City Beat announced the Cincinnati Midpoint Indie Summer series lineup today, and it kicks the shit out of any lineup that the Queen City weekly Uptown-area events have had in years. Among those slated to perform at the Cincy weekly series are Those Darlins, Man Man, Moon Taxi, Local H, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and Islands. In addition to local acts opening up, and four bands playing each night, did I mention these concerts are FREE?!?
Does that price tag of free remind you of any other summer music series you might know of or have attended?
I’ll admit, I’ve complained plenty about the Alive After Five series and its focus on cover bands for its music. Another local series, Friday Live at the Factory, centers around ’90s alt-rock bands, though they’ve done a good job with booking local acts for openers. Both events have at least experimented with having local bands that play original music headline. (It’s a short drive to the U.S. Whitewater Center which has been getting solid acts on its River Jam series for years now.)
The typical arguments I hear is that “no one cares about the music” at those events. Promoters go for cover bands who are safe choices due to their broad appeal. To that I always ask, why not offer more? Why can’t AA5 book even more local acts to open for the headliners, as the Friday Live series has done (and will hopefully do this year)? Why can’t both events book more original national and regional acts who aren’t bank-breakers but still draw a crowd, such as Janelle Monae, Kurt Vile, Charlotte’s own Matrimony, Drive-By Truckers, Little Dragon, Shovels & Rope, Carolina Chocolate Drops, Lost in the Trees, Blackberry Smoke, ZZ Ward, J. Roddy Walston & The Business, Lake Street Dive, Wild Feathers … the list goes on.
Charlotte may have twice the population and enjoy warmer weather, but as far as a summer music series goes, Cincinnati clearly wins. (Not to mention all the national acts the city gets at the annual MidPoint Music Festival.) The Whitewater Center is doing its part to show that it can be done and people will even travel for a quality event.
- Photo by Jeff Hahne
- Can Charlotte get a better weekly music series?
This year’s lineup for the Friday Live at the Factory series, which starts in May, will be announced on Thursday at 5 p.m. My fingers are crossed that they’ve beefed up the lineup with more current band offerings, but until more Charlotte music fans demand better from promoters and events, we may continue to suffer from the typical fare and “safe” choices at these events.
I have to wonder, though, if maybe it’s too late for AA5? Is there such a lack of expectations on the Uptown scene that even if AA5 started booking acts like Man Man, Those Darlins and the like, that people would still shy away?
The River Jam series this year includes locals such as Overmountain Men, The New Familiars while getting quality regional and national acts including Cedric Burnside and Nora Jane Struthers along with up-and-coming acts like Roadkill Ghost Choir and Sol Driven Train.
Do you want more indie bands to play a series in Charlotte? Is a new series needed in the spring or fall at a new location Uptown?
Share this blog post, comment below on the bands you’d like to see perform and spread the word. Let’s see if the readers of Creative Loafing can help make it happen. What have we got to lose?
This article appears in Apr 16-22, 2014.
The US Whitewater Center has the Riverjam concert series every summer on Thurs and Sat that starts May 1. It is all original music with local and national touring acts. Some of the bands that are playing would cost you anywhere in between $15 to $20 to see them at The Neighborhood Theatre or Visulite. Did I mention its FREE?
http://usnwc.org/category/riverjam/
The post has been updated to include the River Jam. My initial post was focused on the Uptown events in comparison with what Cincinnati offers. If anything, River Jam also proves my point that people will attend a quality event with good music even if they have to travel a bit.
Random snotty comment from a Cincinnati resident: Charlotte isn’t really twice the size of Cincinnati. Strictly by the city limits population, yes, its significantly bigger, but for comparisons like this, its really the size of the Metro area that counts. Charlotte metro area is about 2.3 million people, and the Cincinnati metro (comprised of 3 states) is 2.1.
I’ve been pretty bummed about the music scene and lack of musical diversity in Cincinnati since I’ve lived here since 2012.. Bunbury’s booking is pretty sad for the amount of money i feel like they are spending.. The hype/energy for Midpoint is a underwhelming (hardly anyone there for Dent May last year who was awesome). Too many terrible country and bland indie-rock lineups. Where is the house music? Electronic? Hip hop? Jam-bands?
