Sunday Recap

Another beautiful day of weather…

Great weather to get stuck in traffic.

Was the MBTA conspiring against the fest? Critical Red Line stations in the festival transport infrastructure were closed. And if you took the shuttle between JFK/UMass to all points south, you waited in bumper to bumper traffic on I-93.

Irony of ironies, In Between Days was advertising by billboard at the side of the highway. So you could be reminded of precisely where you couldn’t get to.

Kind of reminds you how the MBTA shut down a critical stop on the Green Line for the duration of the What the Fluff? festival in Somerville. Maybe the MBTA is just conspiring against everyone?

Good luck trying to make the opening set by Sweet Petunia on time. They kick off a Sunday lineup with rootsier flavors like Kat Wright, Miko Marks, Trampled By Turtles and headliners Lord Huron.

Sweet Petunia

The folk duo Sweet Petunia found themselves opening the second and final day of this year’s edition of In Between Days. (Watch for three days of the fest in 2024?)

It’s a big platform, but the Arbella Stage offered a good opportunity to size down performances to more intimate affairs by bringing the crowd right up to the lip of the stage. At least half of the stage – a small photo pit abutted half the proscenium, while the remainder was given over to fans.

It’s a huge upgrade from last year’s layout, which established a vast gulf between the performers and crowd. For security purposes? The insurance premium number crunchers must have taken one look at the sedate mom n pop crowd in 2022 and realized that their excess of caution was excessive.

Sweet Petunia bills itself as “freak folk” at their website. Let us know when you find something freakish about them – pretty straight ahead folk stylings, brandishing acoustic guitar and banjo, spiced with a rock n roll yelp here and there. It comes across beautifully, and it’s right on target for what contemporary folk artists sound and look like today. Extra points for a strong whistling game. Shout out to the sister of one of the musician’s visiting from Virginia on her b-day weekend – thankfully, no “Happy Birthday” song interlude!

Good luck finding an actual practicing folk musician under the age of 40 who doesn’t have tattoos and didn’t grow up on a musical diet of punk, rock n roll, disco, whatever, along with all the folk standards they cut their teeth on. Nothing marginal or freakish about it.

But maybe folk music fans are a particularly sensitive lot who need their expectations carefully managed, or else. Case in point: Bob Dylan at the Newport Folk Fest.

Dwight + Nicole

Hey, Dwight + Nicole are BMA nominees for Blues Artist of the Year. Good on them!

The four-piece introduced the first track “The Next Go-Round” off their new album The Jaguar, the Raven & the Snake. Sounds like a description of an ancient Mayan glyph.

So how blues are these Blues Nominees? Pretty blues!

But also a lot of rootsy soul. The live songs lay out a long runway for the standout solo stylings of the lead guitarist. Some really interesting timeplay at work in those solos, skirting in and around the rhythm is surprising ways. As far as we saw, he played without a pick, relying on those extra long fingernails favored by diehard axe-handlers of a certain stripe.

What was his stripe? Kind of Billy Corgan gone Quaker.

Mint Green

Another local favorite Mint Green finds their way onto the Arbella Stage.

Extra points for a grand entrance, the fronter landed on stage like she was shot out of a cannon and dropped a nice juicy F-bomb on Quincy. Not enough swearing at In Between Days – it’s a real polite crowd, at least by daylight.

The set included some auto-biography about the fronter coming to terms with her religious upbringing. That can be tough! You ever seen Carrie?

The mom n pop crowd was sure to appreciate the cover of Radiohead’s “Creep.”

Allison Ponthier

Allison Ponthier rolled up to the Main Stage three deep: two guitars and a drumkit. There was bass reverberating through the speakers, so maybe a few prerecorded bass lines accompanied the songs. The fronter asked for a shout out from all the people who suffer from social anxiety. Centerstage is a funny place to hang out for someone with social anxiety, but it’s more common than you think. Or maybe you think that already?

Kat Wright

Kat Wright is a goddamn trooper.

The singer’s voice was out of commission due to factors beyond everyone’s control. Hot tea and honey lozenges can only do so much. But she muscled through the first song, and duetted with the guitarist, who picked up the lion’s share of vocal duties for the In Between Days.

Did she sound “kind of like I’m 80 years old and Bob Dylan?” It takes all kinds.

