Paradoxically, Summerfest is one of the few things – I can count them on one hand! – that bring me actual, honest joy. From the announcing of the lineups to planning out my days, the food, the people-watching, the actual music, and even the late-night shuttle rides home – Summerfest is like my happy place. Even if, when you see me down there, I will most likely be scowling in the back with my arms crossed.
Opening Day - Thursday June 20th
I am not sure that I’ve ever been to a Summerfest opening day. So it is perhaps appropriate that the old man maladies came in hot for my first trip down to the lakefront this summer. I was tired – I do wake up at 4:45 am for work after all. My back hurt, and I grunted and grimaced every time I sat down or stood up. I complained about the beer and t-shirt prices. (Summerfest gear was surprisingly reasonable, however) I had to pee approximately one million times.
Music festivals have been a young man’s game for quite some time, but I wasn’t going to let that bring me down.
Better Than Ezra was up first, and I think theirs was the most fun set I saw. They seemed like they didn’t take themselves too seriously, as evidenced by the snippets of covers they played ranging from The Weeknd to Sublime to, uh, Naughty By Nature. Lead singer Kevin Griffin joked around and told facetious stories – including one that kind of had me going for a bit, about how bassist Tom Drummond actually wrote the once-inescapable Proclaimers hit “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” via a John Lennon songwriting contest. It actually turned out to be a pretty excellent cover.
Over the opening guitar lines of their biggest hit, “Good,” Griffin channeled Jim Gaffigan’s “inner voice, exclaiming “Hey! I actually know this one!” This tune definitely got the biggest reaction of the night. They did play the other two songs you probably know if not by name, then by sound. “Desperately Wanting” and “In The Blood,” along with “Good,” sounded pretty much just like you remember them.
It was a pretty decent 75-minute set, and its good vibes and “let’s remember some songs”-nostalgia was actually a pretty accurate harbinger of what was to come for the rest of Summerfest.
Gin Blossoms strolled to the stage nearly 20 minutes late due to audio difficulties that had the stage crew scrambling frantically. No matter though, as they kicked right into “Follow You Down” and then proceeded to perform their expertly-constructed pop rock jams for about an hour and change.
Of course, if you wanted to hear any of their other big hits you had to wait until the end of the set. Which is both fine and somewhat expected, but Gin Blossoms’ brand of MOR pop rock gets a little samey-sounding after a while. (It probably also doesn’t help that I’ve heard their biggest albums maybe two or three times each. I haven’t lived in those songs the way a superfan might have.)
But they did end up playing “Hey Jealousy” – an all-time classic of the genre – and “Found Out About You” to plenty of dancing and singing along. Much like Better Than Ezra, these old warhorses sounded as good as they did cranking out of your boombox or car stereo back in the day. It’s hard to get too worked up one way or another about Gin Blossoms, but their easygoing, workmanlike set was a nice way to close out the cool, breezy first night of Summerfest.
Sandwiched in between the two veteran bands was local singer/songwriter Trapper Schoepp. His brand of upbeat folk rock was actually a pretty good fit for a festival. His storytelling really caught my ear, and one tune in particular nearly moved me to tears of joy. “Ferris Wheel” is about two brothers who go on a ferris wheel and wish for the ride to never end… so it doesn’t.
It would have been so easy (one imagines, I’m no songwriter) to have the song take a turn into a rumination on mortality, or perhaps a Weird Al Yankovician twist where the ferris wheel becomes unmoored and rolls and rampages away and kills everyone in its path. But it doesn’t. It’s just joyous and sweet until the very end in a way that life mostly isn’t.
My six-year-old son would absolutely wish for an amusement park ride to never end, and “Ferris Wheel” made me happy just thinking about that. It’s little moments like this that provide counterweight to being a parent to a small child who is quickly growing – something that is oftentimes inherently and profoundly sad.
All of this concluded with me buying a t-shirt from Mr. Schoepp, the “THIS ISN’T FUN ANYMORE” model showcased in the video clip I linked above. Why that one? Because… Gestures broadly to everything around me
The shuttle bus report: Fred the bus driver was in mid-Fest form already on opening night. The Amp headliner was a country singer, so that was the soundtrack. The gussied-up ladies in their Nashville-best cowboy hats and boots absolutely ate this up. But back to Fred - he was aggressive on the road as per usual. He did an impromptu u-turn right after we got off the freeway for the hell of it, and spun the bus around a few times in the parking lot. He suffers no fools and gives no fucks, and I love every second of it, lame country music be damned.
Day 2 - Saturday, June 29
Having bands that you actually know play at 4:30PM is a relatively new phenomenon at Summerfest (or maybe I didn’t pay much attention to the early performers when I started going in my teens, I don’t know) so when The Dandy Warhols were slotted there I was curious to see what kind of show it would be.
The sun was scorching us at the Miller Lite Oasis stage as the Dandys took the stage and went right into their first hit, “Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth.” Lead singer and guitarist Courtney Taylor-Taylor had a second mic with a vocal effect on it for this song. It made him sound more disaffected than usual, almost as if it was a piss take on his own song. I understand playing the same song the same way for 30 years can get boring, but this take on it wasn’t all that good.
This much more in-depth review thought the energy level was fine, and I would agree if he was talking about the energy used to get off the couch after a couple of massive bong rips. This is kind of what the Dandys do, of course; they’ve always been glam rock for stoners. They managed to sound both gnarly and subdued.
As much as this might sound like a negative review, I found their noisy alt-rock a good reprieve from everything else I saw at the ‘Fest this summer. They played the three songs I came to hear (“Bohemian Like You” and “We Used to Be Friends” being the other two) and all of them got the hips a-shakin’ for the modest crowd that came to see them, despite the fact they were all slower than the album cuts.
