Lee AdcockIn all my days as an unpaid music writer, I never once thought I’d hear Fleet Foxes blaring from half a mile away. Right now, the sell-out folk indie darlings barely register in my head, as I pace the Kindezi School parking lot with cell phone in hand. I’d left my car here this morning—everyone had parked everywhere else—and now my Camry was gone. And meanwhile, an irritably familiar song billows through the trees, a campfire song belted for all the Boy Scout wannabes in the Old Fourth Ward: “I was following the pack / All swallowed in their coats / with scarves of red tied round their throats…” God damn all those overgrown camper kids, I think as I tug the ribbon on my wrist. God damn all those sundresses and shorts that I passed on North Ave, bumbling toward Central Park past the 10-year-old water buskers. Would they risk their car for this decade-old nostalgia? Do they even realize what they’ve missed?
Shaky Knees was one of those annual Atlanta happenings that I vowed to never attend. Giant, corporate-branded festivals weren’t really my beat to begin with. Surely they’d only attract those well-adjusted frat boys and sunshine girls that I never jived with in college. The bills never excited me, anyway, apart from maybe a peep of Phoenix or so. When this year’s lineup first leaked in January, I remained impassive while friends around me yammered giddily about Jack White and Jack Black. Not my scene, I kept telling myself.
Four months and one revelation later, I’m swerving past someone in an 8-foot tall Tom Petty suit on Central Park Place. He’s in his crimson “Don’t Come Round Here No More” getup, and he gestures toward incoming festival goers as if he’s about to scoop them up and eat them like Alice cake with his oversized hands. We haven’t even reached the festival grounds yet, and already Shaky Knees wants to divert us from the main event with this plastic reincarnation. Around me, other attendees guffaw and snap pictures; I try not to think of my mother1 and pull out the map I printed at home.
A tad creepy, no?
The setup for Shaky Knees this year involved four stages. I can already see Peachtree, the biggest one, from across the baseball field as I hustle into the park’s northern quadrant. I can also see the swank Crown Royal truck in front of the entrance to the VIP viewing booth. Directly across and up a steep embankment, the second largest stage, Piedmont, sits across the soccer field. After scoping out the press tent in the northeast corner (behind the port-a-potty block in the playground), I trek to the two smaller stages, Ponce De Leon and Criminal Records, on the southwest block of the park. Even as a renowned speed walker, I could never travel from one side to the other in less than 8 minutes; staff-driven four-wheelers whizz by throughout the day, but I assume they aren’t for me, and anyway that’d be cheating.
In every time slot, one artist plays on both sides of the park. Today, Shaky Knees has almost split the bill evenly, so that at least one non-dude option sits in each slot. (POC, on the other hand, drew the short end of the stick; one of the opening acts, Amasa Hines, would be the only black artist all Friday, apart from David Byrne’s backup singers.) My only prerogative was to support as many women/non-binary/non-cis folks as possible, so I’ve chosen to check out Liz Brasher at Ponce, down Pine Street. Here, the Human Rights Campaign booth (and their rainbow array of tote bags) sits adjacent to Third Man’s garish yellow Rolling Records truck. “Rolling Records?” Why, because festival attendees need to assure themselves they’re REAL music aficionados, and what better way to do that than to buy actual records? Never mind that this is the first 80+ degree weekend of the year, and that all those vinyl vanity purchases will ultimately bake in direct sunlight for hours. But don’t mind me, I can’t buy records anymore.
Liz Brasher
Anyway. The Ponce stage resides within a large sheltered pavilion, at the center of an abandoned lot—maybe 250 people could fit here. I want to enjoy Brasher, but she and her black polo band play a studied simulacrum of soul-powered rock n’ roll that bores me utterly. A granddad in a Hawaiian shirt is dancing, though, so she’s accomplished something. There’s a scattered but modest crowd under the Ponce roof, which is encouraging for just before noon; however, no one’s in the designated VIP zone, a gated-off block at the front. After trying to stick out for Brasher, I give up and duck out toward the bar (each stage except Criminal boasted a huge white-and-red alcohol stand—the ones at Peachtree and Piedmont must’ve been at least 60 yards deep), where I buy my one and only $4 Dasani water for the day. I try to ignore the sign posted just outside my bartender’s stall: “We support bad decision-making!”