Shout out to the song about a Burlington bartender who passed during the pandemic. Extra points for the politically-charged song about the Bread & Puppet theater. And a big thank you to the guitarist for ably picking up the slack.

Yoke Lore

Extra points awarded to Yoke Lore’s white tube sock merch. What else would you expect from a power pop trio fronted by a banjo?

Miko Marks

If you thought the “country and Americana” artist Miko Marks was going to arrive with a sleepy set for the old-timer crowd, think again. The live set turned up the volume for a wide-ranging set that banked on the powerful voice of Marks, buoyed by a righteous rhythm section and lead guitar stylings that were peeled off the pages of Creem circa 1972.

Cautious Clay

Jazz-meets-rock, or rock-meets-jazz, or neither/nor? Hump Day News covered Cautious Clay at the Newport Jazz Fest. We know the guy is versatile, so don’t paint his four- or five-piece into a corner. Just let us have our rock saxophone in 2023 because the vintage memories of that musclebound musician from The Lost Boys (1987) is not enough.

Extra points for rock flute!

Illiterate Light

Maybe the only legit cowboy hat on stage at In Between Days belonged to the guitarist from Illiterate Light. Which is little surprising, given all the country-adjacent folk and Americana afoot at the festival.

Between the hat and a band name that seems to nod at ignorant country stereotypes, seems like you have a country outfit custom marketed toward northeastern elite stereotypes. You know, the kind of marketing target that likes the comfort food quality of country music but still thinks they’re intellectually, culturally, whateverly above it. Whether or not any fans in the crowd fit that bill, who knows.

Being a legit two-piece, Illiterate Light couldn’t help but echo the approach of some of the more popular rock & pop two-piece outfits in recent years. The Black Keys, The White Stripes, Science Penguin. Keep your licks loud, paint in broad strokes, and let the drummer bang free.

Trampled By Turtles

At this point in the Sunday schedule the big hitters started to perk up for their time on stage.

Not that an indie folk band from the Midwest would storm around the festival grounds thinking of themselves as “big hitters.” But 20 years into Trampled By Turtles’ existence, with plenty of success along the way, the rest of us reserve the right to hold the jammy, folky, bluegrass band in a certain esteem.

It’s bringing bands like this to the venerable confines of Veterans Memorial Stadium that makes In Between Days a thing. As opposed to just another day of nice local music.

Shout out to that mandolin gold. The set also included at least the second Radiohead cover of the day – this time from The Bends. Dadrock supreme.

Phantogram

The Arbella Stage, second to last set of the night, might have been the sneaky best slot of the festival.

Sure, it’s theoretically the “junior” stage without all the bells & whistles of the Main Stage. But it’s got most of the bells & whistles, and Phantogram’s set (as it did with The Beth’s set on Saturday) hit right as dusk was about to set in. The crowd was at full froth, having tuned itself up properly in the preceding hours with booze and smokes. (Forget the few who actually showed up at doors – they were already having naps on the grassy lawn along the margins).

The energy was set to peak right around the second to last set because everyone always overestimates their capacity for ecstatic being, aims for reaching nirvana at the headliner, and overshoots the mark by at least one band. Hence, a righteous crowd for Phantogram, and a bit of a sloppy flavor among the groundlings for the headliner.

Phantogram hoovered up all that energy and traded it right back into the crowd with their poppy, electro-charged rock n roll. Bigger numbers in front of the stage on Sunday than Saturday, which seems counterintuitive.

Hey, it’s summer. Work schedules are a flat circle.

Lord Huron

With the cicadas chirping in the dark of night Lord Huron took the stage, backlit as silhouettes. Super moody.

The massive dropcloth that had been draped over a chunk of the Main Stage was pulled aside to reveal a multi-tiered complex of soulful, rootsy, indie rock mayhem.

Kind of like those fancy shopping malls back in the day – impressive and low-key appalling.

You know, huge glass atrium illuminating all those cascading tiers of waxy green planters, maybe a water sculpture, and a busy glass elevator humming up and down all day long.

Lord Huron needs the exalted architecture, though, to fit everyone on stage. The band rolled pretty deep. Plus, it makes for an effect.

Local giggers The Gypsy Moths and Paper Tigers kicked off a daylong bill that featured legends Sunny Day Real Estate, Vacationland heroes Weakened Friends, The Beths buzz, headliner Modest Mouse and more.

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