Tropical Heatwave can be an exhausting endeavor. The stages are spread out enough that you spend as much time walking or scurrying or flat-out dashing from one place to another as you do enjoying the music. All that hoofing it in the humidity for several hours means lots of sweating, and to avoid being totally gross by the end of the night in addition to being totally wasted (no one likes a stinky drunk), you have to plan for a few fresh-up detours (at your car, hotel room or in my case, the friendly CL offices), so you can change your shirt and switch from sneakers to flip-flops and back to sneakers again as your feet demand. Gotta jam some food in there somewhere, maybe a beer or two, bottled water for those of us want to be standing at the end of the night, and don't forget all the stretching and prepping in between venues, dancing while watching bands at said venues, keeping yourself moving and maneuvering amid the ever-shifting mass of bodies entering and exiting the venues continuously, none of them lingering too long because there's always something else happening that you could be missing… [Photos by Phil and Tracy.]
Then again, maybe other folks see it and do differently, with less exhausted results. What follows is a record of my own meanderings through the 2012 fest (including my pre-Heat Demo Listening Session appearance), and those of Shae Krispinsky, a local musician and CL contributor who helped me cover the 2012 fest and offered her unique perspective on it as both a first time performer and attendee. In her own words:
“Even though this will be my fifth summer in Florida, this year was my first time attending Tropical Heatwave. Ybor is often too crowded for me on an average weekend night, so I tend to avoid it during special events that take up entire days and glut the streets with revelers. But since my band was asked to participate this year, I braved the mob of attendees, security guards, food stands and other musicians, and over the course of the night, became a Tropical Heatwave convert.
When WMNF announced the acts set to play awhile back, there were two bands that I really wanted to see – Wet Nurse and Jane Jane Pollock. Unfortunately, when the schedule came out, I saw that their set-times overlapped with my band’s, so my goal when I set out on Saturday, then, became to catch as many bands as possible, if only staying in one venue for a few songs before moving on to the next.”
Our schedules converged but we never actually crossed paths, and experienced similar disappointments, missing or only catching the tail end of bands we really wanted to see due to being otherwise detained. I ended up catching a little of a lot of different things, a lot of a few different things, and overall came out feeling all right about it because I knew that, for the most part, any good act I missed would be brought back to town by WMNF or some another enterprising local promoter…
Check in: 1 p.m. I've lent a helping ear to several Demo Listening Sessions over the years, and the formula goes something like this: local artists in various stages of the recording process submit a song, the song is played for a panel of industry folks and the room at large (whoever shows up), and after getting the backstory on the song/album/goal of the artist, the panelists offer input and feedback on production quality, song content, style, delivery, presentation and anything else that we think matters.
I'm the moderator for my third time participating in CL's Pre-Heat Music Industry Workshop session, probably best since I can't seem to juggle working both the unfamiliar laptop (which is muted, duh) and my own iPod without killing everyone's ears with the abrasive static-scratch of the hot plug. The rest of my fellow comrades-in-music-biz-arms do official panelist duty: Craig Adams aka Lovers-Lament Craig, of Lovers Lament Entertainment, a promoter who stages shows in downtown St. Pete; Ed Lowery, vet local musician and vocalist of ska staple Magadog; and Alastair St. Hill, musician in Gentleman Please and host of WMNF's Grand National Championships, who uses haikus to express his point-of-view (and they are quite lovely, too). I throw in my CL Music Editor’s two cents where I see fit as we cycle through six demos ranging from raw punk with a cheeky blues spin (The Stereotypes), to heavy but well-polished pop-punk (Neglected Superhero) to weirdo-fun experimental hip hop (MC Radiance). I always enjoy myself more than I expect to at these things. You never want to make someone feel like something they created isn't meaningful, so it's nice to be able to offer constructive advice or criticism without tearing anyone down. After hanging around for some of the “Scenebuilding 101: Putting Tampa Bay on the Map” panel, I head home to take care of some business and rest up before heading back to Ybor to tackle the main event: Tropical Heatwave. –Leilani
Check-in: 5:20 p.m. Just arriving at Heatwave. Checking out the Plaza – big stage, pretty crowded, but not packed. Wasn’t expecting the food tents for some reason, but makes sense that they’re here. Frozen Key Lime pie? Mental note to come back for that later. –Shae
5:30 p.m. Pausing at Centro Ybor. Small stage set up, a few people milling around. Danny Freeman on acoustic guitar and vocals, another guy on acoustic bass, didn’t catch his name. They were okay; Danny sounded like John Mayer, and I could see him one day in a video being played on Vh1's Top Twenty Countdown, but this isn't my cup of tea. –Shae
5:45 p.m. Centennial Park for the Mud Flappers. This is much more my style – an old-timey six-piece with four vocalists, mandolin, trumpet, banjo, kazoo, and girls wearing jewel-toned, fringed flapper dresses and jingle-bell ankle bracelets. People around me murmur approval while one guy sets up an easel to sketch the band as they play. A few couples begin to dance. –Shae
6:10 p.m. New World is packed. Playing a cigar-box guitar is Lauris Vidal, filling in for the Roadkill Ghost Choir, who couldn’t make it. Lauris reminds me of a less rootsy Josh Small – he has the same intensity in his singing and playing. –Shae
6:40 p.m. Nice and cool in the Cuban Club Cantina. There's a pretty big crowd swaying and swirling around to Jubal's Kin. The music is simple and folksy. The audience is singing along, but then, this song seems to only have one lyric. –Shae
7 p.m. Hunter & Avery at the CL Space. Piano and guitar from two girls who could have stepped out of an Urban Outfitter’s catalog. They seem too weary for being so young. Unless it’s ennui – come on, girls, it’s a festival; have some fun! The music is slow with a feeling of heavy poignancy. Jessica Lea Mayfield meets Cat Power. –Shae
7:20 p.m. Amid the hubbub of dropping by the CL Space to check in with coworkers who are volunteering there, hitting the Cuban Club to pick up media passes, and tracking down a current schedule, I mix-up the overlapping set-times and my original plans to start with The Preservation at New World, and beeline straight to Crowbar for He’s My Brother, She’s My Sister, my first official show of the night.
