On 20 August, 2022 the Veterans Memorial Stadium in Quincy, Massachusetts played host to the inaugural edition of In Between Days. The music festival featured a solid roster of midlevel indie acts that might struggle to find a suitable venue to showcase their talents on the South Shore, despite oodles of music fans young and old eager to hit the summer festival scene without schlepping to Boston. 

Alex Magleby, CEO of local rugby team Free Jacks and Heritage Sports Ventures, ventured to connect the dots and bring the music directly to the people. The fan experience felt like a rugby game in certain respects. But reflect that some of the biggest name music festivals feel like anything but a music festival. Is it a media conference? Is it a new product expo? Is it a film fest? Is it a marketing pyramid scheme? A music festival that feels like a sporting event ain’t half bad.

The story of In Between Days has just begun. Fest organizers can consider it a success as a family-friendly musical happening, though it might take another year to build the brand and draw the numbers for a return on investment. Hump Day News was there for live coverage, including our insufferable tweets.

The venerable Veterans Memorial Stadium held many surprises. The New Deal era-construction, part of the Works Progress Administration, bears all the hallmarks of early 20th century charm.

The brick and wrought iron enclosure wrapped around the festival grounds, centered on the rugby field with the stage set up in the “try” zone.

the try zone

The objective of rugby is the same as in American Football: to advance the ball into the opposition's end zone, called the try zone. While a player scores a touchdown in American Football when he reaches the end zone, in rugby the player has to touch the ball down in the try zone to be awarded a try.

The field itself looked like your standard crumb-rubber infilled synthetic athletic turf, hashmarks and all. These are fields of fake grass filled in with small black rubber pellets to help absorb impact. The pellets stick to your skin when you grab a seat, but if you get tackled by security, the shock absorption will ease the trauma of your extraction. Some other downsides: the turf runs hot in the summer sun, so the forward thinking fans brought a blanket to shield themselves.

Around the field was a covered VIP section, exposed bleachers for the proles, plus a lightly forested glen of food, drink, and sundry entertainment to distract fans between sets.

Grabbing a cold beverage and just chilling with friends beneath the shady trees was a highlight for many fans.

Extra points to In Between Days for gifting early arrivals with free water bottles and providing ample ice water throughout the day at well-marked stations.

There seemed to be a competition between the musical acts as to who could express the most empathy with fan heat exhaustion. Hot, indeed, but the obstacles to good hydration were zero.

Catbite kicked off the day, riling up the crowd at a tick before noon.

The Philly-based band is a little more punk rock than cookie cutter ska. No brass section, but a shiny black & white Rickenbacker, Hammond organ, and more gave the five-piece all the firepower they needed to lay the upstroke down. Shout out to the fan in pink for his total balls-to-the-wall skank attack before most of us had shaken off Friday night’s revels.

Catbite played more than a few hits off their recent LP Nice One, including the rocksteady favorite “Bad Influence” and “Creepin,” before closing with “Excuse Me Miss.” If they played any songs off their even more recent EP WAVEBREAKER #2, let us know in the comments.

The food and drink on tap is never the highlight at music festivals. Rightfully so – especially at a one-day affair where you can eat before, after, and just wing it throughout. The ideal, though, is always to have some options that will keep your charge up and get a little buzz on without breaking the bank.

Heritage Sports Ventures didn’t reinvent the wheel and most food options were catered by the small food kiosk that served all the bleacher binge classics.

Does anyone want to pay $8 for the pictured burger? And add a $9 beer, plus $1 tip, to boot? No, of course not, but the prices are “competitive with comparable food options at comparable events,” as a bright-eyed capitalist might say as he impales you on the burning spear of market forces. Good beer selection though.

Blac Rabbit lowered the boil to a low psych simmer.

The 5-piece is probably sick to death of answering questions about busking on subway platforms and going viral with a Beatles cover. It must be a strange and unique level of hell to field constant questions from music press about being on the Ellen Show.

The best remedy is to let the music do the talking. Blac Rabbit kept the banter to a minimum and churned out a set of stony, Britpop-influenced themes. The crowd was treated to a first: the first live performance of their new song “Always Greener.”

