Month: November 2021

So, Atlanta has two major outdoor music festivals in the spring – SweetWater 420 and Shaky Knees.  SW420 is usually held on the weekend around April 20^th while SK is usually held two to three weeks later in early May.

But in 2022 both festivals will occur over the same weekend, April 29 – May 1.  Why?  SW420 should have been April 22-24 and SK should have been May 6-8 or May 13-15.

This seems like an “unforced error” on the part of SK since SW420 announced their 2022 dates over a month before SK announced their dates, and even before the delayed SK 2021 festival took place in late October; SW420 was cancelled for both 2020 and 2021.

The festivals are in different locations and there isn’t much overlap in the performers, especially in recent years as SW420 has become the “jam bands” festival and SK has drifted away from the “indie band” focus of earlier years to a more mainstream lineup, at least in my opinion.

But having the festivals on the same weekend doesn’t seem fair to the fans who might want to attend both and also to the vendors who might want to participate in both events.  Plus the traffic, the subway, and the rideshare services are going to be twice as bad.  Maybe someone will set up a shuttle service between the festivals so you can watch Spafford at SW420, shuttle over to SK to watch Spoon, then back to SW420 to watch Umphrey’s McGee, for example.

I’m looking forward to my first SW420 in 2022 after missing the 2019 festival and getting cancelled out of 2020 and 2021.  I did go to the SweetWater anniversary party at the brewery in February of 2019 to see Anders Osborne and Samantha Fish.

I have enjoyed SK in the past.  The 2015 Saturday show featured The Avett Brothers, Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, Real Estate, and ZZ Ward.  The 2018 Friday show featured Jack White, David Byrne (performing American Utopia), Courtney Barnett, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, The Ghost Of Paul Revere, and The War And Treaty.

There wasn’t much of interest to me in the 2021 SK festival and based on a quick glance at the 2022 lineup the only performers I will miss will be Spoon and Kurt Vile.  Maybe they will come back to town on a later stop of their tours.  Maybe even Music Midtown in September?

Congratulations to Jon Batiste on the 11 Grammy award nominations. 

I went to the Tedeschi Trucks Band weekend at Lockn’ Farm in August and saw that Jon and his band would be performing on late Sunday afternoon before the final TTB show that evening.  Up until then I only knew him as the bandleader on Colbert.

What a superb show – I highly recommend seeing him if you can.  He exemplifies the best of live performances – great music, great energy, great showmanship, great connection with the audience.

This is one of things I like best about festival-style concerts, where in addition seeing to performers you already know, you can “sample” performers you might not have been inclined to go see at a solo concert.  A bit like streaming music from new artists before buying an album.

Other recent similar festival performances were The War And Treaty and David Byrne performing American Utopia.