This year’s Troika Music Festival just got a lot better and there are 15 reasons why. The lineup now includes 15 more bands, among them Megafaun, the Love Language, Red Collar, Pipe (!) and Butterflies. The schedule for this year’s festival will be released later this week. Ticket sales for Durham’s November 5-7 music festival will also begin later this week. Check back her for further updates and below for the new additions to Troika.
Brad Cook played with Megafaun and Bowerbirds at last night’s show, earning the hard-worker award. And for “The Ticonderoga,” Phil Cook joined Bowerbirds. Bowerbirds, who headlined, closed out their encore (and tour) with all of Megafaun joining them on-stage as they performed a cover of the Rosebuds’ “Hold Hands and Fight,” dedicated the Rosebuds’ Ivan Howard and Kelly Crisp, both in the audience.
Bowerbird’s latest release Upper Air is an enchanting album. But the live experience at their homecoming show with Megafaun last night, which was a triumph. But the surprise, likely stemming from the fact that Phil Moore, Beth Tacular, Mark Paulson and Brad Cook just returned from an extensive tour promoting the album, was how familiar these songs felt. The songs from Hymns for a Dark Horse were as great as ever, but the one’s from Upper Air, released July 7, felt like old favorites. Here’s a sampling of two songs: one older and one newer.
Capping off an international tour alongside Bowerbirds, Megafaun returned home to North Carolina playing to a sold-out crowd at Carrboro’s Arts Center. At Saturday’s show, an especially amazing outstanding Megafaun delivered big time. Here’s a clip of there first two songs, the old favorite “Beloved Binge” and, from their barely-month-old new release Gather, Form & Fly on Home Tapes, “The Process.”
New York-based music blog Ear Farm has just issued their ranking of the 10 bands from the Tar Heel state that “you should hear right now.” Though we’ll have to wait until Wednesday to find out who the folks at Ear Farm–who cite the Love Language, Bowerbirds, Annuals and the Rosebuds as favorites–chose as their top pick, spots 10 through 2 went to:
I’m betting number one goes to someone like I Was Totally Destroying It, but wouldn’t it be awesome to see Des Ark there? You can read about each band here. UPDATE: Links to all bands’ MySpaces accounts have been added, and, on second thought, the Physics of Meaning would be a totally acceptable and awesome band for numero uno. Or the Never–really, there’s just a lot of deserving bands, including some already on the list.