On the side of Pine Street rests Criminal’s stage—the smallest at Shaky Knees—under a huge tree. Young folks sit with their blankets on the sloped ground. Other young folks sit without blankets, and I reckon they must not have grown up in the country, where every square inch could hide swarms of ants. Ah well, they’ll figure it out. We’re here for *repeat repeat, an upbeat indie rock squad from Nashville, who apparently played on ESPN in 2016 (ESPN? When was that a thing?). I honestly wasn’t expecting much from the five-piece, but frontman Jared Corder really sells that all-gut-punch blast, as he darts across the stage in his striped tee. Not long into the first song—”approximately 12:36 p.m.,” my tweet reports—I catch the first whiff of weed for the day. Two minutes after I write this into my notes, Corder announces “I smell weed!” That’s followed swiftly by “Let me smell that again!” The crowd eats it up.
*repeat repeat
Overall, I dig *repeat repeat. I’d scribble RIYLs like Spoon, Black Keys, and others that I wouldn’t normally care about, but Jared and his sidekick Kristyn Corder seem genuinely grateful to be here, and genuinely grateful that we’re here, so in turn the audience reciprocates the gratitude. “I want to know all your names,” Jared asks the crowd mid-set. “You guys rock!” a punter shouts back. My favorite moment, though, is when the band halts mid-song so Jared can explain that this particular number is for “the punk good guys, because, see, I was raised to stick it to the man, but also to respect a woman.” Then Kristyn announces their cover song (they always include a cover song, we’re told). “Times are fucked, so we chose Rage Against the Machine!” The crowd cheers their approval, but I sidle down to Pine Street again.
I cross over to the other side, and without even trying, my feet find a gentler incline up to Piedmont. The sun is blazing, and no shelter protects the gig-goers huddled by the barrier here. When dude rock dudes Welles hit the stage, I’m immediately repelled by a shirtless guitarist. I’m not about to risk an early sunburn to watch these blokes ape about, so I turn back swiftly toward the press tent.
This marks water refill #1. One of the most generous and sensible gestures from Shaky Knees was the inclusion of a free (albeit branded) water refilling station, conveniently located in the middle of the food truck block. At 1 p.m., I had no problem marching right up to one of the ten taps. Even as the day wore on (and the sun continued to decimate us), I’d never wait much longer than two minutes for a refill.2
If you’re wondering what lavish quarters the press folk had access to—don’t. Our press tent was little more than a row of card tables draped in black linen, with a wi-fi hotspot and giant fans in the corners. In this interim, I’d jab a few notes into my iPad, to maintain my press cred around the photo buffs. By the evening, I’d give up on productivity and zone out in my seat. I never felt too comfortable there; the photo peeps would all gang up and brag loudly about their next moves and past scores, while the other writers would keep to themselves until I tried to make small talk. I’d find myself explaining the Ponce and Criminal stages at every point in the day— “Wow, I haven’t even been down there yet,” they’d inevitably say, at 1 p.m., 2:30 p.m., 4:30 p.m., 7 p.m…
Committed to my “support all women” stance, I venture back to Criminal at 1:30 p.m. for L.A. Witch. Unfortunately, while these femme fatales are indeed both women and from L.A., they drone drowsy JAMC blues that paint them into cliché. The singer piles on reverb, doesn’t even try to connect with the crowd, and remains stock-still the whole time. I zone out and take notes: “The frequency of topknots is much less than expected;” “Dude in black carries a tote bag that says ‘the plural of vinyl is vinyl’—must be from Third Man;” “Do I know that non-bi person with the glitter warpaint?” When L.A. Witch finally switch gears to a slightly more slinky goth number, I check my watch yet again. Time to go.
