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pringtime in Athens always brings two crucial ele
ments back to town: temperate weather and a smor
gasbord of music festivals. The first fest of the year
the fifth annual Athens Americana Fest, a celebra
tion of America's musical roots that townsfolk consis
tently welcome with open arms.
One can likely find aspects of Americana
music in pll major Athens festivals, but the
Americana Fest focuses on this particular genre.
The pacing of this event is unique: a five-day
journey kicks off at Georgia Theatre, moves to
Little Kings over the weekend and winds down
at Highwire Lounge Sunday evening. What's so
unique about that? Americana Pest's founding
organizers, Justin Evans and Adam Klein, make
sure to plan everything in such a way that allows
audience members to catch each show.
"One thing that's different about Americana
Fest," says Evans, "is that we only have one
venue going at a time... At the Georgia Theatre,
we're doing a free rooftop happy hour, then an
evening show. Other festivals will do multiple
clubs at once."
With their audiences in mind, Evans and
Klein set out to book both traditional and new
fangled Americana acts. Being a big-tent genre,
Americana seems to include artists with a cer
tain historicity, rather than a specific sound or
message, within its ranks. Now, we're left with an imprecise
definition.
"I define Americana as a broad genre of music," says Evans.
"I know some people try to narrow it down, but... we just
try to stick with bands that have some attachment to roots
music. We have two or three blues bands playing, two or three
bluegrass bands playing, then we have other bands that have
drifted further from the roots. But you can still sense that
connection."
Perhaps it detracts from the meaning of the word "genre"
even to refer to Americana as one—we might, more precisely,
refer to it as a musical tradition. Blues and bluegrass are
certainly two sonically distinct styles, but they both form
the roots of modern American music. As Evans says, blues
is "essentially American music, in that it spawned rock and
roll, jazz and all these other things that came out of that
tradition."
With a festival that's had steady growth year after year,
audiences can expect to see some new and interesting talent.
several others. More broadly, he indicates that a new sonic
addition has been added to this year's fest:
"We do have a few artists playing this year that are a
little more poppy, like Ruby Kendrick and Thayer 3arrano...
We wajited to include a little bit of everything, especially the
things that are acoustically based."
Besides satiating the Americana junkie's appe
tite, the festival's organizers aim to "let people
know just how much of this stuff is actually in
Athens."
"The original purpose," says Evans, "was just
to bring everybody together and have an event
that really celebrates this kind of music and
brings attention to it."
It must be difficult to decide "who's been
representing Americana music in Athens over
the past year," and Evans and Klein regretfully
"couldn't get to everybody" this time around.
"Eventually," says Evans, "we want to get every
body who wants to play in on it." He adds, "For
our purposes, we're just trying to get music that
is rooted in America and bands that appreciate
that once they move past the roots."
Hopefully, tradition will be simultane
ously honored and bastardized to Athenians'
satisfaction.
In years past, New West Records has provided the Americana
Fest organizers with various items to raffle out, acting as an
informal sponsor of sorts. This year, the label is talcing on a
more active role by providing the festival with a freshly signed
duo. The Mastersons, a husband-wife-indie-country-folk act
that dropped its debut album, Birds Fly South, less than a
month ago, will be moonlighting at Americana Fest—by day,
they compose part of Steve Earle's backing band.
Evans can hardly begin to list the bands he's most looking
forward to; he seems excited about every act, new and old. *1
think it's cool that Shonna Tucker from Drive-By Truckers is
kind of branching out on her own," he says. He also mentions
Sans Abri ("a spinoff of the Packway Handle Band"), Shovels
and Rope (cf Charleston, SC, one of Evans' favorite bands) and
Kevin Craig
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APRIL 18,2012 • FLAGPOLE.COM 17