By Rick Wood
Every year, music fans of all stripes add a vacation day or two to certain weekends and make a pilgrimage to one of the annual music festivals held throughout the summer. This year’s slate of festivals is in its final stages, having begun in Austin, Texas, in March and moved north during summer’s hottest days. This month, things cool off back in Texas at the season’s finale, the Austin City Limits Music Festival, offered on eight stages over three days (September 15–17 this year).
The PBS show “Austin City Limits” has been showcasing roots-based musical acts from Texas and beyond for more than 30 years. Since 2002, the festival has brought an even more diverse range to Austin’s Zilker Park (from Van Morrison to the Flaming Lips), and “ACLfest eve” is one of the liveliest nights of the year at Austin’s numerous live-music clubs. Festival regulars know to book hotel rooms early and expect to collect a year’s worth of musical memories in a few packed days.
Austin also hosts the first big musical event of the year, South by Southwest. Held during the University of Texas’ spring break, SXSW is a citywide affair, comprising hundreds of small stages and five nights of music acts in just about every nightclub, courtyard and parking lot in town.
New Orleans’ JazzFest, the granddaddy of all music festivals, takes place over two weekends in late April/early May, with 10 big outdoor stages and a strong emphasis on jazz, blues and Cajun/zydeco. The success of JazzFest 2006 was pronounced an important gauge of the city’s ability to get back to doing what it does best: throw parties.
Meanwhile, out in the desert just east of Los Angeles, the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival provides a two-day marathon of favorite acts from the punk/alternative corner of the music world right around the same time that Merlefest brings folk and acoustic-based acts to the hills of western North Carolina.
In June, Tennessee’s Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival features a broad buffet of rock with a few side dishes of jazz and bluegrass, and Colorado’s Telluride Bluegrass Festival presents the same menu in almost exactly inverse proportions. Kansas’ Wakarusa Music and Camping Festival is, literally and figuratively, somewhere in between.
Birmingham’s City Stages offers a Southern urban setting and lineup with the feel of a smaller-scale JazzFest. If you’re seeking authentic American music on an even smaller scale, check out Memphis’ Ponderosa Stomp and St. Louis’ own Twangfest (full disclosure: I help plan Twangfest). Both limit the proceedings to one stage at a time, creating an intimate relationship between artist and audience.
As the summer heats up, Rhode Island’s Newport Folk Festival offers a relaxed, breezy New England feel (and a great view of the bay), and its lineup remains thematically linked to its famous alumni (Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, et al.). In August, Chicago’s Lollapalooza (previously a touring festival and now a one-off, three-day event) draws from the urban-hipster demographic, with a lineup geared toward the punk/alternative crowd. And Seattle’s Bumbershoot keeps things wide open with a West Coast, “anything goes” eclecticism.
Austin, Texas: www.aclfestival.com, www.sxsw.com
Birmingham, Ala.: www.citystages.org
Chicago: www.lollapalooza.com
Lawrence, Kan.: www.wakarusa.com
Los Angeles: www.coachella.com
Manchester, Tenn.: www.bonnaroo.com
Memphis: www.ponderosastomp.com
New Orleans: www.nojazzfest.com
Newport, R.I.: www.festivalproductions.net/newportfolk
Seattle: www.bumbershoot.org
Telluride, Colo.: www.bluegrass.com/telluride
Wilkesboro, N.C.: www.merlefest.org
St. Louis: www.twangfest.com