The home of In Between Days is Quincy, Massachusetts, a lynchpin community of the South Shore region. It lived a few lives before becoming its own town in 1888. It’s the home of two US Presidents, John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams (though it’s named after the guy that John Quincy Adams was named after, not after John Quincy Adams). Home to Quincy College. Hub of the MBTA. Home to the Thomas Crane Public Library, choice example of premier architect H.H. Richardson. There are enough vestiges of inherited prosperity and historical prestige to hang more than a few hats on.

Despite all of this there’s been decades of talk about the need for economic revitalization and a downtown facelift. Quincy’s economy in the 19th and early 20th century was powered by manufacturing and heavy industry. And in the second half of the 20th century it saw its star on the decline like many centers of American industry and manufacturing that watched corporations relocate operations to more “business friendly” foreign countries.

The local economy suffered. Things started looking a bit shabby. It’s not clear that the town has turned the corner yet, but there are signs of life. The average Quincy single income in 2020 (42,481 USD) beats the national average (31,133 USD in 2019) and is competitive with the state average (45,555 USD), though it doesn’t hold a candle to wealthy South Shore towns like Hingham (89,073 USD).

The revitalization plan keeps chugging along. New major employers are cropping up in the professional and service sectors. The economic engine of Boston drives all these ancillary gains as businesses, individuals, and families seek to profit on The Hub without having to live and work within its snug confines.

If you revisited downtown Quincy today, after a layoff of a few decades, you would notice a few differences. A few more restaurants, a few less empty storefronts, and a nice pedestrian walkway with fountain, sculpture, and shrubbery, where a god awful traffic triangle around the United First Parish Church used to be. Nice update, but not a game changer.

The Gish Brigade, en marche!

When Sidney Gish took the stage a noticeable swell of fans thickened the soup along the barricade upfront. The Gish Brigade skews young, female, and social media savvy.

The Northeastern grad and NYC local enjoyed good reviews with her breakout LP No Dogs Allowed in 2018, a bedroom pop gem. A question still in search of an answer is whether she can translate the precocious songwriting chops of the recorded music into an equally satisfying live performance.

All the charm of the No Dogs Allowed was on full display at Veterans Memorial Field, though the live sound needs some finetuning. She performed solo and she used a looper guitar pedal to bulk up the sound and build out its complexity. You can do amazing stuff with a looper pedal when it works right. When it doesn’t work right, it hits like a music act at a Midway Cafe open mic. Somebody get her a backing band!

8 hours is a lot of outdoor music in August. If you need a break from the rugby pitch, you can try the shaded glen around the field, or the VIP section if you have the credentials.

More than likely you’ll feel the need for a real deal air-conditioning opportunity. May we suggest Fowler House Cafe down the road? Because it’s the only restaurant within walking distance of the festival.

Sure, Frank S. from Westlake, Ohio found the spaghetti sauce “too spicy to tolerate,” but the beer and the AC are cold. You’ll never find a Fowl-er House than the Fowler House Cafe! Though you might find a few Buck Fiden t-shirts.

Kevin Devine wails live.

That’s the headline for those of you that didn’t catch him at In Between Days. If you only heard some of his recorded work, including the recent LP Nothing’s Real, So Nothing’s Wrong, you might have taken him for a natural born coffeehaus folk strummer. Someone who builds up larger sounds on records but doesn’t really know, or want to know, how to ratchet up the noise live.

That’s all wrong. His backing band, including a bassist from Manchester Orchestra, hit blastoff after the charming, but relatively subdued Gish set. Feedback, guitar growl, and sticky riffs translated Devine’s songwriting craft into festival-ready barn burning anthems.

The Bill Belichick/Scientology banter mostly went over everyone's heads, but extra points for knowing the local scene enough to grasp the socio-economic difference between Quincy and Hingham.

Another reminder of that socio-economic difference is the National Guard Recruiting office on Hancock Street. The large stone building figures prominently on your right if you are walking from the Quincy Center T toward Veterans Memorial Field, not so far from the MBTA bus depot. 

Since 1969 the US military has relied on an all-volunteer fighting force. The existence of the National Guard speaks to how tenuous the notion of “volunteer” can be. If you really want to join the military, you join the military. If you don’t want to join the military, but want a little more change in your pocket, you join the National Guard. If you’re broke and can’t find work, then you join the military.

Proud military families who have served their country for generations will shudder in disgust at this paragraph, but it’s a lot easier to find military recruits motivated by financial desperation than any other reason.

Windsor’s The Blue Stones, pride of the Maple Leaf!