I will say this summer series is pretty cool for being free.. Man Man and Moon Taxi should be fun.
I work with the organizers of Alive After Five. I agree with your points and I would love to have an indie festival, there is A LOT that goes into making it free though. Also, in AA5’s defense, we/they have never tried to be anything but an after work free event to listen to music. We have purposely tried to appeal to a wide range of people and not make it a specific kind of music series. The music is just a nice back drop for a lot of folks… and we are cool with that. When you talk about specific bands, you are targeting a specific fan base and that makes it tough to get a wide range of folks out to your event. It’s too bad Centercity Fest went by the wayside, it was a great festival with several different kinds of bands. It takes a lot of dough to put an event like that on and sponsorship dollars are the driving factor. I applaud the Blackstock Music festival, the organizer for that event is using private funds to put on an amazing event, I hope people support it. That could be an event like you are talking bout right in our backyard every year, if it’s supported.
Charlotte just doesn’t really have a true music festival yet, period. I think it will happen eventually, but at the moment we don’t have even a shadow of what many smaller cities like Raleigh, Asheville, and Chapel Hill/Durham have in their various annual festivals. Which is sad especially considering that we have a better music scene here than most people realize, and some truly great venues begging for a sort of venue-hopping festival like Hopscotch or Mountaintop Oasis.
What a disappointing lineup for NC Music Factory’s Friday Live Concert Series. Cowboy Mouth is highly entertaining, but they are retreads from years past. It’s nice to see David Lowry & Cracker return after their super soaked show from last season. The Spongetones belong at The Double Door. Hopefully the May 16th TBA show will bring something special, but I highly doubt it. And, what’s up with closing the series with an Eagles cover band. Really, that’s the best we could do ? If the NC Music Factory is in need of a booking agent, I’m available.
Thanks for the props!! Cincinnati’s music scene is AWESOME, especially at the local level. We have some great bands around here that are putting out some top-notch music on both a writing and recording level. Great bands need receptive and forward-thinking promoters/venues and we have that here. Bars like Northside Tavern, MOTR Pub, Mainstay Rock Bar, Comet, The Drinkery, and the Indie Summer series on Fountain Square NEVER charge a cover, pay bands well, and have reasonable drink prices. The impact it has had on our scene is tremendous!! The removal of a trivial cover charge has shot attendance through the roof.
If you’re interested in hearing some new music coming out of Cincy here are a few to begin with:
Lemon Sky (LemonSkyMusic.com for free stream/downloads)
The Killtones (http://thekilltones.bandcamp.com free stream)
Pop Goes the Evil (http://popgoestheevil.bandcamp.com free stream)
Electric Citizen (http://electriccitizenband.bandcamp.com/ free stream)
DAAP Girls (http://www.daapgirls.com/ free download)
Young Heirlooms (http://youngheirlooms.bandcamp.com/ free stream)
Saturn Batteries (http://saturnbatteries.bandcamp.com/ free stream/download)
Are you ready??
vimeo.com/86724351
Jeff, I think this topic deserves a bit more consideration and I hope you’ll explore it further. Charlotte has an oddly compartmentalized music scene that makes it hard for something like this to exist. Between the Whitewater Center and the NC Music Center I think we as a community would be hard pressed to make something free and truly community-centric work as a public arts project. We know the community is here to support it (I’ve stopped even trying to make it to a Riverjam due to the corresponding Trafficjam), but whether the city and business community would get behind something public I think is highly questionable. But the most important road block I imagine is, how/why would the competing independent promoters with the contacts to book these bands work together to pull this off instead of booking them for their own venues?
Some to check out in CLT coming up:
Tuck Fest- http://www.tuckfest.org
Drumstrong- http://www.drumstrong.org/
NC Brewer’s and Music Festival – http://ncbrewsmusic.com/
GBV, Of Montreal, Manchester Orchestra, Bad Veins, and Alice in Chains all played this past weekend in Cincinnati too.