After spending only one year at Big Cypress in the Florida Everglades, the Langerado Festival heads back to the bright lights of the city on March 6-8 at Bicentennial Park in Miami. This marks the fifth change in venue over the course of the festival’s seven year history, which started in 2003.
Langerado’s promoters aim to release a lineup in November of the 60+ bands who will play at the festival’s four stages. Festival co-promoter Ethan Schwartz spoke to Billboard.com about what we can expect…
“From who we’ve booked so far it’s going to be really fresh,” Schwartz tells Billboard.com. “I would say that 75%-80% of the bands have never played the festival before.”
Bicentennial Park holds 35,000 people and the central location makes it easier for folks who only want to hit one day of the festie to attend. We’d bet that the late nights will once again be held off-site, as there’s probably a tight curfew at the park. Regardless, we’re happy to see Langerado return to its roots as an urban festival. Keep your eyes on HT for more on Langerado ‘09.
SXSW has finally wrapped up in Austin, and sadly Hidden Track didn’t have any correspondents on the scene. Luckily, almost every single blogger and their brother attended the schmoozefest, so there were plenty of reports from Texas. The Daily Swarm did the best job of rounding up the important news each day with their comprehensive You’re Not There features.
Let’s see what else happened this weekend:
Finally, we were sad to hear that Martin Fierro passed away late last week. The fiery saxophone player is best known for his brilliant work with both Legion of Mary and Zero. Our friend Brian Bavosa wrote a beautiful eulogy for The Meester.
Tjinoh recently returned from Big Cypress and filed this report:
Until last weekend, Langerado was among a select group of major national festivals that had yet to enjoy my company. 10KLF, too far. Wakarusa, too…Kansas. But South Florida? In early March when it’s still snowing in Ohio? Just tell a brother where to sign up.
I had resisted Langerado’s supple charms in the past mostly due to the non-traditional festival setup I had been told about – multiple late night sites, odd re-entry policies, etc. The move to Big Cypress – thus centralizing and consolidating the event – was a good one, but not without problems. Any event on the scale of Langerado – and on a property as large as Big Cypress – is going to have growing pains. I think the festival staff did a commendable job, and that Langerado is only going to get better and more organized in the future. But enough about all that…let’s get down to the getting’ down.
Through sheer will and determination I was able to catch at least one full song from 31 different bands over the long weekend. That’s some ample tunage for your festival dollar. I won’t delve into all 31, but will do my best to briefly give credit where it’s due and highlight what I considered to be some of the finer moments I was fortunate to enjoy. Read on for more about Todd’s experience in the Everglades…
One of the cooler venues near my hometown is the historic Count Basie Theater in Red Bank, New Jersey. The Count Basie offers the only chance Bayshore residents have to see nationally touring acts year round, but the theater was starting to fall into a state of disrepair. The situation looked dim for a while.
Local hero Bruce Springsteen has come to the rescue by scheduling a benefit performance at the theater on May 7 with all proceeds going towards renovation. The restoration and renovation is scheduled to begin this summer. What can’t Bruce Springsteen do? Well he can’t give you links, but we can:
And we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention a couple of outstanding interviews over on Glide’s main site. Travis Atria sat down with Stephen Malkmus to discuss his new album, Pavement’s legacy and why he loves The Beatles. Also, be sure to check out Eric Ward’s chat with Chuck Garvey about approaching 20 years of moe., playing the new songs from Sticks & Stones and vinyl.
Now that they’ve finished covering the Biscuits three-night run at the Starland Ballroom, the iClips crew is off to Florida where they will webcast all four days of action from Langerado. Tune in on Thursday to watch the unofficial start of the festival season live from Big Cypress. Only three days to go!
Let’s begin the week with a batch of links:
Finally, no one can ever accuse Michael McDonald of being a bad sport. McDonald recently sat down with Time Out magazine to discuss Yacht Rock, writing with Kenny Loggins and the drug preferences of the Doobie Brothers.