I’m pretty drained as I beeline for the press tent again, so when I turn toward Peachtree and realize that Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever are still on, I plop onto the hillside. (Actually, I first leaned against a railing, but then a kindly staff person asked me if I needed ADA credentials, and I apologized for intruding.) Watching bands on the big screens felt wrong to me, as if someone blew up your hometown heroes into hologram celebrities much bigger than you, in both a physical and metaphorical sense.3 But my Shaky Knees experience wouldn’t be complete without some celluloid action, right? Ugh, look at ’em. They didn’t even have to tell me they were from Melbourne, as I could already tell: that jangle with a swagger, the cocksure stances and firm jawlines, the slice-of-life narratives. Why haven’t I heard of these guys, I ask myself as they close on extended jam “The French Press.” Surely every Dolewave fan4 in Melbourne must think they’re the best band ever. Hopefully none of them are dicks.5
Ezra Furman
Well, no matter. After 20 minutes of recharging in the press tent, I caught up with an old classmate from Mercer and drank almost an entire bottle of water. I’m back on my game, and I march straight up to the barrier at Peachtree. You see, the primary reason I applied for a press pass—apart from just the “experience”—was to catch Ezra Furman, who I didn’t even know until someone sent me a press copy of Transangelic Exodus, and I become irrevocably hooked. And lo! Here he is now, soundchecking with his band in the red dress and pearls that he’d been wearing in all his press shots lately. Sigh. I admire so much about Furman—of course his androgyny, but also his effortless knack for writing. Indeed, just a few weeks ago, his 33 1/3 book on Lou Reed’s Transformer hit shelves. I’m always excited to see introverts take the spotlight, since we have to work harder to raise our voices, and Furman’s success, a steady decade-long climb into his most challenging work yet, has inspired me loads over the past three months.
So, you can imagine my delight when Furman and his and band prepare for the first song, and he has to pace back and forth before he explodes to life. God! I knew I’d be in rapture, but what amazes me the most is how, after all these years, the excitable frontman still has to pause for deep breaths, still speaks with a hesitant cadence better suited to a tiny dive bar than a crowd 500+ people deep. (“I think it’s cool that you’ve all come to see me,” he says, as if he didn’t have 22K+ followers on the socials. But whatever, I’m sure I yelled “You’re cool, Ezra!” anyway). He picks the meaty topics from Trans Ex and the album before that, Perpetual Motion People; leave it to Furman to announce “this one’s about teenage gay sex” (“I Lost My Innocence”), or “this one’s about paranoia, anxiety, driving through the night… classic shit” (“Driving to LA”). He even adds a verse to “Maraschino Red Dress for 8.99 at Goodwill” — “I’m wearing it right now / I can breathe / working on my make-up…” — to transfer the surface dread of presenting as queer in public to the present day.
Ezra Furman (see if you can spot Lee!)
Long story short, the crowd adores Furman and his humble monologues, even though a few folks wince at some of the more piercing synth tones. Surely I’m not the only one stomping the breaks to “Driving to LA,” or bracing the freakouts on “Peel My Orange every Morning”, or literally screaming all the words to his motion-picture single “Suck the Blood from My Wound.” When Furman finally beats a hasty retreat, I feel like a) I oughta find a way backstage and thank him thrice for keeping it so real; b) I could swoon; and c) no really, I could faint right now, as the sun hadn’t relented this past 45 minutes. But nope, Waxahatchee’s on at Ponce, so I push through the crowd and rush to Pine again.
My devotion to the Crutchfields was tangential, at best. I hadn’t really followed Katie and Allison from their P.S. Elliot days to now, and I really dug the latter’s solo album from last year, Tourist in This Town, more than Waxahatchee’s proper next chapter, Out in the Storm. Still, they wooed the Georgia Theatre last year at Athens Popfest, so I counted myself a believer. By the time I arrive at the Ponce tent, everyone’s beat me there—including all the VIP folks in their cramped little pen. The vibe in here has bumped down several notches. Waxahatchee dutifully reproduce their newest songs, but they seem drowsier than I recall. Or am I drowsy? I’m zoning out behind the VIP block. What’s the average age in there, I wonder. 55? 50? Some olive-skinned bloke in a bucket hat keeps looking back at me with a smug grin—is that one of my high school teachers, or just a creepy guy?
Waxahatchee
During “Sparks Fly,” I realize that another man in a chair (only the VIPs get chairs) has fallen asleep. Um. Well. Do we mock the self-elected elite for squandering away their privilege, or do we cut him some slack and blame the band for not bringing their A-game? You tell me. At the time, I just take him as a sign to get out, but Waxahatchee hold me for “Hear You”, cos I had to stay for “Hear You.” The last time I caught them in the same space, I was walking away from Sluggo’s packed basement, and my heart sunk like oil as the song rang out, until I peeped into the parked Camry and found my mum in a deep, adorable doze…
As I meander back up Central Park Place, college rock staples Jimmy Eat World belt out something that isn’t “The Middle.” Had I heard that one big hit, I would have floated up to Piedmont. But alas, instead I queue up for refill #3. After 15 minutes of cool-down in the press tent, I’m back down in Peachtree for Courtney Barnett, where a fellow comrade from the Masquerade hails me. They’re the first person all day (apart from one of the photographers) that I recognized as an actual gig-goer, and not these dallying tourists camped on the hillsides.
