California’s Avi Buffalo craft tuneful indie-pop with a lyrical density that’ll sneak up on you. Though the band has gone through some lineup changes since their 2010 debut, they’ve still captured festival audiences both home and abroad with their stellar live performances. Don’t miss them on Saturday at 6:30 on the Arrowhead stage.
Per the name, the nucleus of the band is 3 brothers from Austin that are genetically predisposed to harmonies and solid pickin’. Most of their debut CD is hook laced folk with a bluesgrass edge, but there are a few feistier tracks that lean towards up-tempo ATX indie. Both should translate well to live performance, and the folkier side of their output will be perfect pre-Keller blanket music to relax to on Saturday at 8:15 on the Arrowhead Stage.
It seems as if Texas has become the adopted home of Japan’s favorite “Action Comic Punk” band, with 5+ visits to Houston alone of the course of the last two years. For the uninitiated, their show shouldn’t be missed, as it will likely be the festival performance that you most often attempt to describe to your increasingly confused friends who missed it. “Well, they’re kinda like a mix between the Power Rangers, professional wrestlers, and the Ramones… I think there was a tiger… and human bowling… I dunno dude, Battling Seizure Robots … loud noises – it ruled.” 3:45 on Saturday at the Arrowhead, don’t miss it.
Next weekend, a crew of BOTheads will be headed to Utopia, Texas to take in our first UtopiaFest. It’s been too long since I’ve hit a camping festival, so I’m quite excited for the ensuing weekend. While headliners Blitzen Trapper, Dawes and Keller Williams are very familiar to us, there are several acts on the line-up that’ll be new to our ears once we hit the festival grounds. If you’re attending as well, I’m sure you’re mostly in the same boat. For the next week or so, Bacon and I will be bringing you videos and more from the entire UtopiaFest line up.
In the best way we could figure out the preview duties, we decided to both take a column and start at the bottom. I got the right column, so first up in our previews are The Giving Tree Band out of Yorkville, Illinois. I’ve never giving these indie-folksters much of a listen, but have always heard really good things about the band led by the brother duo of Todd and Eric Fink. Quoting influences such as The Band, Neil Young and Bob Dylan among others gives me high hopes for their early afternoon set on Saturday, October 15th. Any band that employs such a multitude of instrumentation, and is described as having the “spirit of Pete Seeger, with the musical abilities of The Band,” is pretty damn good in my book.
After spending a bit of time with them on YouTube, they definitely have that Felice Brothers/Old Crow Medicine Show/Railroad Earth “newgrass” sound, and that’s more than ok with me. Watch the video for “Red Leaves” below, then after the jump check out a whole bunch more to get you excited for next weekend!
Read all about the day and check out some more terrible iPhone pictures after the jump.
@BreakfastOnTour “@festivaloutlook: Avicii and The Bloody Beetroots also playing Voodoo Experience 2012 http://t.co/hfvUfj52”
Our primary goals are to spread the word about artists that we love and to encourage more people to experience the joys of live music events. We also want to promote musical exploration - don't just listen to what the blogosphere tells you to listen to, get out there and discover new artists yourself! There's a wealth of talent out there waiting for you to lend them an ear.
