WMNF's Tuesday Sonic Detour host Amy Snider is headed up to the Solid Sound Festival this upcoming weekend and will be reporting back as a guest contributor for CL-Tampa. The following is her preview of the fest …
Solid Sound Got Soul
I spent a couple of years schlepping 60 pounds of gear through Western Massachusetts as a TV news photographer. A hotbed for hard news and excitement? Not exactly. I covered more kielbasa festivals, teddy bear shows, and high school football games than you can imagine. And the "protests" were pitiful. Each weekend, the very worthy causes changed (hunger, no nukes), but it was the same six smelly hippies in Northampton with new placards. Berkshires? Boring. Pittsfield? The name says it all.
So of all the places in the world for a music festival, alt country rock heavyweights Wilco chose the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass MoCA) in North Adams, Massachusetts. Whither Wilco goest, I will go, too.
The band is curating the Solid Sound Festival this Friday through Sunday, August 13-15, and, I'm headed up with my 15-year-old daughter, Josie, who pleaded and begged for months. She, too, is a rabid Wilco fan. But she had to swear on my life to behave. No eye rolling or teenage 'tude allowed.
A Tina Fey wanna-be, Josie is also obsessed with stand-up and sketch comedy, and Wilco is feeding her hunger for laughs by presenting first rate comedians like Todd Barry, John Mulaney, and Kristen Schaal (Flight of the Conchords, The Daily Show, Dinner for Schmucks). [Solid Sound playlist after the jump]
This article appears in Aug 5-11, 2010.