“We’re The Hold Steady, you’re Milwaukee, and we fuckin’ love you!” exclaimed lead singer Craig Finn near the end of their hour-long set. It was probably the most energetic set I saw through all of the four days I went, and that energy was reciprocated between band and fans throughout.
If I may be a bummer for a second, The Hold Steady are a party band that reminds you about the hangover that’s coming afterwards. Their music has major “dudes rock!” vibes, but their lyrics are all about lost souls and damaged people. The last song they played, “Killer Parties,” features the lines “Killer parties / Almost killed me.”
But despite that it was easy to rock out. The band might look like a bunch of accountants, but their guitar solos were righteous. Their three song run of essentially their best songs - “Chips Ahoy!, “Stuck Between Stations,” and “Your Little Hoodrat Friend” - was unmatched by any other band I saw.
Better Than Ezra may have been the most fun, but I think The Hold Steady was the show I enjoyed the most. I haven’t paid much attention to them since their mid-aughts heyday, but that didn’t really matter here. Craig Finn remarked “There is so much joy in what we do!” before the aforementioned “KIller Parties.” In that moment, a truer statement could not have been made.
The shuttle bus report: A new experience for me as I believe I’ve only ever taken the bus back to the bar after a headliner. There were four people on the bus total. No music. Fred needed to stop for gas. Lame all around.
Day 3: Friday, July 5th
There was only one band on the docket for tonight, and The Wallflowers were lowkey one of the bands I was most excited to see. I have been listening to their 1996 classic BRINGING DOWN THE HORSE quite a bit lately, and was curious how those songs translated live all these years later.
I don’t know if it was sound issues or age or (more than likely) a little of both, but Jakob Dylan’s voice seemed thin and raspy at times. He mumbled the lyrics at times, and sounded a little too much like his old man than I’m betting he would have liked to when he did.
But despite that I think the band itself sounded great. The Wallflowers’ music just fits well for a summer night by the lakefront. The multi-instrumentalist who played lap steel, among other things, was phenomenal.
And yet, it was clear most people were waiting for “One Headlight.”
“6th Avenue Heartache” was played early in the set, but the wait for another song people actually knew was quite long. Van Morrison’s “Into the Mystic” was covered, but no one seemed to notice, or care.
Plenty of people bailed throughout the set, but those who stuck out the 70 minutes or so were rewarded with the biggest hit, and then some choice covers by Cat Stevens and Tom Petty for the encore. “The Difference” closed the 90-minute set out, and sent people out into the night on a relatively good note.
The shuttle bus report: Fred’s wife Tanya was driving our bus tonight. Though I’ve witnessed her racing Fred up the Molitor Lot hill at AmFam Field, this ride was nothing to write home about.
Day 4: Saturday, July 6th
The last day of Summerfest was a musical mish-mash for me as both bands I wanted to see - Cracker and Living Colour - played at the same time (6:00 PM).
My brother-in-law and I went back and forth between the two bands. Cracker was first up, and I think their vibe was a little bit too laid back for me. Their fiddle player was awesome, though. I wanted to wait until they played something I recognized, and they obliged with “Teen Angst (What The World Needs Now)” It was fine.
Living Colour was right next door, and we made it just in time for their cover of MC5’s “Kick Out The Jams,” which was excellent. They also did a snippet of Prince’s (but more like Sinead O’Connor’s) “Nothing Compares 2 U,” which I think would have been better if a) it was the whole song and b) if they made it a little bit more their own. But that’s just me. They started jamming on something, so we went back to Cracker.
Cracker was just finishing up their biggest hit, “Low,” which was cool. They followed that up with the song I was looking most forward to, “Euro-Trash Girl,” which was awesome and seemed to get the biggest reaction of the night of the songs I saw. They played their hits, and I was happy about that.
We hightailed it back to Living Colour to catch “Cult of Personality,” and it was every bit as rocking as you could hope for.
Overall the two-band approach went better than I thought it would.
We weren’t planning on it, but what the hell, we decided to check out Sad Boy Saturday to finish the night.
My brother-in-law thought maybe it would feature all kinds of sad music, like The Cure. I did not have the heart to tell him we would mostly be hearing third-wave emo. But we ventured on into the Aurora Pavilion anyways.
We stuck around for maybe an hour, hour-and-a-half. They played some bangers for sure - My Chemical Romance, Dashboard Confessional, New Found Glory - but the songs we heard leaned more toward the slick, pop side of the genre. Think Fall Out Boy and Paramore. Where were local heroes The Promise Ring? The Get Up Kids or Alkaline Trio? They are far more in my wheelhouse, and maybe if we stayed for the whole thing we would’ve heard them.
(Yes, I know, Dashboard and NFG are more or less pop too)
Overall the positive vibes of the experience provided some cognitive dissonance for me. This type of music is not something I experienced communally. I don’t want to yuck anyone's yum here – singing and dancing your hearts out to something that means a lot to you is awesome! But it was all so foreign to me – I’ve never sung any of these songs with my bros. I listened to them in my room in college, alone, with headphones on because no one wanted me to fuck them. Clearly, the crowd and I differed on this point.
We had much more fun trying to AirDrop vulgar memes to people. There were no takers, but it was fun to think about.
The shuttle bus report: Fred drove us home one last time. It was not the end-of-night crowd, so it wasn’t crazy at all. Relaxed is how I’d put it. He still did a spin around the parking lot, because that is just what Fred does.
That is a wrap on Summerfest 2024. All of the bands – ALL OF THEM! – played the songs I wanted to hear. The performances were fine. Nothing mind-blowing, but nothing disappointing. It’s not exactly a ringing endorsement, but when all of the bands you saw are ones you only kind of sort of like at best, you can’t really hope for much more than that, can you?
