Posts by Nancy Lasher & Lisa Benne

Dave Grohl of Foo Fighters dropped a bombshell on September 10th. So it was no surprise when this past Thursday afternoon, less than 48 hours before the doors of the inaugural Soundside Music Festival opened, organizers let their torpedo launch – No Foos but offered Jack White and Greta Van Fleet instead as Sunday’s closers. […]

Music, sunshine, and bourbon, what more could a woman want? And Louisville, Kentucky’s Bourbon and Beyond provided barrels of all three. This four-day festival (September 19-22) spread over the Highland Festival Grounds at the Kentucky Expo Center gives you 117 bands performing across five stages, over two dozen distilleries offering their best riff on a […]

As the teeming, days-long, record-breaking rain subsided to drizzly heavy gray skies on Saturday morning, the Sound on Sound team was still at it on September 30th. Probably now working off Plan Z figuring out how to be able to stage the second-year Sound on Sound festival in the boggy fields of Seaside Park in […]

A new festival popped up this year to help close out the northeast states festival season – Sound on Sound in Bridgeport, Connecticut on September 24-25. The lineup was solid and a mix of proven draws, currently hot bands, and up-and-coming acts. The twelve daily musical acts alternated between two side-by-side stages so it was […]

Beach Road Weekend on Martha’s Vineyard in its second year has somehow managed to put on the ideal festival. Three days of great lineups. Two stages with music running continually. Decent food for a festival. Excellent and varied beverage choices. Good vendors. Friendly and low-key staff and security. And the right number of festival-goers with good […]

Festival Sunday comes too soon. You realize all the things you’ve yet to explore. The foods you haven’t tried. The friends you’ve missed in the crowds. Yet, it doesn’t come soon enough, as you drag yourself to the festival grounds, feet weary, ears ringing, stomach just a bit off. But you still make it to […]

Gov Ball Day Two – What a difference a day makes. The festival has worked out the kinks. The crowd knows where to go and how to act. And the perfect weather and strong musical lineup continued. Livia O kicked off the Honda stage and had the lyric of the day if not the festival […]

New York City’s Gov Ball is back.  After a long pandemic, a postponement, a change of venue, Gov Ball made a reappearance for its 10th anniversary, not at its original Governor’s Island off Manhattan, not at its usual Randall’s Island tucked between Manhattan and The Bronx but smackdown in Queens at Citi Field (home of […]

The rain threatened to derail this year’s Voodoo Music + Arts Festival but stellar performances, smaller crowds, and a commitment to costuming helped to make this year’s Voodoo an overall fun weekend.  Friday’s steady precipitation required only a poncho, proper footwear and a good attitude to prevail (although a few stages were shut down briefly […]

It’s noon. The Star Wars theme blares from the sound system. The gates open.  A quick bag check and pat down and the costumed throngs enter New Orleans’ 10/26-10/18/18. City Park for the start of Voodoo Music + Arts Experience on the weekend of The venue is impossibly muddy, with full-out puddles all over, and soupy, […]

The 2017 Voodoo Music & Arts Experience took place October 26-28, 2917 at City Park, New Orleans. From the moment you get in line for Voodoo, you know you are not at your usual festival.  Even the Friday before Halloween, about half the crowd is in some kind of costume. While only about twenty percent […]