If local festivals were racehorses,
Festival Palomino is
best in show. Again.
The
Trampled by Turtles-curated festival, held again in the inside greens of the horse racetrack at Canterbury Park in the southwest suburb of Shakopee, triumphed once more in its sophomore year, as a prime example of a highly enjoyable, expertly-run day of music.
 Festival Palomino
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Last year, the two stages were placed on each end of the festival grounds, with each band starting when the previous one finished, though the area was small enough to easily walk to the other stage, or simply turn your head, to experience the next band. This year, the stages (nicknamed ‘Stars’ and ‘Satellites’) were set up next to each other, with a cordoned VIP section in the middle, for a double-barreled look, which also saved the organizers an additional separate set up crew, speaker stack, and front of house board set up.
The result was a little claustrophobic compared to the previous staging, but no less enjoyable, with the only very occasional interference being the sound checking on one stage, bleeding over a couple times to the full performance going on at the other stage. The rest of the festival grounds featured food trucks, traditional and specialty food vendors as well as other beverage and merchandise stands.
With summer’s last breath of warm sunshine in the afternoon followed by the impending fall’s slight chill in the evening, this year’s weather was perfect and a welcome change from the previous year’s storms that evacuated the grounds briefly.
1:30pm Lowest Pair (30 mins)
 Lowest Pair
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Kendl Winter and Palmer T. Lee are a string music/ indie folk duo that was the ideal opener for a day-long event of Americana music as well as being an act with local ties. Lee is a Minneapolis native who first met Winter at a bluegrass festival in Winona and a few years later, their debut album
36¢ (Team Love Records) was produced by TBT’s
Dave Simonett, with latest album
Sacred Heart Sessions (recorded in Duluth), out earlier this year.
Their dual banjo-picking roots sound with gentle harmonies on songs like ‘Irene’ and the new ‘Minnesota Mend Me’, was a worthy appetizer for the full day ahead.
2:05pm Lydia Loveless (35 mins)
 Lydia Loveless
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Columbus, OH native Loveless was next, playing a somewhat dark punk blend of traditional and alt-country, with four-piece band including stand-up bassist and husband, Ben Lamb, in tow.
Her latest full-length is last year’s
Somewhere Else (Bloodshot Records) and her sound on songs like ‘Head’, ‘Chris Isaak’, and ‘Out on Love’, sound like a revv’d up
Maria Mckee (of
Lone Justice fame), or maybe what
Chrissie Hynde would do, if she ever went bluegrass.
2:45pm Calexico (45 mins)
 Calexico
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A refreshing bit of Tex-Mex indie rock was served up midday by Tucson, AZ
Calexico, spotlighting songs from their newest release,
Edge of the Sun (ANTI-/Epitaph Records), and featured seven band members including upright bass and a horn section. 1998’s ‘Frontera’ began their set on a somewhat somber note, but things quickly picked up with ‘Falling From the Sky’, the new album’s opener, and one of three new songs played.
Martin Wenk played some fierce accordion on ‘Sunken Waltz’, the new ‘ Bullets & Rocks’ seemed especially poignant in light of the refugee crisis in Europe, and an “old song from San Piedro, CA”, their cover of
The Minutemen’s ‘Corona’ was a Latin-transformed pleasant surprise. Set ender ‘Cumbia de Donde’ got most in the crowd shuffling in place, transposing them to the Mexico City borough of Coyoacán that inspired the song and the new album.
3:35pm Laura Marling (45 mins)
 Laura Marling
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Adorned in layered whites and pastels with a thin scarf blowing in the wind and golden shoes, UK singer-songwriter
Laura Marling may have been the
best dressed of the day but her storytelling folk songs were what mesmerized the crowd the most.
In support of the this spring’s
Short Movie (Ribbon Music), Marling entranced the hushed crowd starting with opener, ‘Take the Night Off / I Was an Eagle’ and for the next 45 min. with a Joni Mitchell-like set of poetry and folk. Marling remains notoriously shy - not saying much between songs, and probably comforted by the shade covering her face for the first half of her performance.
“We’re gonna do a
Dolly Parton cover… to lighten things up a bit” she said mid set before launching into a butterfly delicate ‘Do I Ever Cross Your Mind?’ She overcame a few feedback issues following, ending somewhat sad but no less resonant on ‘Alpha Shadows’ and 2010’s ‘Rambling Man’.
4:30pm Shakey Graves (45 mins)
 Shakey Graves
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Austin, TX’s
Shakey Graves (aka Alejandro Rose-Garcia) immediately followed on the Stars stage, starting and ending his set as a solo artist, but accompanied by a full band, in-between. Playing his own blend of blues/folk/alt-country and with a large Texas flag draped on a speaker stack, Garcia’s set drew mostly from last fall’s
And the War Came (Dualtone Music Group).
There is a raw fuzziness to his music, evident in his mission to “raise the
turbo out here in the racefield” that he declared early-on, and prompting the crowd for “oohs” and clapping throughout the set. Playing live, the band is more raw and loud than on record, with an additional grittiness added to songs like ‘The Perfect Parts’ and ‘Where a Boy Once Stood’.