How fortuitous, I tell them, particularly in light of Barnett. Like us, she’s cut her teeth in dive bars and circled round the scene before her double EP package A Sea of Split Peas crossed the ocean. Up here on the Peachtree stage, she looks undeniably like the seasoned scenester, all cool and casual and in total control. It’s always a good sign when the new songs don’t drag down the set, and heck yeah, “City Looks Pretty” fires us up, especially when Barnett locks into her zone and shreds her solo. She’s light on banter, but we don’t care; the new brash victim-solidarity anthem “Nameless, Faceless” tickles the very same thrill-seeking pleasure node as “History Eraser,” and “I’m Not Your Mother, I’m Not Your Bitch” smacks us in the FACE with mosh-worthy riffage. Funny, though, I’m astonished that everyone (everyone!) in the pit can recite the rambling narrative to “Avant Gardener,” I shouldn’t have been, given Barnett’s international acclaim, but still—perhaps I’d given in to the common assertion that the kids with their streaming platforms and ephemeral MP3s just don’t treasure their music like the old folks used to. Idiot me!
Courtney Barnett
I’m loath to cut early from Barnett, but 40 minutes in (i.e. after “History Eraser”), I nod and decide to trek up to Piedmont. I had two missions today, actually: 1. Catch Ezra Furman, and 2. Dance to Franz Ferdinand. Every millennial’s favorite post-punk disco Scots are up next, and their latest record Always Ascending promised giddy rhythms just as irresistible as the classic hits. As before, I settle toward the front and suss out the crowd. Nearby, some particularly loud blokes are plotting their alcohol consumption for the rest of the evening. Another guys tells his buddy, “Yeah, that Jimmy Eat World song was the first one I caught all day!” Why do I want to strangle him?
But WHATEVER, here comes the band and the glam themselves—and man oh man. Unlike Furman, Alex Kapernos definitely acts like he’s playing to thousands of people—or rather, he basks in our glow. “Atlanta!” he says at least a dozen times, as performers do to connect superficially with a giant crowd, but we’re always there to scream, because holy wow, Franz Ferdinand are a sexy machine. You shoulda seen how Kapernos would jump in place, and saunter across the stage, and pivot round like a model on the runway. Would you even believe that “Take Me Out” wasn’t even the highlight? No, the newer songs sashay even harder. “Always Ascending” opened the set on a bang, “Walk Away” warms us up, and “Love as a Photographer” sets us ablaze. When Franz Ferdinand finally bring in the big hit, they play at such a sluggish clip, much slower than my memory, and too slow for sustained movement.
By the fourth song, Kapernos hails us as “Shakys,” and perhaps I’d chafe if any other band gave me a pet name, but nope, Franz Ferdinand had a firm grip on our collective leash. Case in point: in an extended jam of “Burn This City,” the frontman says he wants to experiment with us. “Everyone get down,” he says, and so you better believe that we all crouched to the ground, as the band pulled back. No one had to tell us when to get up—when that chorus hit, everyone jumped at once, back into our happy dances.
Franz Ferdinand
There’s a chick with brilliant blue hair next to me, an exquisite mix of cyan and cobalt. She’s slim, and she’s agile, and I assume she’s much younger than me, but at least a legit punk, because she’s yelling at the band like they can hear her. At one point she turns to me as I’m moving and grooving, as I do, and yells, “I love your hair!” No, this has nothing to do with Franz Ferdinand, but it has everything to do with Franz Ferdinand, because just then I realized I was still cool, and I didn’t think anything in the world could drag me down from this high cloud of ecstasy.
Indeed, as I’m panting and stumbling back down, I can’t imagine what could possibly top that bona fide spectacle. Even as the masses descend and gather like zombies over foggy hillsides to Peachtree, I stagger like a wounded animal back to the press tent. The very thought that Talking Heads maestro David Byrne will grace our presence next overwhelms my already short-circuited senses. (He’s up on the screen now, grey suit against a grey curtain, staring like Hamlet into an ersatz brain.) Besides, the PR team promised us refreshments, and I’d refrained from soliciting any food carts to save cash (unpaid music critic here, remember). Not to mention, I’d like to catch my friends’ release show down in Athens, and I’d really rather not stick around for Mr. White. Another writer balked at this notion earlier, that I would zip 50 miles down 316 after an afternoon’s worth of music for yet another concert—but for me, that’d be a protracted ride into the sunset, a long-overdue homecoming that would purge the base-level anxiety that had plagued me all day.
