So what exactly is Rebelution? Glide decided to find out with a phone call to lead singer and main songwriter Eric Rachmany, who was home in San Francisco enjoying some nice weather before his band went back out on the road. Formed in 2004 while all four band members were attending college, Rebelution first hit big in Hawaii, releasing their first album in 2007. They have been growing in popularity ever since, selling out more and more venues as they travel the country spreading their reggae.
I made a point of getting up early on Saturday morning of the 15th Annual All Good Music Festival to catch some of the local talent at the Grassroots Stage. Having been told by numerous local media sources that they were a hot ticket, I made a point of seeing a bit of Fletcher’s Grove from nearby Morgantown. As usual, I was not as quick making the trek as I’d hoped and arrived about halfway through the fledgling jamband’s first set, just as they were finishing a very strong cover of Buddy Holly’s classic Not Fade Away.
The next few songs in the quintet’s inaugural All Good set proved once again that festivals are a great place to check out fresh talent. See more about Fletcher’s Grove in the All Good New Artist Spotlight below. As local favorites, Fletcher’s Grove brought a sizable audience to the campground stage that quckly cleared after their set. I waited around to see a bit of Chicago’s Lubriphonic whose funk and horns also proved danceable and fun, although it was a shame there wasn’t a larger audience.
Opening the main stage on Saturday was self-contained band Zach Deputy whose soulful vocals and looping guitar and beat lines made for a more relaxed set under the West Virginia hills’ intense mid-day sun. After Deputy, I caught only the first couple of songs by The Werks (which the audience seemed to enjoy) and headed back to the Grassroots Stage to see Michigan’s Greensky Bluegrass, where they performed only bluegrass covers of rock songs including Traffic’s Light Up or Leave Me Alone, Talking Heads’ Road to Nowhere, Arcade Fire’s City With No Children and Prince’s When Doves Cry.
READ ON for more thoughts and photos from Saturday at All Good…
We’re barely a week into 2011 and we’ve already got our first major summer festival line up announcement of the season that has us excited for the warmer months ahead. Earlier today the fine folks behind the Wakarusa Music Festival dropped a monster list of bands that will take to the variety of tents and stages over the weekend of June 2 -5 at Mulberry Mountain in Ozark, Arkansas.
Now in it’s seventh year, the jam-friendly festival will be headlined by the mighty My Morning Jacket, who are joined at the top of the bill by Ben Harper & Relentless7, Thievery Corporation and STS9.
Other acts set to head to Mulberry Mountain this year will be HT faves Umphrey’s McGee, Mumford & Sons, Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings, Grace Potter & The Nocturnals, Galactic, Dark Star Orchestra, Perpetual Groove, Those Darlins and These United States.
A variety of ticketing options for the four day festival are currently on-sale, which include an early bird full event pass for the low price of $139.
READ ON for the full initial Wakarusa 2011 line up…
Throughout the 1990s Perry Farrell’s traveling Lollapalooza festival was a staple of the summer concert season bringing together an eclectic mix of acts from the worlds of alt.rock, metal, hip
On the surface, the name Soul Rebels looks just like any of the endless array of names that your eyes would pass over while browsing the racks at a music store. The result is music that is all over the radar screen, that features one track as a hip-hop song with a tuba playing the bass line, while the next is somebody dropping serious rhymes over a salsa beat. This may seem like a puddle of too many sounds to rope together into cohesive song structures, but the reality in each track retains enough of the traditional song structure to pull off a clean sounding album