Just one week from today the Langerado Music Festival kicks off at Big Cypress in the Florida Everglades. I’ve attended the last two Langerado festivals, but this year’s lineup takes things to a new level. As someone who doesn’t get to many festivals, I think the best part of going is the enjoyment I get from checking out artists I haven’t seen before. Here’s the second part of my list of ten bands I’m excited to see for the first time at Langerado:
1. The Avett Brothers - North Carolina’s Avett Brothers play deeply spiritual music that seems to appeal to a diverse range of music fans. The songs that Seth and Scott Avett write are gritty tales of life played on basic acoustic instruments. Their most recent release, Emotionalism, shows the wide range of styles in the fellas’ music. Within one song on the album you may hear elements of Calypso followed closely by a bluegrass stomp. I’m very interested to see how they pull of this melange of styles live. Read on for more on the Avetts and four other bands….
As many of you prepare to head down to “Hippie Spring Break,” we thought we would check in again with Ethan Schwartz - one of Langerado’s founders and promoters - about the move from Sunrise to Big Cypress, late-night sets, and two bands that his mom has actually heard of plus so much more…
Some Dude: Sunrise had been home to the festival for the past three years, why did you guys decide to make the move to Big Cypress? Was the switch in sites in hopes of being able to secure it for the long term, like Superfly has done with Manchester?
Ethan Schwartz: We were limited to 15,000 attendees at Markham Park, and last year we reached that. We’d been in discussions with the Seminole Tribe for a few years, and last year they came out, loved what they saw, and invited us to our new home. We’ve got a lot of room to grow at the new site, but at our own pace.
SD: What will the new site offer that you weren’t able to in the past?
ES: It’s actually a lot easier for the attendees this year. Besides offering on-site camping for everyone, the late night shows will take place on site this year, so that will keep people from having to drive 30 minutes to downtown Ft. Lauderdale to see a late night show. Plus, there’s no chance the late night shows will sell out, so no one misses anything. It’s actually cheaper to attend Langerado this year, camp and do the late nights than it has been in the past. Read on for more of Some Dude’s interview with Ethan Schwartz about Langerado…
In just two short weeks from today the Langerado Music Festival kicks off at Big Cypress in the Florida Everglades. I’ve attended the last two Langerado festivals, but this year’s lineup takes things to a new level. As someone who doesn’t get to many festivals, I think the best part of going is the enjoyment I get from checking out artists I haven’t seen before. So for the next two edition of The B List, I’ll look at the five bands I’m excited to see for the first time at Langerado:
1. Ben Folds - Ben Folds arrived on the scene in 1995 with his trio: Ben Folds Five. You couldn’t walk around the campus of my alma-mater, Skidmore College, without hearing Folds’ refreshing sound that combines elements of jazz and arena-rock with typical singer-songwriter fare. The Ben Folds Five continued to release great albums over the next few years including 1999’s The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner, a record which hasn’t left my iPod in over two years. Read on for more about Ben Folds and four other bands you gotta catch at Langerado…
We’ve got less than a month to go until Langerado, and I just can’t stop thinking about leaving the cold of NYC for the comfortable warmth of Florida.
As if I wasn’t excited enough for my trip to Big Cypress, the schedule for the festival has just been released. We’re sure you’ll be absolutely shocked to hear that Umphrey’s McGee, The Disco Biscuits and STS9 were among the bands receiving coveted late night slots. But the most interesting late-night sequence takes place on Saturday night when Pelican, Dan Deacon and Yard Dogs Road Show offer an indie alternative to Bisco.
If you haven’t bought your tickets yet, this just might be your lucky day. Today marks the end of our Langerado contest that you may have seen advertised on the site. Glide and Hidden Track have teamed up with Music Allies to give away a pair of tickets for the festival.
Simply fill out some basic information (which we never share with third parties), and you’ll be entered to win. The contest ends at Midnight EST tonight. We will select the lucky winner at random from all entrants on Monday. Good luck!
Organizers for the Langerado Music Festival have released the daily schedule for the sixth installment of the event, and it follows after the jump. Read on and let us know which of the three main days looks most appealing. If you ask us, and nobody ever does, Saturday looks particularly nasty…even nastier than two girls surrounding a communal cup, and we mean that in a best way possible.
