“I feel like tonight, we’re all Henry Rollins,” said MC Joel Parsons from the stage on Friday night of Gonerfest 18.
Rollins, the legendary Black Flag frontman, was scheduled to travel to Memphis to be the MC for the show, but canceled because of Covid’s Delta wave. So Parsons, his replacement, simply claimed to be the punk icon all night. The pandemic hovered over the event, which was 100 percent virtual last year, but moved to Railgarten for a vax-only, hybrid event this year.
Masking compliance was generally very good in the crowd, which swelled steadily as afternoon aged into evening, except when they were drinking Gonerbrau, the Memphis Made craft beer brewed specially for the fest. (“Chuggable!” brags the official program.)
The festival’s move to the open-air Railgarten has definitely changed the vibe. Gonerfest is usually something that happens late at night, hidden in cramped clubs, defiantly underground. But these are times that call for change. Goner Records’ Zac Ives said he and co-owner Eric Friedl were skeptical at first, “… but we got in, started looking around, and thinking about our crowd here, and thought, ‘This can work.’”
Thursday night had started off tentatively, but it ended up being a rousing success. I spent most of Thursday with a camera in my hand as a part of the newly minted Goner Stream Team. The live-stream, under the direction of Geoffrey Brent Shrewsbury, is bringing the music to the far-flung masses with an ingenious kluge of 20-year-old Sony Handycams, analog hand switchers, and a cluster of mixing boards and dangerously overheating laptops. Gonerfest was actually a pioneer of online streaming, but this year, with the international bands from Australia, Japan, and Europe kept at bay by the pandemic, it’s more important than ever.
By the time Model Zero took the stage on Friday afternoon, it was clear Ives was right. The crowd had adapted to the space, which Parsons joked was a “beach volleyball and trash-themed bar.” Model Zero locked into their dance punk groove instantly, and got the afternoon crowd moving with their cover of Buffalo Springfield’s “Mister Soul” and their banging original “Modern Life.”
Total Hell ably represented the New Orleans trash-metal contingent that has been a Gonerfest staple for years. Nashville’s Kings of the Fucking Sea started their set off by providing noise accompaniment to Memphis’ Sheree Renée Thomas, poet laureate of the New Weird South, before heading off into a set of Can-infused psych jams.
Usually there’s several hours after the afternoon sets to change venues, but noise ordinances have forced this outdoor Gonerfest to start and end earlier, so afternoon spilled into evening as Austinite singer/songwriter Nick Allison took the stage with a set that was, dare I say it, kinda Springsteen-y.
Another sign that Gonerfest’s audience’s taste has broadened from the old days of all caveman beats, all the time, is Optic Sink. NOTS Natalie Hoffman and Magic Kids’ Ben Bauermeister’s electronic project never sounded better, with the big sound system bringing out their nuances. They, too, debuted a new song that embraced their inner Kraftwerk.
Gonerfest frequent flyer Drew Owens returned with his long-running project Sick Thoughts. Their set was loud, offensive, and confrontational, and sent beer cans flying across the venue. As Ben Rednour, who was working the Stream Team camera at the edge of the stage, said afterward “When they started sword fighting with mic stands, I knew it was anything goes.”
The Archeas’ album has been a big pandemic discovery for me, and the Louisville band’s Gonerfest debut was hotly anticipated. Violent Archaea was the charismatic center of attention as the band ripped through a ragged set that reminded us all of why we like this music in the first place.
The greenest band on the bill was Sweeping Promises. Arkansans Lira Mondal and Caufield Schung have gone from Boston to Austin recording their debut album Hunger for a Way Out, but they haven’t played out much. “I think this is like their fourth show,” said Ives in the streaming control room (which was a tiki bar in the Before Time) as they set up. They’re going to get spoiled by all the attention their Gang of Four-esque, bass-driven New Wave brought from the rapt crowd.
The climax of Friday night was Greg Cartwright’s Reigning Sound. After a successful return to the stage with the original Memphis lineup of Greg Roberson, Jeremy Scott, and Memphis Flyer music editor Alex Greene at Crosstown Theater earlier this summer, the “original lineup” has expanded into a Bluff City A-Team with the addition of Graham Winchester, string sisters Krista and Ellen Wroten, and multi-instrumentalist (and dentist) John Whittmore. The Crosstown show had been a careful reading of the new songs from the new album A Little More Time With Reigning Sound. This set transformed the big band into a raucous rave-up machine. (With Cartwright as band leader, set lists are more suggestions of possible futures than concrete plans for how the show will go.) Cartwright invited Marcella Simien onstage for washboard and vocals, duetting with the singer on two songs from A Little More Time, transforming the evening into something between a family reunion and a reaffirmation of Memphis music after a long, scary era.