Weekend of local rock volume 73

For this installment I return with a look at some of the music from the Good Beer Festival. Unfortunately I missed the more enticing (to me) half of the music on Friday evening – a lineup that featured The Permilla Project, Anthony Calamoneri, Uprizing, and Petting Hendrix.

These festivals always provide a helpful musical guide. It makes the job of a blogger so much easier.

So the first act of my day there was the solo artist Winship.

Winship is a solo artist, but he set a pretty good mood for beer tasting.

What I will say about him is that he was good, but not particularly memorable good. I think part of that was getting my food while he was playing, which meant I wasn’t always close by the stage. He would have been a good fit for the old “bar stage,” which used to be a home for acoustic acts before they consolidated stages. I guess I’ll go with “elevated but easygoing style.”

Next up was the band billed as the Mark DeRose Band.

The sign said Mark DeRose Band, but Mark said it was Dreadnought Brigade. I like that better anyway.

Dreadnought Brigade was the band I actually got to sit down and listen to, and I enjoyed them. While they did a sampling of originals, they made a lot of friends by putting a good spin on classics like The Way It Is (the old Bruce Hornsby song), Jet Airliner (Steve Miller) and a neat version of the Johnny Cash tune Ring of Fire.

The next band may have grown up listening to Johnny Cash, but they were far more modern.

I was talking to someone when Six Pack Rodeo came out. If the name didn’t give them away, the hats did.

I gotta be honest with you…modern country isn’t my cup of tea. They went over with me like a can of Bud Light would in the middle of this beer festival. Yeah, I remember Six Pack Rodeo playing a Skynard cover but I had pretty much tuned them out by the time I left. I’m sure they’re nice guys and solid musicians but I wasn’t into it.

Like I said, Friday presented the better musical options, although as part of what seemed like excessive cost cutting they dropped a half-hour of music off each day of the GBF (not to mention the dual stages a couple years back.) But one thing I can say is that they avoided using overly local bands for the Saturday show as two hailed from Virginia and one from Pennsylvania. (Speaking of bands from the Keystone State, it’s a shame that Smokin’ Gunnz is no more because they would have filled that last slot really well.)

So the next WLR installment for tomorrow talks about the Autumn Wine Festival, but I will have a special (and appropriate for the day) added surprise.