Three-day concert series brings lacking lineup to downtown Columbia
Small but enthusiastic crowds flocked to Finlay Park this weekend for the inaugural Famously Hot Music Festival, three days worth of live music in the capital city.
Local music advocates lauded the festival for bringing acts to a struggling scene often passed over by tour managers in favor of larger southern markets.
"This is one of those opportunities where people who complain that there (are) not enough cool shows in Columbia can step up and say, 'Now we are going to support live, local music,'" said Kelly Nash of WCOS-FM. "A lot of shows end up going to Charlotte or Greenville and Columbia often gets overlooked."
Dave Stewart, owner of SS Productions, founded the event with the intent of providing Columbia residents with an entire weekend of fun, enjoyable music the likes of which the city hasn't seen since the Three Rivers Music Festival in 2006.
"We haven't had a festival in Columbia for quite a while, so I thought I would take the bull by the horns and give it a try myself," Stewart said.
Indeed, while several Columbia residents came out to hear the tunes, the festival had several flaws.
For $35 per day, local music fans could take in a variety of genres from electronic to '90s rock to country, but the quality of talent wasn't worth the ticket price. Several of the acts on the bill had played Columbia before, and only a handful of the musicians have new songs on the radio.
Each band was given an hourlong set, which was OK for some groups but dragged on when others took the stage, driving away fans who may have otherwise stayed all day. Sitting through a 60 minute set just to hear one or two hits at the end quickly became annoying, especially in the later days of the festival. While all the bands put their hearts into their performances, the festival lacked memorable moments.
One of the few occurred Friday, a seven-hour set full of electronic dance music, when some particularly peppy members of the 200-person audience challenged one another to dance-offs. The evening, sponsored by WUSC-FM, USC's student radio station, featured DJs Minnesota, Archnemesis, Eliot Lipp, Savoy and EOTO, who shared their music with the Midlands audience.
On Saturday, cheers could be heard from two blocks away when Eve 6 took the stage at 2:45 p.m. The Southern California power pop group kicked off a day of rock 'n' roll that was mostly a blast from the past.
"We traveled a great, great distance at our expense to be here [with] you," said Max Collins, the band's lead singer.
The band's high-energy set got the crowd on their feet and Collins repeatedly conducted the audience, instructing them to jump and clap in time with the kick drum. In addition to playing hits like "Here's to the Night" and debut single "Inside Out" (to which festivalgoers pumped their fists and shouted out the angsty lyrics, "rendezvous, then I'm through with you"), the band gave Columbia a sneak preview of tunes off 2012's "Speak in Code."
But the day went downhill from there.
Seven Mary Three and Filter played next, bringing the crowd energy down as fans retreated from standing near the stage to squeezing their blankets and towels into the little bit of shade that was further back on the lawn. A small collective crowd was still feeling it, though, singing along to hits like "Cumbersome" and "Take a Picture."
The festival certainly did live up to its name, though.
In true Columbia fashion, temperatures were in the high 80s. Women donned all manner of hot-weather garb, from bikini tops to studded corset shirts to spandex tube tops. Their male counterparts, of every age, peeled their shirts off as the bands jammed in front of them; the eclectic crowd displayed a myriad of chest and neck tattoos and body piercings.
The musicians were feeling the heat, too.
"This is the Famously Hot Music Festival," said Jason Ross, Seven Mary Three's lead vocalist, with a chuckle. "My guitar is melting up here."
Tallboy cans of Twisted Tea for $4 a pop were the most popular drink choice of the day as fans raised their bright yellow koozies in the air as they danced to the music. Pizza and nachos were available for sale as well as shaved ice in flavors like cherry lime and cantaloupe from Main Street's Paradise Ice.
Buckcherry got the crowd pumped back up again, though, inspiring fans to flock to the stage and even getting some concertgoers crowdsurfing. Collective Soul closed out the evening with a variety of tunes spanning the band's nearly 20-year career.
Saturday's crowd was made up of mostly middle-aged couples. A handful of college-aged fans in colorful sundresses and cut-off shorts took in a band or two near the beginning of the day, but left the park before the end of the show. Another crowd drifted in halfway through the day, clearly only there to see Collective Soul close out the evening. Perhaps the ticket price discouraged younger fans from attending. But the lack of bands who are currently on the charts probably factored in more.
The crowd on Sunday was both equally small and lively as country artists like Josh Thompson and Corey Smith took the stage.
Thompson especially energized the crowd with his well-known songs like "Living Like Hank," Always Been Me" and "Same Ol' Plain Ol' Me." He even surprised some of the hardcore Southerners in the crowd with his own rendition of Old Crow Medicine Show's "Wagon Wheel."
Following Thompson was three-time Grammy nominee Pat Green, a real treat for the older crowd of country music, and Smith followed Green, which excited the younger members of the crowd. Smith played some crowd favorites like "Party," Twenty One" and "Maybe Next Year" as well as verses from well-known songs like "Waiting on the World to Change" by John Mayer and "Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana.
Stewart hopes for the festival to be an annual event and continue to bring big-name acts to downtown Columbia.
We're with him. If it's going to be a long-term success, the Famously Hot Music Festival will need to be more than lukewarm.