Report: Hopscotch Festival in Raleigh

"3 days. 10 venues. 120 bands": let's do this. September 9, 10, 11 brought one of the biggest and most vibrant music festivals the Tarheel State has ever known, and we were there...

By John Schacht

In 2003, Charlotte, North Carolina's annual Center CityFest died a much-deserved death, serving up one last hairball that year with a bill that virtually banned local talent from the stages. As they'd done for years, organizers relied on the kegger-and-‘shrooms nostalgia of frat boys (Hootie, Widespread Panic), baby boomer's expendable income (Steve Winwood), and stale 90s' AOR leftovers (Collective Soul) to fill their coffers. Trudging through the dirt and blacktop parking lots that year in the shadow of Ericsson Stadium where the stages were hastily thrown up, dejection and ennui clung in the air like poison gas - or maybe that was just .38 Special.

Good riddance, then, though it seemed the Carolinas would have to make do with smaller local festivals, single genre-oriented regional events like Merlefest, and an occasional shindig like Merge Record's 20^th anniversary.

But in March I got an email from Raleigh's Independent Weekly Music Editor Grayson Currin. He and a couple of other staff members on the advertising side were putting together a three-day festival in September. Eventually an impressive list of artists rolled out: "3 days. 10 venues. 120 bands." read the event posters.

When it finally arrived, the weekend delivered on nearly every level. The gigs featured just about every imaginable genre - rock, hip-hop, country rock, metal, dance, punk, noise, free jazz, drone, folk and more - in every conceivable venue, from rail-thin Slim's with its curb-high riser to Raleigh's impressive open public space, City Plaza. And though the big draws included a reformed Public Enemy (plus marching band!), Canada's electric Broken Social Scene, and Animal Collective's sound-manipulator Panda Bear, the local and regional acts who comprised most of the line-up provided the weekend's finest moments.

Up-and-coming Triangle folk experimentalists Megafaun (pictured at top, above) transported themselves from venue to venue like Spock, Kirk and Bones (Brad Cook played bass with three other bands Friday - that we know of). The trio played packed day parties, hushed evening improv sets, and after-hours jam sessions. They also hosted some of the nation's finest experimental drone musicians in Keith Fullerton Whitman and Greg Davis. At the far other end of the spectrum, Durhuam rockers Red Collar and MapleStave left their day party stage splattered with busted guitar parts and their own blood; Charlotte's Temperance League nearly did the same during theirs the day before. The sneaky heat generated by The Kingsbury Manx's melodic crescendos worked as a perfect buffer between Chapel Hill neighbor Bellafea's molten rhythms and the lustrous pop of Carrboro's Schooner - all three got the packed Tir na nOg venue primed for the epic psychedelic folk blend of Philly's The War on Drugs. And so and so on - "3 days. 10 venues. 120 bands." Part of the fun of festivals (at least well-run ones) is the dizzying array of music you can experience in compacted time. Catching a spine-tingling free jazz set from Chicago's Jeb Bishop Trio, hopping down the block for Floating Action's strangely compelling Asheville-in-Motown-and-Trenchtown hybrid, then heading down the street for mind-bending instrumental rock from Tortoise -- it's like avatar-strolling through your iPod's "shuffle" button.

But Hopscotch succeeded because it treated the locals and regionals with the same respect afforded The Big Guns. To feel the love in the room, as they say, you only had to hear, from stage after stage, bands expressing genuine thanks to Currin and the Indy Weekly for their commitment to local music coverage, and out-of-town acts - from the festival-savvy to those more at home playing house shows - acknowledging the fun they#were having seeing the locals play.

No doubt there were hitches and glitches behind the scenes, and sometimes on stage - musicians are not always the fussiest people when it comes to schedules. But whatever went sideways was quickly forgotten and forgiven, or simply went unnoticed via the tap, bottle or aluminum can. And of course if a band didn't float your boat (looking at you, Bear In Heaven), the one playing next door most likely would.

On Friday between sets at Tir na nOg, a couple of us Shuffle Magazine staffers chatted with a member of Charlotte's Black Congo NC (they'd played Thursday night), who posited that what made the Carolinas' music scene special was that it was a "state" scene and not reliant on any one city. That dovetailed with why our humble and amusingly dysfunctional publication (which covers the Carolinas' music scene) made sense - there'd be little chance we'd ever run out of shit to write about.

In the end, that extraordinary well of regional talent and diversity was what the inaugural Hopscotch Festival really celebrated, and what corporate rock schlock like Center CityFest never understands: A vibrant music scene only exists if you water the roots.

[Megafaun photo by Derek Anderson]

John Schacht is a regular contributor to BLURT as well as editor of the exceedingly fine Carolinas-based music magazine Shuffle. You can view their latest issue on the web right here.