Day one of the third installment of ShoalsFest boasted an impressive lineup of musicians and the welcome inclusion of a songwriters’ In The Round session.
It was an early start on Friday morning to finish getting packed, put our dog into boarding, and pick up a hire car for what has become a regular annual road trip for Loud Hailer. We were bound for Florence, Alabama for Jason Isbell’s ShoalsFest festival. The journey itself included many more traffic jams than usual, the consumption of between 2 – 3000 calories of road snacks, and a brief encounter with an Alabama Police officer who wanted to chat with us about the fact that we were maybe trying to get where we were going a little too rapidly for his liking. Thankfully though, he let us off with a warning and we made it to the Marriott in Florence at around 9pm – just in time to catch our first live music of the weekend in Swampers, the hotel bar.
We’ve spoken in the past about the fact that Jason Isbell and his team deserve huge credit for putting in the time and effort to arrange a festival that shines a light on The Shoals and Alabama in general. Putting on a music festival is a dicey business and there’s no guarantee of success. It’s incredibly difficult to predict the appetite for a festival: Who will be willing to perform? Is the location right? And (probably most important/fundamental) who will come to watch?
We’re aware that this is a music website and we are here to talk about musicians but, with the above in mind, we want to lend some space at the beginning of this review to talk about something other than the music and the musicians. We want to talk about the people from Alabama, and from all over the country, who come to McFarland Park to attend this festival.
As you can imagine, we attend a lot of live shows, including festivals, but without doubt, it’s been at this festival where we’ve consistently made great new friends and had some of the best conversations about music, musicians, and songwriting. Florence and, more broadly, The Shoals is steeped in music history and the people from the area are, quite rightly, happy and proud to talk about it. We’ve enjoyed people regaling us with tales of seeing David Hood and other members of the famed Swampers playing shows in small local venues and their encounters with famous musicians visiting the area to record at FAME or Muscle Shoals Sound among many others. Of course, there have been more than a few stories about watching some young guy called Jason and his friends take to the stage (or the corner of a Mexican restaurant) to ply their trade in their formative years. Not to be left out, those who are not from the area are just as willing to share musical experiences from their neck of the woods and we’re always keen to throw in a Supergrass, Futureheads, or Oasis story to keep the UK represented.
Have no doubt about it, this is a festival for people who are true lovers of music and the craft of songwriting. Whenever we have been here, we’ve always enjoyed the time between the acts (almost) as much as the performances themselves because it’s in those times that we’ve got to know the people we’re attending the festival with. We’ve received many recommendations on new music/artists to check out, reminisced about great performances, and had conversations with people about hard times they’ve been through and how a lyric or a song helped them get through it. It’s an example of what is so great about live music, an event that brings people together to celebrate and enjoy their shared love of something, differences in opinion on other topics be damned! In today’s world, that is a rare and precious thing.
So, that is a long section of a festival review without mentioning the music but what we talk about above is a massive part of the reason we’ve made ShoalsFest a regular event in our calendar. Don’t get us wrong, the quality of the artists and music speaks for itself and we’d probably go to see these musicians perform if it was in a farmer’s field with a bunch of cows in the audience for company. But ShoalsFest has hit on something truly special. It’s the mixture of music, location, and people (along with that intangible we’ve all felt in the air on certain occasions in a venue or location for a live show) that makes this such a special event.
So without further ado, let’s get to the music (finally, I hear you say!). In a recent interview on Alabama Public Radio, Jason Isbell said when he invites an artist to perform at ShoalsFest it’s like he’s inviting someone to have dinner at his mother’s house. First to be seated at the dinner table on Saturday was The Wanda Band.
This was our first experience of The Wanda Band (aka singer/songwriter/guitarist Wanda Wesolowski, drummer Nick Recio, and bassist Andrew Sharpe) but it didn’t take long for them to impress. At 3.30pm, they ‘Wanda’d’ onto the stage and launched into a set full of instantly memorable, hooky tunes with lyrics drawn from Wanda’s own life experiences. Wanda has a great fingerpicking guitar style which, through a clean Strat with some swirly reverb, which with the solid support of Reico and Sharpe, provides an evocative backdrop for her vocals. There were clearly some in the audience who had been looking forward to this performance and sang along in earnest to all of the songs from the start. Even those who were experiencing the band for the first time, like us, were singing along by the end. All in all, it was a great way to start the weekend.
