Next Big Nashville: State of the Art

The first thing we noticed when perusing the lineup for the second Next Big Nashville festival was the sheer number of acts—some 130—slated to take stages all over the city over the next four days.It got us thinking about the various pockets and cliques kicking around, and the staggering largeness of a music scene that still manages on certain nights to feel more like a ghost town than a hotbed of musical activity.

No matter. The bands showcasing their goods the next few days not only represent nearly every imaginable stage of a music career—bright young things to career revivalists—but also every imaginable level of ambition.

Nashville’s rock scene is at odds with itself, unsure of its definition of success and quick to rabble-rouse—but maybe those are just growing pains. We see it as a necessary tension, the sort of competition among rivals that spurs a few good men and women on to greatness. And like the rock genre itself, our scene is an umbrella large enough to house typical pop-rock fare, metal, the experimentally bent, the singer-songwriter and the joke band.

And the good news is that our scene just keeps getting bigger and more diverse, as evidenced by the astonishing number of transplants—from upstarts such as Katie Herzig and Jeremy Lister to veterans such as Freedy Johnston—moving to Nashville to carve out a living in something other than twang.

And, of course, we’ve got an ever-expanding crop of locals: veteran acts such as The Features who keep the scene honest, and hustlers such as The Pink Spiders (whose singer/guitarist Matt Friction hosts a showcase for his Geffen imprint, Mean Buzz, at Exit/In), who still manage to piss off everyone each time they inch toward that brass ring. There are newcomers dancing the line between art and comedy, such as electronic poppers Plastic Clap! (we still can’t tell if the joke’s on us), delightfully amped-up young side projects such as Turbo Fruits, sprung from the head of Be Your Own Pet guitarist Jonas Stein, indie-pop singer-songwriters such as Brooke Waggoner and Cortney Tidwell, offbeat, irreverent performers such as The Mattoid, new wave loyalists Plex Plex, and too many more to cover here.

But you’ve heard about most of those performers before. What follows are 10 bands we haven’t covered enough or at all, acts who have been quietly building buzz and piling up praise and recommendations until we can’t ignore them anymore. You can’t see all 130 bands playing over the next few days—who would want to?—but you can see these 10. Think of them and the festival as a developing snapshot of where Nashville’s rock scene is now and where it’s headed: yeah, it’s a little uneven, and plenty blurry around the edges, but it’s coming into focus a little more each year.

THURSDAY, 6TH

Those Darlins

No matter. The bands showcasing their goods the next few days not only represent nearly every imaginable stage of a music career—bright young things to career revivalists—but also every imaginable level of ambition.

Nashville’s rock scene is at odds with itself, unsure of its definition of success and quick to rabble-rouse—but maybe those are just growing pains. We see it as a necessary tension, the sort of competition among rivals that spurs a few good men and women on to greatness. And like the rock genre itself, our scene is an umbrella large enough to house typical pop-rock fare, metal, the experimentally bent, the singer-songwriter and the joke band.

And the good news is that our scene just keeps getting bigger and more diverse, as evidenced by the astonishing number of transplants—from upstarts such as Katie Herzig and Jeremy Lister to veterans such as Freedy Johnston—moving to Nashville to carve out a living in something other than twang.

Like many rockers before them, Murfreesboro’s Those Darlins play country music for laughs, but their renditions of Carter Family and Merle Travis songs avoid parody. Kentucky native Jessi Z. Wariner met Kelley Anderson at Murfreesboro’s Southern Girls Rock ’n’ Roll Camp—which Anderson founded—and soon enough hooked up with Nikki Kvarnes, a singer and ukulele player from Virginia. Coming from musical families, the trio had absorbed the punk and classic rock of their parents, and Wariner, the group’s guitarist, learned country standards from her grandfather. Once they heard the Carter Family, the trio set out to reinterpret the likes of A.P. Carter’s “Little Darling Pal of Mine” and Jerry Irby’s “Drivin’ Nails in My Coffin.” It’s a typical tale of imaginative musicians looking for fresh kicks within the context of a tradition that was never as staid as historians would lead you to believe. They’re too young to indulge in revivalism—at 24, Anderson is the oldest Darlin—and their live show finds the trio hamming it up and getting rowdy in the time-honored spirit of rock ’n’ roll.