The self-styled “glamabilly” outfit was on my must-see list, their kitchen sink-style of roots music drawing on shades of ’60s pop, gypsy folk, rockabilly and cabaret blues. Live, they exude infectious cheer and perform in what I imagine is a thespian’s concept of glammy retro-wear, encompassing a hodgepodge of 20th century eras without ever really settling on one. The musician-vagabonds are ostensibly led by harmonizing siblings Robert and Rachel Kolar (on guitar and percs, respectively), who trade-off on lead vocal duties with finesse. On this night, she’s decked out in a gorgeous vintage-rich red dress, he sports a black bowler hat and black-and-white striped pants like some sort of carnival barker, while tap dancing percussionista Lauren Brown works a more mod-chic angle in an A-line mini with a square color block print as she keeps the beat with her feet and adds an interesting element to the the band’s rhythmic textures and overall theatric appeal. Upright bass player Oliver "Oliwa" Newell plucks away on an instrument emblazoned with a turquoise Native American burst of color and design, barefoot and wearing scruffy makeshift overalls, and second guitarist/lap steel player Aaron Robinson hangs quietly in the back adding layers to their upbeat sound.
And thus I am so utterly charmed that I stay longer than intended. I leave before they're finished and start booking it to catch the tail end of The Preservation's set, but run into friends along the way who tell me I'm too late… —Leilani
7:30 p.m. Signals From Satellites at The Bricks. Signals are the first band playing in this venue, so the audience is slowly growing as the disco ball dots the space with light. I’m obviously biased, since I love these guys, but they bring the rock. The sound here is exceptionally good. –Shae
8:10 p.m. The doors to The Ritz Sideroom are open, so I can hear Poetry n’ Lotion as we're striding up, which gets me excited about going in, and I'd love to be inside getting down, except I’m outside waiting in line to get in, getting ID’d, again, getting slapped with yet another wristband, and getting my stuff searched. When I finally land in the stuffy room, I cut a rug to the Lotion’s ironic, mostly instrumental post-jazz post-metal rock-outs, like the stealthy electro-trumpet dance ode, “Sego Techna,” and the ever-popular double-punch of “Knight Rider Theme” into “Skinsuit,” the cover an always-welcomed vehicle that segues into and through their original start-stop hoedown/reggae number. Then, with little adieu, we’re off to see the next act. —Leilani
8:30 p.m. My band, …y los dos pistoles, is about to take the stage at the Bricks. Not so nervous, but definitely excited. A pretty good crowd has formed. –Shae
8:40 p.m. We drop into New World for a beer, schmooze and a few melodic beachy rock tunes by The Semis. I drop by the CL Space, stick around to hear Sons of Hippies kick off a set of their futuristic indie rock, then head back towards Crowbar and Jane Jane Pollock, a Tallahassee band I’ve managed to unintentionally miss each and every time they’ve been in town. I’m hoping to end this ridiculous record. —Leilani
9:10 p.m. And we’re done! This was one of the most fun shows we’ve played. The audience was awesome – very receptive and accepting of my yammering between songs and our special guests – John David on cello and Rodney from Signals on backing vocals and Little Tikes tambourine. Russ dented the headstock of his bass after slamming it like a rock star into his pedal board at the end of our last song. By 9:20, I'm rushing to the Crowbar to try to catch as much of Jane Jane Pollock as possible. I arrive in the middle of the last song – bummer! But they’re banging the life out of these pots and pans, and the audience is eating it up. –Shae
9:30 p.m. I arrive as Jane Jane Pollock is breaking down. Apparently, their set ended early, and I'm too late to even hear a note. So we return to New World, take in a few songs by Wooly Bushmen, their sound a too garage-blues raw for my taste, though I end up hanging around longer than expected because the lead guy is so dynamic with his passionate gruff-shout delivery and sweat-dripping mutton chops. Then I remember The Bricks is running behind and I still have time to see one of my favorite Orlando bands, Saskatchawan. And off we go. —Leilani
9:40 p.m. Catching the end of the Black Taxi’s set at the Ritz. Their description as “alt rock” is sort of funny, since they sound to be a straight-up surf band. The place is overflowing with drunken guys asking for high-fives. –Shae
10 p.m. We stroll into The Bricks to the sounds of Saskatchawan, still on! And it’s a song I love, so I start getting my sway on to their driving but dreamy indie pop and then… they say a quick thank you and start packing up and a dude starts making announcements for WMNF. Luckily, Barons of Tang are hitting the stage any minute in the Cantina, and because they’ve come all the way from Australia, I don’t intend to miss their performance. —Leilani
