Inaugural Back Cove Festival Brings Jack White, The Roots, Margo Price, Lord Huron & More To Maine

Portland, Maine’s stature on the music touring calendar waxes and wanes throughout different eras, but it’s been on a current upswing for a decade now. Thanks to the revitalization of Portland’s vibrant and fiercely independent music venues (so robust that locals are protesting Live Nation’s threat to come in and upturn its ecosystem), and newish venues such as the outdoors Thompson’s Point, more and more artists are seeing the market as an actual stronghold and not just an endpoint from which to turn around and head back through Boston.

It was only a matter of time before the festival circuit reached its way to Portland, and this year GoodWorks Entertainment and Shore Sound Entertainment, with local assistance from State Theatre Presents, kicked it off on Saturday and Sunday, August 2 and 3, with the first annual Back Cove Music & Arts Festival — a two-day festival in Payson Park, a large park in a residential area on the water of Portland’s Back Cove.

With the city’s skyline seen just across the water and cooperative weather featuring warm days and cool, breezy evenings, the stage was set. The lineup was tilted in favor of the kind of music that generally attracts Portlanders, such as indie-folk, indie-rock, retro soul, and alt-country, with a mix of local and national acts.

The first day began with the children of the Maine Academy for Modern Music (who also opened the second day) and the Pihcintu Multinational Chorus, with the country act the Crowe Boys and local favorite indie-rock band Weakened Friends following.

Sarah Kinsley then offered some impressively soulful singing in her set, and Cimafunk (the stage name of Cuban performer Erik Alejandro Iglesias Rodriguez) provided an eclectic, high-energy highlight to the day. Griffin William Sherry, a local musician formerly of the band Ghost Of Paul Revere, took the stage for his first gig back from a national tour and gave his home crowd a set of his raw, country-inflected songs.

In the slot that was supposed to go to André 3000 before he became a late scratch, last-minute replacement The Roots brought the mid-day a huge injection of energy with a tightly rehearsed festival set that didn’t waste a second, opening with favorites like “Respond/React” and “Proceed,” moving on to hits such as “You Got Me” and “The Seed (2.0)” and tossing in homages to everyone from The JB’s to Bob Marley.

Afterward, more bands with horn sections dominated the festival, with St. Paul and The Broken Bones offering uptempo dance numbers and Thee Sacred Souls delivering a soulful set with bubbling basslines from Sal Samano and lilting falsetto vocals by Josh Lane.

Lord Huron headlined the first night. The Los Angeles band is a favorite on streaming services, and while their studio efforts could be categorized as low-key indie-Americana, in concert they’re louder and more propulsive, almost sounding like The National.

They boasted an imaginative set design and stage production, with a fake mountain and night sky, actors/dancers, and a pay phone that singer Ben Schneider often sang into. The energy was a step down from the bands that preceded them, but their overall performance was evocative and engaging.

The second day leaned more into indie-rock and country music. It began with North Carolina artist Eliza McLamb and the popular local indie-pop band the Oshima Brothers. The Kansas indie-rock band The Greeting Committee followed, and then Madi Diaz offered a set of her acoustic songs.

Chance Peña, former contestant on The Voice, was the first country performer of the day, and then Ripe provided an energetic, horn-fueled set similar to those of Saturday’s lineup, even sneaking in crowd-favorite covers of songs by The Kinks, Chappell Roan and U2.

Charismatic country star Margo Price took the stage with a crack band, offering a sterling collection of her originals (“Four Years of Chances,” “Tennessee Song”) and covers (Waylon Jennings’ “Kissing You Goodbye,” Andrew Combs’ “Too Stoned to Cry”).

The country music continued with the Turnpike Troubadours, in their first Maine appearance. The Oklahoma band alternated between barnburning numbers like “Good Lord Lorrie” (played faster than on record), swinging songs like “A Tornado Warning” and ballads such as “Heaven Passing Through.”

Indie-rock star Lucy Dacus then took the stage, and it was quickly clear that a significant number of people attended just to see her, with the crowd shouting the lyrics of opening song “Calliope Prelude” back to her. The devotion to Lucy Dacus is so pronounced that earlier this month, the singer announced on social media that she’d officially marry couples during her set, and three couples took her up on the offer.

During “Best Guest,” they came on stage and slow-danced during the song, and were ultimately pronounced married after a brief ceremony during the song. It was a touching highlight to a moving set.

Jack White closed the second night with a typically raucous 90-minute set. Each song seemed to emerge from feedback of the song that preceded it, providing a fluid overview of his whole career, including The White Stripes (“Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground”), The Raconteurs (“Steady, as She Goes”), The Dead Weather (“I Cut Like a Buffalo”), and lots of material from his latest solo album (of which “Underground” was a highlight).

With the obligatory closing number of “Seven Nation Army,” he sent the estimated crowd of about 12,000 home into the Portland night. Here’s hoping they’ll be back next year.