The band took the stage around 3:15, smack dab in the meaty middle of the afternoon. Alt-rock meets blues-rock with determined pop influences.

Are they getting a piece of that sweet Canada Music Fund?

If they are, local Windsor muckraker Linden Crainer will dig it up!

Tennis lived up to Hump Day News’ Can’t Miss Acts billing.

In person Tennis dials down the pastiche in exchange for nuts-and-bolts solid musicianship to produce a sound that takes advantage of the festival-grade PA. 

Some bands make music that suits more intimate venues better and you can’t simply turn up the volume on that type of musician to make them fit a larger space. It takes thoughtful craftsmanship to write songs that want to be heard on large outdoor sound systems.

Most of all it's a question of what to do with that deep bass thump capability that you can do outdoors in the open with the right rig, but would be too overpowered for indoor sets. 

Tennis started a string of acts at In Between Days that knew exactly what to do with the thump. They used it to turn their sultry, retropop crooners into danceable grooves that got the crowd moving. Extra points for a strong tambourine game and for sounding great after a bit of a layoff from touring, not having performed live much since a big tour in the fall of 2021, if BandsInTown is to be believed.

There were three permission levels for photography at In Between Days.

1. no photopass: you can shoot whatever you like with your smartphone, or average joe camera, but don’t bring a big honking pro-level camera

2. photopass: you can bring a big honking pro-level camera, but you have to remain kettled in the photo pit and you have to leave after 3 songs

3. whatever clearance this lady (pictured) had: you can do whatever, wherever

Level (3) permission grants you sweet release from the caged enclosure of the photo pit, which was a fenced den of iniquity about 10x15’ at stage left. Weirdo bloggers and field reporters from local high school papers were crawling over each other like the undead in World War Z to get their shot. 

Jokes aside, it’s shameful to think about the hundreds of hours of experience and thousands of dollars of equipment sloshing around in that human flesh pile. Mostly to produce free promotional material for the festival.

Show promoters and festival organizers have been exploiting free photog labor for so long that hardly anyone brings it up. Young photogs are just excited to be there and aren’t invited to think much about the economics of the situation. They are a free pool of labor that’s used to bargain down the rates of pro photogs. It’s definitely considered “unprofessional” to point out the dynamic.

Go figure the standards for professionalism that are expected from those underpaid or not paid at all for their work. But if you’re looking for actors in the music industry that are undercompensated for their labor, they’re a dime a dozen. Want change? Baby steps. There’s an interesting new bill proposed to help make music streaming more equitable for artists. Check it out.

Hippo Campus has a trumpet!

Yes, a trumpet! It had a bright, shiny tone that cut a beautiful line through the feel-good pop funk. The Twin Cities band has had a busy year, with regular gigs since February, and there’s more on the horizon in the fall. For all that gigging the band sounded super tight, their sound boiled down to its perfect essentials.

Hippo Campus is another band that knows what to do with the deep bass thump, which, paired with auto-tune vocals, still mixes an effective cocktail for moving hips at summer festivals in 2022.

The stage banter was fine tuned as well, combining positive vibes with a youthful insouciance that says, “Hey World, can I bum a Parliament?” 

Also: Hippo Campus made repeated references to playing In Between Days next year, which is definitely not something that’s been reported by the festival itself. If we’re wrong, let us know in the comments. One wonders how much of next year’s bill is already booked?

Shout out to the fog machine that was huffing and puffing backstage throughout. In the cloudless daylight of the afternoon, the faint wisps of smoke dissolved into nothing almost immediately. You might not have noticed the effect at all and, if you did, you probably thought it was the crumb-rubber infilled synthetic athletic turf turning into an expensive tire fire beneath the summer sun.

Wait until night falls! That’s when the fog can start to catch the stage lights and make some magic.

Atlanta’s Manchester Orchestra landed around sunset.

The production timed the performance to catch the dying light. The band can produce a muscular rock sound that puts a suitable exclamation point on 8 hours of music. And when day turned to night, the crowd said goodnight to the inaugural edition of In Between Days.

Nice thing about these types of festivals for musicians: you can close the entire festival and still hit the sack before midnight, if you like. Beats a club gig where you might not even hit the stage until midnight.

Did Manchester Orchestra choose to overnight in Quincy or did they skedaddle to hepper digs? That would be a true test of the town’s progress on revitalization…