The Blue Moon, Artmosphere, Sadie's, and Cedar Deli with Bordens host Geronimo Music Festival
Acadiana is no stranger to festivals. When spring hits there's practically one every weekend celebrating everything from crawfish to crayons. This weekend the Geronimo Music Festival celebrates independent rock and roll music. In two short years, the Geronimo Music Festival has become one of Lafayette's best gatherings for local and regional bands who specialize in creating original music that challenges the listener. "Geronimo is designed to display and celebrate the area's rock & roll, indie, and modern progressive music and art movement," says Tiffany Lamson, one of the festival organizers. This ain't the stuff you'll hear on commercial radio. These bands play unorthodox, sometimes loud, sometimes soft, sometimes discordant music that has few things in common - other than a resilience to create - with the dominant Cajun and zydeco musical culture that fills the landscape. "The aim here is to make a blatant artist social statement of We're here, we're loud, we're extremely talented, and we're not going to stop partying until this music scene is successful in the ways that we see fit,'" says Lamson. Whether or not you like this music, it exists. And it has existed here in some form or another since the late '60s when anti-establishment, non-commercial rock and roll bands began playing bars around the McKinley Strip. From the 1970s on, succeeding generations followed the alternative template, forming their own parallel subcultures of punk, metal, garage, goth, burnout, screamo, and hippie bands among others. These are musicians who have, for one reason or another, elected to take the road less traveled, gigging in dive bars, tiny clubs, and house parties over the years. At Geronimo, you'll see a lot of them. The bill is packed with inventive bands from around the state. When organizing a fest with this many bands, you're never going to be able to please everybody; however, there are a few notable omissions from the line-up - Blast Rag, Really Really, Foul Stench of Youth, just to name a few, are not on the bill - all bands that represent "the scene" as much as anyone in this town. That might raise an eyebrow or two given that half of the Geronimo roster is made up of New Orleans bands. "We hope a lot of networking goes down, because both cities could benefit greatly from some show swaps." Hear, Hear. The act of putting on an event that incorporates multiple clubs and numerous bands is ambitious and deserves to be saluted; moreover, the desire to bring in bands from other cities, could subsequently benefit the scene if the favor is returned in kind. Considering that "bigger city" bands - often afflicted with a kind of urban egocentricity - historically tend to be somewhat cold, methodically polite, lazily aloof, or just lackadaisically snide toward "smaller city" bands, it'll be interesting to see if New Orleans, and Lafayette for that matter, steps up or sits down. Regardless, there's gonna be a ton of killer bands at this thing, from Dax Riggs to Rex Moroux, from Rotary Downs to FIGHTS, Wildfires, Glasgow, and One Man Machine plus a lot more. It's going to be pretty rad. If want to peep out a cross-section of the regional independent music scene, in its current incarnation, you'd be well advised to make it out to the Geronimo Festival on March 6. Combining a mix of Lafayette and New Orleans underground bands, the festival takes place at three downtown Lafayette music venues (Blue Moon Saloon, Artmosphere, and Sadie's) plus an outdoor stage between Borden's and Cedar Deli. Do it. Come out. Rock.
Cedar Stage & Borden's Marketplace
1:15 Calico & The Off Brand Band
2:15 One Man Machine
3:15 OhJ
4:30 Secret Annexe
5:45 Nawlins' Johnny's
6:30 Caddywhompus vs.B.L.A.C.K.I.E.
**
Blue Moon Acoustic Stage**
2:45 Honey Pillow
4:00 DD & the Sensations
5:15 Alexis Marceaux & friends
6:15 Rex Moroux
Blue Moon
5:00 GIVERS
6:30 Sun Hotel
7:30 Frau Eva
8:30 The Viatones
10:30 Dax Riggs
Artmosphere
5:45 Big Sky
6:45 The Gills
7:45 Rotary Downs
8:45 Glasgow
9:45 Sean Bruce Band
10:45 Big Rock Candy Mountain
12:00 Bird City
1:00 FIGHTS
Sadie's
7:00 I, Octopus
8:00 The Melters
9:00 Fleur De Tease
10:15 The Chauvinists
11:15 Prom Date
12:30 Wildfires
Sadies Upstairs
Unicorn Fukr
Smurl
Kriznis
DJ Moon
Yellow
Hardin
Herb Christopher