Review & Photos | Hopscotch Music Festival | Raleigh

Words and images by: Jake Krolick

Hopscotch Music Festival :: 9.4.14 – 9.6.14 :: Raleigh, NC

Check out Jake’s highlights from his weekend in Downtown Raleigh after the gallery.

Summer music festivals are a dime-a-dozen. There’s one happening in every major market across the country. Many of them are alike, featuring similar touring acts on multiple stages. Yes, there are some amazing festivals out there, most of those are long established or placed in exceptional locations. However, many of the pop-up festivals are giant soul-less corporate money makers where your closest interaction with the performers will be via a jumbo screen or the occasional sponsored meet and greet. It feels like the music festival experience has been turned into an American strip mall. Dammit, I want my unique experience back!

Enter Raleigh, North Carolina’s Hopscotch Festival -a regional exploration of a budding music scene. Hopscotch acts like SXSW’s distant cousin from the south. Sure it was a little backwards at times, but a lot more laid back than the scene in Austin. Plus, you won’t be stuck in a two hour line to see a band. For its fifth anniversary, Hopscotch hovered right around the 50,000 attendee mark. Raleigh welcomed us with open arms and a hearty helping of free day parties. They stuck the largest bands in the center of Raleigh on the City Plaza Stage and ended those shows by 10 p.m. You had the rest of the evening to explore the dozen venues around the city. These “venues” come in all shapes and sizes from the dirtiest of clubs like Slims to the sleek Contemporary Art Museum. With short 30-minute sets and all the venues contained within 10 city blocks, you essentially hopped from one show to another. It made live music fans feel like kids on Christmas morning. Our largest challenge was stringing together a list of great sets.

As it has been for the past five years, Hopscotch was all over the map musically, but it has always kept a special place for local talent. This year almost half of the lineup hailed from the Tar Heel State, the largest percentage since the festival started. Hopscotch helped bring much needed exposure to these regional bands. Just imagine if your large neck-of-the-woods festival showcased 50% local bands, what great exposure it would be for your region’s music. Hopscotch is a hidden gem.

Here are my biggest hits, misses and discoveries at the 2014 Hopscotch Festival:

Best Music To Guide You From Your Hotel Into Downtown Raleigh: De La Soul sent us out into a stormy city with the old school, good time bounce of “Me, Myself & I.” Who could let rain damper your first night spirits with that 1989 hit making your tail side bounce?

Greatest North Carolina Band Discovery: Museum Mouth,the garage rockers from Southport,NC were excellent. Karl Kuehn, a drumming singer, pierced the dark venue with his emotional vocal deliveries. Graham High and Kory Urban got creative with guitar and bass duties. Together they shattered the Stage at Slims’s and you could hear every note rather than a wash of muffled fuzz. Plus their songs had variety that lacks in many garage rock bands. http://museummouth.bandcamp.com/album/alex-i-am-nothing

Thursday’s Tiniest Hiccup: Storms brought a deluge of rain and made everyone run from awning to under hang, between their musical hops around Raleigh.

Guiltiest Pleasure at Hopscotch: Diarrhea Planet, Nashville’s favorite guitar army crammed themselves and 100 or so fans into the milk crate known as Slim’s. They teased the first verse and chorus of “I Believe in a Thing Called Love” by UK’s The Darkness before launching us into “Separations.” This beast of a song sent bodies flying around the stage. The interesting moment came in a full stop to the music so that singer guitarist Jordan Smith could tell people to stop fighting before raging on with the music.

Friday’s Hilarious Bummer: Sun Kil Moon’s Mark Kozelek freaked out on his loud fans at Hopscotch by yelling, “All you Fuckin Hillbillies, shut the fuck up.” Then seeing homages to him around town later in the festival.

Best Discovery Of The Entire Festival: Dark Rooms from Dallas, who sounded like Andrew Bird shaking hands with the Talking Heads. This four-piece featured plenty of guitar, violin, drums and keyboards. Daniel Hart, the band’s composer, violinist and singer, created intensely layered music that just grabbed at us with emotion and rhythm. Throughout their set -and especially during “Beyond the Lens” and “Olga Kurylenko” -I found myself actually examining the music in ways I haven’t done with a band in a long time. Double dare: give their first album a listen here.

Favorite Lyricist & Electronic Manipulators: Clipping made us remember when we wore out our tapes mixed with A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul and Black Sheep. Well look around at Das Racist, Shabazz Palaces and Death Grips. Rap music seems to be getting weird and unique again. Watching the trio of rapper Daveed Diggs and producers Jonathan Snipes and William Hutson in action, we saw a clear sign that they were here to help lead that charge. Diggs clearly and precisely delivered unwavering lyrics over one of the most unique sound beds ever. Snipes and Hutson used alarms, sound effects, pedals and a table full of nobs and dials to create some seriously out there sounds that all came together to form something original and listenable. http://clppng.bandcamp.com/album/midc ity

Saturday’s Earliest Highlight: Being woken up by Mastodon sound checking at 10 a.m. outside the hotel.

Coolest Day Party Attended: Saturday’s Cherub Records “Let Feedback Ring” party at Legends night club with the indoor and outdoor stages, game rooms and $3 Dark and Stormy’s.

Saturday’s Largest Scheduling Mishap – Missing Raleigh’s own Tow3rs incredible set of music, complete with one of the wildest stage shows seen ever at Hopscotch (contortionists in silver leotards), because Prince Rama created a soundcheck disaster.

JamBase | Hopscotching Around Raleigh
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