Next up, it was time for a songwriters’ “In The Round” session with Chris Tompkins, Gary Nichols, Jason Isbell, and John Paul White. It was pretty special to see a group of such talented songwriters who came up together taking to the stage to share both stories and songs. Chris Tompkins kicked things off with “Bama Breeze,” a song used by Jimmy Buffet to open his 2006 album, Take The Weather With You. Down the line we went, with Gary Nichols opening with a great new song to make sure he didn’t forget how to play it! That was followed by Jason, who performed a great acoustic version of “Overseas” before John Paul White stunned the audience into a reverential silence with a rendition of his beautiful song “I Wish I Could Write You a Song.” There was time for four rounds of songs and banter, including John Paul White recounting first meeting the other three when they were in a band together which was pitted against his band in a competition (which JPW’s band won) and Jason mentioning how great it was that they all looked just the same as they did when they first met 27/28 years ago (and that nothing bad had happened to any of them between then and now…..). As you can imagine, given the quality of the artists on the stage, the audience enjoyed the performance immensely and we heard more than a few people stating that they’d love to see the “In the Round” session become a fixture at future ShoalsFests.
We first saw Brittney Spencer perform as support for Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit in Schaumburg, Illinois in a late August 2021 show, just as the world was emerging from Covid lockdown. She performed a great stripped-down set that night with just a guitarist alongside her on the stage. Since then, she has released new music and is now performing with a full band. Her set at ShoalsFest was filled with originals, including “Sober and Skinny,” which went down particularly well with the audience, along with some well-picked covers of songs by The Chicks (who she mentioned were a big influence on her), Fergie, and a rousing rendition of Lee Hazlewood’s “These Boots Are Made For Walkin’” which has been performed by many notable artists including Nancy Sinatra, of course, the late great Loretta Lynn. It’s fantastic to see an artist develop right in front of your eyes and Brittney Spencer is one that the music world is definitely keeping an eye on, with good reason. She’s a performer with great stage presence, a spectacular voice, and something to say. Props also go to her band who were re-jigged/not playing their primary instruments for the ShoalsFest performance due to an injury to the guitarist. You’d have never known it from the way they played which speaks to the quality of musicians Brittney has surrounded herself with.
As the sun was setting over Florence, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram took to the stage and lit up McFarland Park with his music. To simply say that 23-year-old Ingram plays and sings with a maturity beyond his years does him a disservice. Born in Mississippi and learning his trade from local musicians teaching as part of the Delta Blues Museum’s education program, Ingram blossomed into the musician he is today. The Blues is an incredibly difficult genre of music to perform well but Ingram seems to have been born to perform in this space. The way he communicates, both through his voice and his incredibly expressive guitar playing, is a joy to watch. Throughout the set, he, along with his fantastic band, controlled the dynamics and pace of songs to ensure they are delivered with maximum impact for the audience. In respect of his playing, it’s equally impressive to watch Ingram hang on a note and take things down a notch as it is to watch him unleash an explosive flurry of notes. The reason for that is simply because he has the ability to make the right choices in respect of what serves the song best. His set spans a lot of his original work with “Fresh Out” and “Another Life Goes By” being particular standouts. We first caught Ingram playing with Buddy Guy, at Guy’s Legends bar in Chicago and it seems he picked up some tips on showmanship from Guy, playing his guitar with his teeth and heading into the audience to play an extended solo during “Too Young to Remember.” By the time he dropped his guitar on the stage after a great cover of “Hey Joe,” the crowd was out of breath and on their feet cheering for Ingram as his band played him off the stage. A fantastic set.
By the time Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats took to the stage, the audience had been well and truly warmed up and Rateliff and Co. were not in the mood to let anyone cool off (even if a temperature drop in Florence had sent many scurrying to the merch stand to buy the long sleeved top that was available). There were likely some concerns from fans and organizers alike as Covid had infiltrated the Night Sweats’ camp, forcing them to postpone two shows on their tour in late September and meaning they weren’t able to perform at this year’s Farm Aid. Thankfully, everyone seemed to be fit and well as the band launched into their set.
The band took to the stage, opening with “Look It Here” and marshaled by Rateliff, they seamlessly worked their way through a set that regularly roused the crowd with upbeat numbers before bringing the pace down a little for songs such as the beautiful “Time Stands” from Rateliff’s 2020 album And It’s Still Alright. It’s a great experience watching a band like the Night Sweats play. Rateliff is a pretty prolific songwriter meaning there is a wealth of material from which to choose and the 90-minute set on Saturday was perfectly crafted to ensure a fitting end to a great first day at ShoalsFest 2022.
Check out our coverage of day two here.
Words by: Phil Walton
Photos by: Kirstine Walton