10:15 p.m. After grabbing some pizza at New York New York across the street, I headed back to the Ritz to check out the Growlers. Because I had heard so many people talking about how they couldn’t wait to see the Growlers, I was surprised by the crowd – half of the people have cleared out after Black Taxi. Crowbar may have been a better venue for them. I’m able to get up close to the stage and am certain that the singer is the lovechild of Jim Morrison and Lana Del Rey. The music is again surfy, but I’m not getting the ‘goth’ part of their description. –Shae
10:15 p.m. By far, one of the best things I’ve seen in all my Heatwaves, and this night, is Barons of Tang, a sexy seething mass of Aussies who brought gypsy-deathcore post-World music explosions to the Cantina. They had a sort of Gogol Bordello-meets-Man Man appeal. Their sound is boisterous, colorful, Eastern Euro-exotic gypsy music with wild punk-metal noisiness, and marked by big marching double-kick rhythms of a drums-and-percussion team (Sean Wyers and Annie Pfeiffer), old world accordion wails as wrung out by a bulky bear-hairy Don Carlos Parraga, heavy distorted guitar riffs (by Jules Brunton I assume), and horn arrangements that vary from jaunty to mournful to eerie to slinky to screaming as raged by two fiery, attractive, ass-kicking women — Anna Joy Gordon on a surprisingly not-smooth sax and Aviva Endean on bass clarinet. This is the first time I’ve ever seen anyone play brass with so much fist-pumping and general punk rock vigor. All of it is led by the tightly-wound frontman antics of double-bass thrashing Julian Cue, whose lead vocal outbursts are accompanied the sung or shouted choruses of his bandmates. My eyes were glued and I stayed until the very end. They even played the one tune I know – "Even If You’re Missing Fingers, You Can Make a Fist!" –Leilani
10:50 p.m. Tallhart starts a bit late at the CL Space. There are a lot of people here. I’d seen Tallhart before, back when they were still the Marksmen, and remember not being too impressed by them. Maybe it’s the name change, or the year-plus that has passed, but I can’t help but be wowed. They’re straight-up rock, but the lead singer’s powerful voice makes them so much more. Dude can sing. They sound fuller than a four-piece, and extremely professional. I expect to see a tour bus with their name on it soon. –Shae
11 p.m. I arrive back at the CL Space during Tallhart’s climactic set-closer, make a note to write about them soon, stick around to enjoy the first few songs of Spiller’s angular post-grunge alt rock, do a last refresher, and head out on a final music run. —Leilani
11:55 p.m. JC Brooks and the Uptown Sound have a much smoother R&B sound than I expect, Brooks more like MJ than Redding. He still cuts a tall and striking figure with his afro-pompadour, though the thin crowd milling about in the big Ritz Ybor theater aren’t offering much of a response. So I hit the Sideroom to feed my head with the acid-washed post-jazz of Infinite Groove Orchestra, their roiling set encompassing a noisy jammed-to-space cover of Outkast’s “Spottieottiedopalicious,” then slipped out to The Bricks for an Auto!Automatic!! prog-tronic rock drive-by before closing my night with Bright Light. —Leilani
Midnight Ending the night with Auto! Automatic! back at the Bricks. The crowd is dwindling, but those remaining are still grooving. I’m not the biggest fan of instrumental music, and anyway, I’m fading fast. My focus right now is on rounding up the troops and getting home to my bed. Later, I realize there were entire venues I never made it to, and while I felt I’d seen a bunch of acts (and more than anyone else in my group, who tended to stick to the same two or three places), I only caught a sliver of what was going on at Tropical Heatwave. I spent the evening running around trying to sample as much as possible, so I probably missed a lot of exciting moments, the building crescendos during finales, or the funny stories told half-way through sets. But nonetheless, I had a blast. I saw some bands I already knew and some bands I’ll be looking forward to seeing again somewhere down the line. I never did have time to go and get that Key Lime pie. Maybe next year, since I will definitely be back. –Shae
12:15 a.m. Bright Light Social Hour’s triumphant return to Heatwave (and the town that has become a second home to the band) found the Austin foursome getting upgraded from Crowbar to the main El Pasaje Plaza stage. And what can I say? They deserve it, and prove themselves worthy of it as they plow through a set with their usual vigorous, energy-busting, Southern-fried electro-funky blues rock ferocity that added a Bright Light exclamation point to the end of my Heatwave. —Leilani
This article appears in May 17-23, 2012.