A bit gloomy in the narrative
Dylan way, the band ended with the brooding ‘Late July’, about a man murdering his gold-digging wife – “I’m eager, young, and starry-eyed” Garcia sings in the song and with newfound fans discovering his music at the festival, no one can argue with that verse.
5:18 pm Benjamin Booker (45 mins)
 Benjamin Booker
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Dressed unassumingly in a red striped shirt, with cigarette dangling from his mouth, New Orleans’
Benjamin Booker turned everything up in volume for a quaking set of noisy garage rock. Last year’s
self-titled debut album (on ATO Records) still sounds fresh, with his style being a hybrid culmination of his influences which include
The Gun Club, Blind Willie Johnson, and
T. Rex. Booker too, didn’t say much between songs, most artists preferring to let their music do the talking.
Any local fans of early
Replacements or
Hüsker Dü responded in kind to the punk elements of Booker’s music, often done at breakneck speed with raspy vocals and little abandon, but there was also a soul influence shown on his
Otis Redding cover and a swampy country/blues element on ‘Falling Down Blues’, played only with fiddle and mandolin.
Set closer, ‘Have You Seen My Son’ evolved into an almost ten-minute long blitzkrieg crescendo of feedback and guitar jamming before Booker and bandmates casually walked off, like nothing at all had happened.
5:56pm Father John Misty (60 mins)
 Father John Misty
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Any award for sardonic wit and snarkiness has to be given to Father John Misty (aka Josh Tillman), who also delivered a soulful hour-long set that had him in the crowd several times, making an indelible impression. Tillman dressed all in black, with a crack five-piece band, referred cheekily to the venue a couple of times as the “Minneapolis dog-fighting pits”, which got a big laugh.
Opening with the title track of his latest
, I Love You, Honeybear (Sub Pop Records), Tillman and band immediately raised the anthemic level of songs and kept momentum going, for most of his hour-long time.
The always self-effacing Tillman mocked himself for trying to dance with Laura Marling during an instrumental of one of his songs, and intro’d ‘The Night Josh Tillman Came to Our Apt.’ as a “horrible little folk ballad”.
‘I’m Writing a Novel’ had a
Beatles “Paperback Writer”/
Simon and Garfunkel upbeat feel to it, he praised the day as one of “authentic, listener-supported folk rock”, and ‘Bored in the USA’ was pre-empted by tuning at the nearby Satellites stage, prompting Tillman to say “Should we have an
Organ-Off, buddy? – I will not hesitate to strap on a keytar”.
7:10pm Dr Dog (60 mins)
 Dr. Dog
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Pennsylvania’s
Dr. Dog was next, with a hour-long low-fi , feel good, set of indie rock that brought their most devoted fans crushing to get up front. “It’s the right night… for the wrong company” from 2010’s ‘Shadow People’ seemed to be the right lyric as the faithful nudged forward for a better view.
The band hasn’t had a studio album since 2013’s B-Room (ANTI- Records), but did release a live album earlier this year, with new music in the offing soon. Singers Scott McMicken (lead guitar) and Zach Miller (keyboards) traded off on lead vocal chores, with McMicken’s sounding more laid-back and Miller being the higher-pitched of the two.
“You guy’s got a killer sunset out here”, McMicken noticed before ‘Broken Heart’, getting everyone to turn right to see the last rays on the horizon. The band smartly stayed with mostly upbeat songs, culminating with an
Architecture in Helsinki cover of ‘Heart It Races’to end their hour.
8:20pm Trampled by Turtles (90 min.)
 Trampled by Turtles
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Finally, it was time for the headliners to take to the Stars stage, amidst fog, dim lighting, and a still gusty wind. The Duluth band started introspectively, with the title track to last year’s
Wild Animals (BanjoDad Records) but soon jumped into their trademark hyper-bluegrass with ‘Burn for Free’.
“It’s been quite a day for us, as fans of music” singer Dave Simonett said, finally speaking twenty minutes in, before a harmonizing ‘Empire’. The aching ‘Winners’ about their hometown, seemed appropriate with its opening line, “There were dreams on a full moon night” as a fall chill and clear night embraced the jacketed crowd.
Mandolin player Erik Berry shined on ‘New Son/Burnt Iron’ and bass player Tim Saxhaug took over lead vocals for
The Band’s ‘The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down’- done very faithful to the original, yet with that TBT trademark twang added.
Banjo player Dave Carroll took centerstage for his own ‘Truck’ as the band teased
Outkast’s ‘So Fresh, So Clean’ while tuning up. The string quartet that accompanied the band like last year, reappeared for a haunting ‘Midnight on the Interstate’, rounding out the song with a rousing elegance.
When you thought that couldn’t be topped, the encore of ‘Alone’, complete with a large troupe of bagpipers that took the song into ‘Amazing Grace’, exceeded everyone’s expectations. The only negative was that the stage was still lit so minimally, it was hard to tell just how many people were on stage for the finale, but that didn’t take away from the majestic performance.
And with another successful day in the books, next year’s
Festival Palomino has already started their planning for 2016, which will no doubt be a three-peat, in terms of success. Never has a full day at a horse track sounded so good.
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