Written by Jon Williams
I recently
had the great pleasure to attend a Gentlemen of the Road Tour stopover event.
British folk rock band Mumford & Sons put together these stopovers to bring
an event to smaller towns that rarely see big-name musical acts come through.
In this case, it was a two-day music and culture festival that took over the
entire downtown area, with more than 30,000 people cramming into the high
school football stadium to check out a wide variety of bands.
The music
kicked off Friday evening with Half Moon Run, a Canadian rock band whose debut
album,
Dark
Eyes, came out earlier in 2013. They brought a folky sound of their
own, and their hit “Call Me in the Afternoon.” They were followed by
deep-voiced singer-songwriter Willy Mason,whose most recent album is 2012’s
Carry
On. Then came Phosphorescent, aka Matthew Houck, whose atmospheric vibe
began garnering acclaim with his 2007 release
Pride,
carrying it through
Muchacho,
which came out in March of this year.
Friday
night’s headliner hit the stage around 9:30. Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic
Zeros managed an intimate performance despite the size of the venue, with
singer Alex Ebert jumping down into the crowd to share the experience with fans
and hear their stories. The twelve-member collective were joined by Marcus
Mumford for “All Wash Out,” from their second album
Here,
and they finished up with the emotional “Home,” from their debut,
Up
from Below. Their
self-titled
latest album was just released in July.
Saturday was
a full day of music, with the stadium opening to the public at noon and the
first band, the up-and-coming Bear’s Den, taking the stage at 1:45. The second
band, Those Darlins, brought a Nashville-tinged rock sound with them, playing
songs from their two albums,
Screws
Get Loose and
Blur
the Line. One act that I particularly enjoyed was Justin Townes Earle
(son of outlaw country singer
Steve
Earle, and named for singer-songwriter
Townes
Van Zandt), who played a mellow brand of bluesy country-rock. His most
recent album,
Nothing’s
Gonna Change the Way You Feel About Me Now, was released in March of
2012; he mentioned during his set that he’s working on a new one.
Afterwards,
the Vaccines performed the most straightforward rock music heard during the
weekend, which can be found on their albums
What
Did You Expect from the Vaccines?
and
Come
of Age, and whose song “Wreckin’ Bar (Ra Ra Ra)” is included on the
soundtrack
for the hit HBO series
Girls.
They were followed by Americana favorites Old Crow Medicine Show, who performed
their hit “Wagon Wheel” (from their full-length debut
O.C.M.S.)
to the extreme delight of the crowd, which sang along at the top of their
lungs.
And then it
was time for the headliners. Mumford & Sons themselves took to the stage
around 8:30 and played for nearly two hours. They played fourteen songs from
the albums
Sigh
No More and
Babel
(the 2013 Grammy Winner for Album of the Year) in their main set, with the rain
coming down during “Thistle and Weeds” being a nice touch. After leaving the
stage briefly, they then came back out for a five-song encore which included
covers of Bruce Springsteen’s
“I’m
on Fire” and the Beatles’
“Come
Together.”
All in all,
it was two incredible days filled with phenomenal music—some from bands I knew,
and some from bands I’m eager to hear more from. If your patrons like Mumford
& Sons (and trust me, they do), be sure to treat them to CDs from this wide
range of artists invited to perform with them at these rare, amazing stopover
events.