As I wolf down a tastefully dry bowl of nachos in the tent, I’m trying hard not to identify the clearly Fear of Music-era cut wafting from below (20/20 hindsight—”I Zimbra,” I think). But I muse out loud anyway, and the writer I’m talking to now has no clue what I’m mumbling about. Ugh. With a dejected air, I toss out my bowl (and some other abandoned bowls—apparently media folk are slobs) and poke out. Go to the car, go to the car, go to the car, I tell myself, even though Byrne now has a full drumline, backup singers, and perfect marionette moves for “Take Me to the River.” The screen display, I now notice, is set to black-and-white, with wide and static camera angles—kinda like Stop Making Sense, sure, but I envision a lost episode from The Old Grey Whistle Test, or The Twilight Zone, or something.6 It’s all fascinating, but…
David Byrne
Oh. Oh. OHHHHH. I could recognize anything off of Speaking in Tongues from a mile away (or in this case, a quarter of a mile away), and the casually dulcet intro to “This Must Be the Place” calls like a siren as my eyes light upon the field. Down at the baseball diamond, kids are waving glo-sticks and dancing in the sand, and college blokes are tossing a ball to each other. Wow, this makes so much sense. Here is Mr. Byrne, abstracted and stylized on the big screen, singing about an unexpected paradise, and here I am, transfixed when I should be leaving. Without skipping a beat, Mr. Byrne and his full band then pivot straight into “Burning Down the House”, and I realize: here is an artist that loves his fans. He has not only given us what we wanted, but he has followed strict chronological parameters that true Heads fans would catch and appreciate. Huh. Of course, if Mr. Byrne wanted to really tunnel down that route, he would have chased up “This is the Place” with “Making Flippy Floppy,” but I can’t complain. He is a mannequin, and a monolith, a monolithic mannequin even. And his suit hasn’t grown an inch.
After “Burning,” Byrne pauses to tell us that he’s about to play something he and Fatboy Slim wrote not too long ago. Time to go, I tell myself for the umpteenth time. I hustle out to the cracked pavement on North Ave, past the kids with the coolers and bearded blokes headed in the opposite direction. One of them asks if they’re headed the right way. “Yep, just keep going,” I assure him. They hustle too, past the 30-something year old that barks: “Hey, it’s much cheaper out here, buddy!” “I’m sure it is,” I remark wryly. I should have added “good luck,” or “sorry I can’t stay.” I should have thrown him a few bucks, anyway. But no, I was no better than any of those campers. There’s some drinks in my car, I kept thinking. Not much further now.
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1 Tom Petty went into cardiac arrest on October 2, 2017. When the news confirmed his death, I called my mum—a diehard Petty fan—and broke the news gently, as if he were a brother.
2 Only as I was preparing to leave did I discover the free water bottles floating in a cylindrical cooler (or was it just a trash can?) outside the press tent. Oh well.
3 On the subject of Tom Petty, there’s a song on The Last DJ that speaks brusquely about rock stars on big screens, which I think may have informed my dread. It’s a good one—hometown rocker becomes a stadium star, so the protagonist buys a pricey ticket to see his show, only to find himself among cocktail-sipping yuppies who don’t have to care about the actual music, which has now been reduced to mere ad jingles for light beer anyway.
4 “Dolewave” = a revival in Go-Between-esque jangle pop, coupled with concise observations about the mundane reality of living outside the 9-5, which peaked in about 2013 with Dick Diver, Twerps, Bitch Prefect, and Lower Plenty, among others.
5 Hot tip: the ratio of dicks to non-dicks in the male-dominated Aussie music industry is even higher than in the US or the UK combined. For reference, just skim through the thinkpieces and news items around Kirin J. Callinan, Alex Cameron, Sticky Fingers, Dune Rats…
6 The Old Grey Whistle Test was a live music show active in the UK from about 1971 to 1988. As a “serious” counterpart to Top of the Pops, they featured loads of your favorite old bands (like Bob Marley, who scored his first televised performance there) in a tiny bare studio, strictly in black-and-white. I shouldn’t have to explain what The Twilight Zone is