It was our fourth trip to the Levitation Music Festival (which I still call the Austin Psych Fest now and then), and we were happy and eager to support it after the weather-battered and cancelled 2016 festival. That took such a toll that the 2017 festival in Austin was also cancelled. This needed to be a good bounce back for the Reverb Appreciation Society (who curate the festival) and the city of Austin. The city still remembered the series of bombings that plagued the city just a month earlier, so the town needed a morale boost. It worked. The limited number of deluxe weekend passes (which allowed access to all shows across the four days) sold out in minutes. No, I didn’t get any of them. I, like most of the attendees, had to buy tickets for individual shows.
The biggest change for the festival this year was that it was no longer held at Carson Creek Ranch and its three outdoor stages. The 2018 festival was held in multiple venues in downtown Austin – Stubb’s BBQ, Emo’s, Cheer Up Charlie’s, Empire Garage, Barracuda, Beerland, the Mohawk, Volcom Garden, and Hotel Vegas. My wife said she preferred the festival this way, as it gave us more places to relax between (and during) sets and more options for food. We rented an apartment via VRBO that was a ten-minute drive from the venues and the Spot Hero parking app became our best friend over the course of the four days. We never paid more than $10.00 for parking for an entire night while in Austin.
I had five shows slated for the first day of the festival (Thursday). The first was Ron Gallo. I hadn’t seen Mr. Gallo and his crew since I saw them open for Screaming Females in a small Fort Wayne, Indiana show. I was keen to see how big of a crowd they’d get since they’d achieved notoriety with their first record and toured with the Black Angels. I’m happy to say they had a good crowd at Stubb’s and were a great opening to the festival. They encouraged us to create our own reality and that everything will be okay.
We headed out for dinner after their fun set, and I started two trends that continued the entire weekend. The first was finding pennies. I found at least three every day we were in the city. It bordered on bizarre. I don’t know why Austin apparently has no use for pennies (and even quarters), but I’ll happily take them.
We ate at Daruma, a great ramen bar in downtown Austin. We started the second trend of the weekend there – Meeting musicians. A group of six sat at the bench-like table with us and we learned they were a self-described “gospel / hip-hop” band called Kings Kaleidoscope from Seattle who were playing in town that night. We also learned there that our broth was probably made by the bass player and / or drummer for Holy Wave, who were playing a record release party that night. We didn’t catch them, because we wanted to get back to Stubb’s to see Ty Segall. We got back a bit earlier than we’d planned, and ended up catching Parquet Courts‘ set first.
They played a loud, energetic set, but it sounded like they were being heckled by multiple people in the crowd who either wouldn’t shut up between songs or kept yelling out requests. A couple band members told them multiple times to cool it.
Ty Segall came to shred. Every song seemed designed to burn the Stubb’s stage to the ground. He had some problems with the lighting, however, and had to tell the light technician to change the lighting and stop strobe lights and projections because he couldn’t see the rest of the band from his position on stage. My wife asked, “Shouldn’t all of that had been established in his contract ahead of time?”
We missed his encore because we went to Barracuda to catch Virginia stoner metal powerhouses Windhand. We got there about halfway through their set, and they were already melting faces. My wife asked if the bass player’s hair covered his face because their music had melted it. It was a reasonable question, considering how heavy their riffs were.
Unfortunately, we missed the set by Christian Bland and the Revelators, but we did get to Beerland to see Austin’s own Ringo Deathstarr. They’re local shoegaze legends, and I’d wanted to hear them for a while. Despite the Beerland sound engineer not being able to keep some microphone feedback in check, Ringo Deathstarr put in a solid performance. Their drummer has serious chops. I left wanting more.
We got back to the apartment around 2:00am, which was another trend that would continue all weekend. It was a good first night, and we were happy to be back.
Up next, a day of funk, garage rock, and Chilean psychedelic freak-outs.
Keep your mind open.
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