The second and final day of the Gasparilla Music Festival in Tampa, Florida had a good mix of local and global acts all joining together to promote youth music education and inspire a future generation of musicians. After a freakishly cold day on Saturday, Sunday’s event had perfect Florida weather, with constant cloud cover blocking the blazing sun. While the first day set a Gasparilla attendance record, the second day was not as well attended, likely because the lineup had fewer household names.
Will Quinlan & the Holy Slow Train kicked off the festivities at the Water Street Tampa Stage with a set of moderately paced twangy rock. “First off, I’d like to apologize,” said Quinlan. “The GMF app tagged us as blues rock but I don’t think we’ll meet that expectation.” Instead, the band delivered twangy rock full of shimmering guitars, chorus effects, and arpeggiated chords. During a cover of “Hurt,” Quinlan and company reimagined the Nine Inch Nails song as brooding alt-country. After a set of solid but low-energy mid-tempo songs, the Tampa band closed its set with its best song, a heavy rocker with retro classic rock riffing.
New York band Argonaut & Wasp delivered the most energetic performance of the festival. The dance-rock band danced, jumped, and ran along the Ashley HomeStore Stage while laying down infectious hip-shaking grooves. Pulsing synthesizers and disco beats backed sing-along vocals from co-vocalists Theo Kline and Trey Schibli. The disco-funk song “Psychedelic Freak” was the heaviest and best song of the set, combining the thumping pop bass with some heavy rock guitars.
Local band New Fang bludgeoned the Replay Guitar Exchange Stage with its brand of head-banging alt-rock. The young band packed a big sound onto the festival’s smallest stage. Guitarists Tyler Coy and Zach Short shared vocal duties while tearing through power chord-heavy riffs and bringing an energy near the level of Argonaut & Wasp. The frenetic rock of “Honeysuckle” was a highlight, as was the jerky rhythms and punk rock intensity of “Wicked.” After powering through the blistering set, the quartet closed the set with its softest and most melodic song, the country-tinged ballad “Good Times.”
Next, the Ashley HomeStore Stage was treated to the folksy mountain music of The Wandering Hearts. The band’s strong suit was in beautiful three-part vocal harmonies from Chess Whiffin, Tara Wilcox, and Tim Prottey-Jones. Each of the three singers took turns leading songs, with the other two providing harmonies. “Wish I Could” began with a beautiful a capella section before the instruments kicked in. “Wild Silence” slowly build momentum from a ballad into a country stomp. The band saved the best for last, closing the set with the gritty Prottey-Jones-led stomper “Devil.”
Anderson East provided the best performance of day two, though the set didn’t start well. Due to technical difficulties with the P.A. system, the band started nearly 20 minutes late and had to shave a few songs off the set. The Athens, Alabama R&B singer – whose real name is Michael Anderson – wowed the crowd on the Water Street Tampa Stage with his charisma, smooth vibrato, and husky voice. After opening with the slow crooner “Devil In Me,” Anderson put down his guitar and took over the stage, confidently strutting the stage, swinging the microphone by the cable, and otherwise pulling out all of the showman tricks. After the infectious beats and horns of “If You Keep Leaving Me,” Anderson and company played two consecutive outstanding covers, Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer” and a funky rendition of Rod Stewart’s “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?” The Gospel-inflected “Satisfy Me” had a bit more soul than the album version, Anderson’s passion shining through. With “Girlfriend,” Anderson got the crowd dancing, his soulful voice smoothly gliding across the popping bassline, accented by horn flourishes. Though their time was cut short, Anderson East and his band made the most of his time with an energetic set of highly danceable R&B.
Gospel blues supergroup The Word kept the dance party going on the Water Street Tampa Stage with its instrumental jam sessions. Drummer Cody Dickinson (North Mississippi Allstars) pounded out catchy rhythms, anchoring the extended jams while adding his own fills. Robert Randolph’s (Robert Randolph & the Family Band) blistering pedal steel guitar mastery stole the show, alternating between rhythm playing and soaring leads. Meanwhile, guitarist Luther Dickinson (North Mississippi Allstars) added guitar hero moments to the performance, with his fretboard shredding and crunching rhythms. It was a 75-minute virtuoso tutorial as much as a concert, with each of the expert musicians getting opportunities to show off. The lengthy jams had room to breathe, with the solos spaced out, the tempos shifting, and the intensity ebbing and flowing. Randolph was subdued in his performance, not providing any of the jumps and kicks for which he had become known, but even without that bombast, the supergroup led an instrumental tour de force.
Alaskan indie rockers Portugal. The Man closed the Gasparilla Music Festival with an uneven set that mostly thrilled. Taking the stage to a video of Beavis and Butthead mocking the band, they then played the intro to Metallica’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls” and a segment of Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall Part 2” before getting to their first full song. The band would continue to tease small parts of other bands’ songs throughout the set, such as adding the main riff from Black Sabbath’s “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath” to the end of “Modern Jesus.”
Though the band’s most recent album, and its biggest hit song, are much more pop than most of the band’s catalog, they played with a rock edge throughout the night. In fact, virtually all of the songs were played heavier than on the recordings. The band was backlit, appearing only as silhouettes for most of the performance. Combined with the lack of banter, the band seemed distant and disconnected from the audience.
For “Keep On,” the band played a loud rock version of a waltz. Zachary Carothers’s fuzzed-out bassline propelled “Atomic Man” along with John Gourley’s neck-sliding power chords. Midway through the set, Portugal. The Man pulled out a show-stopping performance of “All Your Light,” dialing the rumbling rock riff up to eleven and extending it into a dynamic epic. As the song ended with the outro from the Beatles’ “I Want You (She’s So Heavy),” Gourley even described it as “heavy metal.”
To close out the set, the band dove into a more rocking version of the breakthrough hit “Feel It Still” and the finished with what Gourley described as their “best song.” The pride of the band was “Sleep Forever,” a slow-burning ballad that started soft and built slowly to a crescendo, ending with a sing-along of the outro from the Beatles’ “Hey Jude.”
