Bowling Green’s free, top rated, 3 day, fine arts and music festival will kick off its 23rd year, ushering in Candandian rockers, the Sheepdogs, for as the Friday night headliner, playing The Main Stage at 10pm.
Like their fond, familiar namesakes, Canadian rockers the Sheepdogs have wandered far and wide in their dozen years. In 2011 the then-unsigned Americana quintet won a contest putting them on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine.
Zeros to heroes
After several albums and years of relatively anonymous touring, the Sheepdogs became overnight sensations. The band won three Juno awards [the Canadian Grammy] in 2012, including one for their re-released 2010 third album, Learn & Burn.
After recording their eponymous 2012 fourth album with The Black Keys’ Pat Carney, they’re preparing to release the self-produced Future Nostalgia in October. The album continues to mine classic southern rock boogie, and the title refers both to those musical inspirations and the accelerating pace of fads.
“The music we play is very much associated with nostalgia— music of the 60s and 70s,” says Gullen. “But, now a lot of people have nostalgia for the 90s and even early 2000s, and it seems like nostalgia gets closer and closer to the modern day. We were joking, ‘How soon until nostalgia is tomorrow?’”
On the blues slide
The Sheepdogs headline Friday’s Black Swamp mainstage, alongside Motor City funk-revivalists the Infatuations, soul and world music loving midwest rocker Paul Cebar and Chicago blues guitarist Studebaker John.
Saturday night is highlighted by some spectacular slide guitar work by The Slide Brothers and Sonny Landreth, playing “sacred steel” a lap steel guitar method developed in Pentecostal churches by artists like Grammy-nominated Robert Randolph and the Family Band.
Self-taught on the slide, Landreth saw B.B. King, Clifton Chenier and Jimi Hendrix performed while he was still in high school, deeply impressing upon him the need to be eclectic and explore.
“You have to be willing to take risks— be vulnerable and take those chances and push yourself in those different directions,” Landreth says. “That’s how you grow and come up with new ideas.”
“It’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a while. There’s nothing like a good housecleaning, then you come back for a reboot,” he laughs, suggesting the album was about more than repackaging some old blues tunes (and penning a few new ones). “It was about rediscovering that which inspired me in the first place.”
A whole weekend of fun
Saturday will also feature performances pop/roots singer-songwriter Randy Bramblett, folk/jangle-pop champ and frequent Alejandro Escovedo collaborator, Chuck Prophet, and rising L.A. roots/bar-rock trio Patrolled by Radar, among others. Sunday’s shorter, four-band bill, caps an impressive weekend with performances by 60s icons, Mike Love of the Beach Boys and rockabilly guitarist Bill Kirchen, most famously of Commander Cody and his Airmen.
Besides three stages for live music, there will be a beer garden, plenty of vendors and over 150 booths of local artists participating int the juried show. Other draws include the Bowling Green Rotary Club’s high school chalk walk competition and other children’s activities, including creating tye-dye shirts, shadow boxes, hanging mobiles and personalized hats in the Kiwanis Youth Arts Village.
The 2015 Black Swamps Arts Festival will kick off on Friday, September 11 and run through Sunday, September 13.
For more information on set times and event schedules, visit blackswampfest.org.
