaded seats on the side but the sound mix was muddled. We stayed for three songs and left.
We navigated toward the Starbucks Stage to see The Honey Dripper All Stars, a group of accomplished Rhythm & Blues musicians assembled for the new John Sayles film Honeydripper. These guys were tight! Great sound, great songs, great delivery, all in all an excellent show! I can’t wait for film. It’s due out this fall.
After that performance we worked our way into the Starbucks VIP area, in the cool, cool shade and sampled free lattes while we reassessed our game plan and poured over the pages of the Bumbershoot Official Program, The Seattle Weekly and The Stranger in an attempt to create a new itinerary. We decided to stay for The Avett Brothers, three young, good-looking musicians from North Carolina. The trio consists of upright bass, banjo & guitar with all three sharing vocals. At first I thought it was going to be a Bluegrass band but shortly in to the first song they started jumping and dancing and hootin' & hollerin'. It was more like Black & Bluegrass. I heard once festival-goer refer to the music as Punkgrass. Whatever it’s called I liked it, high energy deliveries of fun melodies. The Avett Brothers have several releases with Emotionalism being their latest CD. If you’d like to hear a few of their tracks you can check out their Myspace page.
We topped off our lattes and waited for The Gourds (Seattle Weekly pick), a group of shit-kickers from Austin with ten years of touring and 9 albums under their belt. Sadly, most folks only know them for a countrified cover of the Snoop Dogg song, Gin & Juice. However, The Gourds’ are a talented bunch of boys who have a lot of fun playing music. They have a wonderful stage presence, they’re relaxed with the audience and you can tell that they are really having as much fun playing as the audience is listening & watching. To top it off their songs are wonderful! If you’d like to hear a few of their tracks you can check out their Myspace page. Unfortunately we had to leave their set early to catch a boat and get back home to feed the dog.
More to follow...