Last year, Brokenmold Entertainment and Daddy Kool Records presented the inaugural AntiWarpt Music Festival, a budget-friendly mostly-local adult alternative to the Warped Tour's behemoth all-ages affair.
The 2010 fest drew healthy crowds of local folks to downtown St. Petersburg and impressed with the high-quality roster of local and regional talent spread out over four Central Avenue venues. In fact, the response was so good, the 2011 AntiWarpt Music Festival has grown to two days (the main event and a launch party), encompasses eight downtown venues, and now features several noteworthy national acts in addition to an expanded bill of area talent for a grand total of more than 60 performers.
The kick-off party is held Friday, July 29, at the St. Petersburg Shufflboard Club with Sleepy Vikings (Tampa), Greenland Is Melting (Gainesville), Living Arches (Tampa) and John Gold (Land O' Lakes).
AntiWarpt takes place Saturday, July 30, beginning at 2 p.m. Among the national highlights are one of my top 20 favorite bands to see perform live, fast-rising Austin four-piece Bright Light Social Hour, which dole out a sizzling, wildly intoxicating mix of stomping Texas Southern dirt rock, sweat-soaked barroom blues, and psychedelic electro space funk (check out a review of their Heatwave performance here with video and CL's story on the band here); another band that kills it live, London Souls (pictured below), a power funk-your-face trio with hard '70s rock inclinations, from Brooklyn; Seryn, an alterna-folk pop quintet from Denton, Texas that crafts melodic nicely textured arrangements with guitars, ukulele, accordion, bass, viola, banjo and percussion; and the return of Tampa's own newly re-formed hard and gritty-funky blues rock trio, Nervous Turkey — original lineup! Differences have been put aside in the name of music and everybody is going to rock the shit out of downtown St. Petersburg.
Also performing: Reptar, Have Gun Will Travel, Thomas Wynn & the Believers, Sonkin, Sons of Hippies, Tim Version, The Semis, Eyes Lips Eyes, The Beauvilles, Car Bomb Driver, Poetry n' Lotion, Holiday, The Pauses, Auto!Automatic!!, Set and Setting, Le BLORR, Florida Night Heat, Andy Matchett & the Minks, Radio Boxer, Infinite Groove Orchestra, Alias Punch, Lauris Vidal, The Still Voice, Alexander and the Grapes, Kaleigh Baker, The Sun Society, An Introduction to Sunshine, Signals From Satellites, Fever, Young Egypt, Jane Jane Pollock, Brahm Bones, Empire Cinema, The Broken Inn, Doll Parts, Loud Valley, FATAL, DJ Mega, Crate Brothers, Transcendent Other, Man Made, Blood Bats and more.
Participating Venues: State Theatre, The Local 662, FUBAR, The Emerald, Star Booty, Sake Bomb, Cafe Bohemia, The Globe
Tickets: $15.
Click here to get your tickets in advance. For more info, check back to the AntiWarpt site regularly.
This article appears in Jun 2-8, 2011.