In a post last night, I noted some of the press that the 3rd Savannah Stopover attracted from BrooklynVegan and other key tastemaking sites.
Today, Chris Coplan has a smart, upbeat, and occasionally-snarky review at Consequence of Sound of the festival and of a dozen individual acts.
A key paragraph:
There’s no denying it’s a young festival with plenty to learn about minute planning details like parking and transit, expanding at an incremental pace as to still maintain its primary goal, not outgrowing the city as a whole and thus becoming a burden, and generally the sort of topics that only can be learned by the awkwardness of experience. Still, it’s on its way to fulfilling a specific role while demonstrating that the festival circuit isn’t all about competing lineups or who can outshine who. So, enjoy our look at the little festival that can, something we hope will one day be as important of a tradition as SXSW itself. Just minus the ceaseless exhaustion and blistered feet.
Parking? Transit?!?! Coplan did hit shows at the Knights of Columbus on Liberty, the of Montreal show in the park, as well as the variety of venues near Congress Street, so some walking was certainly involved, but he apparently needed some different strategies. I.e., a bicycle for the weekend.
It’s certainly flattering to Stopover to hear so many comparisons to the early years of SXSW, but let’s just say right now that Austin is a much larger city than Savannah — a capital city of one of the nation’s biggest states. Still, if you’re visiting a music festival, you can only be at one show at a time, and if those individual shows feature stellar acts, good acoustics, and comfortable rooms . . .
Consequence of Sound used one of my pics of Filligar, though I might not have granted permission if I’d known how much Coplan disliked their set.
Coplan also weighs in on some of the bigger shows, including of Montreal, Chelsea Light Moving, and Mac DeMarco.
And he mentions some of the smaller ones too, including some compliments for Whiskey Dick (aka, Savannah’s own Tony Beasley, who also tends bar at The Jinx):
Beasley did stretch his wings slightly, demonstrating real emotional depth with an anti-marriage song that featured the goosebump-inducing line “Why let that ring be an endless circle/when it’s only one of misery and liesâ€. But like any good country artist who understands the inherent disappointment and disregard of the genre, Beasley seemed at ease with performing for less than five people at the bar he works at, so long as people hear what he’s got to say. And, despite the goofy name, we should all be listening by now.
The whole piece is well worth a read.
Here’s another shot of of Montreal:
