Pilgrimage Fest 2016 Brings the Heat to Franklin

While the first official day of fall was days earlier, it felt like summer was in full bloom on Saturday when The Spin parked in the neat rows of cars on the grass at Harlinsdale Farm for the first day of Pilgrimage 2016. Temps in Franklin had climbed to the mid-90s, and beer hall patrons were shoulder to shoulder soaking up the shade of the tent.

“Just brutal,” said Pilgrimage co-founder Kevin Griffin of conditions when we saw him later that day.

Over at the Gold Record Road stage, Chicago's Wild Belle proved the timeless appeal of R&B grooves. Their take is flavored with reggae filtered through post-punk — gritty and aggressive, but also supremely nimble. Frontwoman Natalie Bergman howled and moaned her way through love-gone-bad songs from both their 2013 debut Isles and their new album Dreamland, striking a pitch-perfect balance between vulnerable and commanding on standout numbers like “Giving Up On You” and the club-ready dance track “The One That Got Away.”

The Struts took over Gold Record Road next, and the glam-rock four-piece fronted by singer Luke Spiller didn’t disappoint. Clad in black leather pants and a sarong-like billowing top, Spiller has moves like Jagger and a voice like Bon Scott-era AC/DC. During their third song, the clap-happy “Could Have Been Me,” we understood their place on the bill at this multigenerational fest: Though formed in 2009, The Struts sound like a band from 40 years ago.

Meanwhile, the older contingent of the festival scrambled to find any shade available at the Midnight Sun stage for Violent Femmes, who gave the crowd exactly what they wanted by busting out “Blister in the Sun” without hesitation. Although the Femmes released their first new album in 16 years back in March, the group kept their eyes on the '80s, with only a few diversions into newer territory. We had forgotten about the Femmes’ deeply religious second album, though, which took us more by surprise than the band’s newer, They Might Be Giants-sounding pop songs.

Parked next to the wine tent beneath a cluster of maples and tulip poplars, squeezed between two outbuildings from when Harlinsdale was a working farm, the Shady Grove provided a welcome respite from the broiling sun. Enhancing Pilgrimage’s reputation as possibly the most chill festival ever, we spied a woman working on her knitting while youngsters spun each other dizzy on swings hung from the trees.

"I've played a lot of festivals," laughed Cory Branan as he took the stage with the Femmes wafting across the field, "but I have never been so bummed to play across from a band in my life." The sound of one of his all-time favorites pulling out their deep cuts lit a fire under him to turn in one of the most giddily punked-up solo sets we can recall. The ferocity lent itself nicely to drinking songs like “Sour Mash,” though the tone turned more serious for “The Vow,” a song for Branan’s late father slated to appear on a record due sometime in the early spring. But the mood came right back up when Branan pulled out a deep cut of his own, the hard-charging “A Girl Named GO,” to which his little boy Clem danced in the front row.

Shakey Graves, a Southern rocker still touring off 2014’s And the War Came, can be a hard ticket to get. But the strain of two years of near constant touring was evident as he meandered through unrecorded B-sides and battled mechanical issues with his kick drum for the first 30 minutes while a packed audience waited for anything to hang their hat on.

Graves seemed erratic during much of the hour-long set, at one point smashing his guitar to the stage and then dropping to his knees to rip its strings off. Hits like “Perfect Parts,” as good a barnburner as you can get, were tortured with tempo changes and long pauses to the point of losing all momentum. He came to a full stop in the middle of “Pansy Waltz” to talk about those in the audience that had “fucked me over” — a reference we couldn’t decipher and he didn’t elaborate on — and at that point we’d seen enough.

After that, we needed a palate-cleanser, which came in the form of mainlining Grace Potter. She flowed between genres from the disco dancehall of “Delirious” to piano ballads like “Stars” that are near Top 40 country (Potter has even recorded an alternate version with Kenny Chesney). This versatility made for a set that from time to time made us drop our pen and just listen.

But after the hopscotch, Potter settled into a rock-focused second half, grabbing a Gibson Flying V and banging through a number of arena-worthy rockers, including “The Lion the Beast the Beat,” which she recorded with her band the Nocturnals. “When the sun goes down, I start to misbehave,” she explained. Though it’s Potter’s voice that often gets mentioned, her guitar chops also deserve a nod.

You know who didn’t throw any curveballs at the easy-going Franklin crowd? Cake, whose alternative goober rock resonated deeply with aging millennials who remember giggling uncontrollably at “Sheep Go to Heaven” in 1998. While that particular bit of the dream of the '90s didn’t make an appearance during Cake’s festival set, they did lean particularly hard on songs off Fashion Nugget and Comfort Eagle, settling into a sarcastic groove that boiled over into singer John McCrea’s between-song banter.

McCrea, whose reputation for disdainful stage banter precedes him, harped on being able to hear other stages during his set, camera phones (“Why should Google and YouTube get to monetize this shit? Fuck them!” he shouted, as a festival-operated drone camera flew behind the stage), and called “bullshit” on Mexican-Americans being in attendance at the, admittedly pretty white, Pilgrimage Festival. Very edgy, bruh. We peaced out in the middle of “Mexico,” hoping to cop a good spot for Saturday’s main event.

As the sun finally set and the miserable near-Bonnaroo-level heat died down, Beck appeared onstage to close out the first night of Pilgrimage with a return to funky form. Beck seemed to be the best possible headliner, effortlessly bridging Pilgrimage’s folksy vibes and ‘90s alterna-rock roots, juggling both acoustic ballads and up-tempo freak-outs to the delight of olds and youths alike.

Fortunately, there were more of those up-tempo freak-outs, as Beck and his compadres ripped through a set that happily indulged in the funk-forward singles from Guero, Midnite Vultures and Odelay. Nothing against Morning Phase, which Beck mentioned was “especially meaningful to play” in Tennessee due to the record’s Nashville connection, but we came to get down, not get sad.

As it turns out, you can do both, as we learned when we got a bad case of the feels during Beck & Co.’s covers of Bowie's “China Girl” and Prince's “1999” (along with Chic, Kraftwerk and Michael MacDonald jams) in the middle of “Where It’s At.” C’mon, man, you gotta give a warning before you remind us that 2016 has been the absolute pits! At least we have the promise of a new Beck record on the horizon to take the edge off.

As the set wound toward its conclusion, Beck broke out both of his recent singles, the indie-pop dance jam “Dreams” and “Wow,” which sounds a little like what might happen if the Flaming Lips made trap music.

Day 2 got hot, fast, with temperatures that felt even more stifling than the day before. We started with Son Little on the Harpeth River stage, which is inside a white-slatted walking horse arena. Its gray dust and unforgiving exposure made us feel like being gored by a bull would be mercy. But Little, in a white T-shirt tucked into Levi’s, made it worth it, opening solo with his electric on “Joy” and sounding every bit a Hendrix successor. Little, however, is far from a one-trick pony. Many of his other tracks, including crowd favorite “Go Blue Blood Red” from 2015's self-titled album, stray into reggae territory.

Tim Easton was not amused about having to play over Blind Pilot — was it us, or was the Midnight Sun P.A. noticeably louder on Sunday? — and he turned his displeasure into a raucous set of what he called his "gettin’ in trouble songs," including “Don’t Lie” from 2013’s Not Cool and “Elmore James” from his new album American Fork. The tunes stand on their own and are played by a band of ringers on the records, but what this fierce acoustic solo show brought into sharp relief is how goddamn good a guitar player Easton is. When the competing band wrapped up, he shifted tone for the gentle tale of songwriters "Burning Star," which he’d once offered to his East Nashville neighbor Margo Price, and “On My Way,” a sweet lullaby for his daughter.

Over at Gold Record Road, we caught Kevin Griffin’s ‘90s alt-rock hit-makers Better Than Ezra. Kudos to Griffin for resisting the temptation to bill himself on the main stage of his own festival, but it appeared to be his undoing, as the band fought with its mix the entire set, with frustrations visible — and audible — throughout. Sound be damned, the audience sang along with every word.

With “Desperately Wanting” as a send-off we were back to the bullring for Brothers Osborne. Credit the vision of a multi-genre festival that put these pop-country rockers on the bill. Their audience was both passionate and distinct from the indie audiences we’d joined throughout the weekend, even cluing us in to the Brothers’ Dixie Chicks cover of “Goodbye Earl.”

John Osborne, one of the two namesake brothers, plays lead guitar like a hellion, with a heavy blues influence along with a healthy dose of classic rock’s best. He's shit-hot and he knows it, finishing every shredding opportunity with open arms to receive applause. We’ll give it to him.

Putzing around until we found the whiskey, we got to the Midnight Sun stage shortly after Alabama native Anderson East kicked off his mid-afternoon set of Americana-soaked rhythm and blues. The singer-songwriter (and Miranda Lambert’s newest beau) pulled out songs from his broad-ranging catalog, bouncing around all the musical genres you typically hear on NPR’s American Routes. East’s band was bolted down to their groove, when they blind-sided us with a cover of the 1995 Mariah Carey hit “Always Be My Baby.” But then Andy phoned in a pretty timid cover of “I Can See Clearly Now.” Having seen Jimmy Cliff himself play it at the same fest just a year prior, we decided to move on.

By about 3 p.m., the hellish heat had us dreaming of making a pilgrimage to a large body of water — or at least, the mist tent — but the show goes on. City and Colour took the Gold Record Road stage with soaring guitar sounds, but the best instrument onstage during any City and Colour show is Dallas Green’s voice, which manages to sound better live than on record. The quick set leaned into tracks from 2015’s If I Should Go Before You, adding a bluesy dynamic to Green’s indie-folk style. After the Canadian singer-songwriter left the stage, things started to feel more local.

Following a triumphant week at AmericanaFest, Margo Price and band cut loose with a set of class-A country that looked forward as much as it did backward. Would Hank have started the show with a downright funky rendition of Billy Grammer’s “Gotta Travel On,” or have a synthesizer duel with the guitars and harmonica on Jerry Reed’s chicken-pickin’ opus “Swamin’”? Maybe not, but Price’s songs are outstanding and her band is hot as the sun that beat down, and that’s all that seemed to matter to the wildly enthusiastic crowd. The group’s fine-tuned intuition led to highlight after highlight, from a version of the Stax-y “Four Years of Chances” that rocked with the ferocity of “Foxey Lady” to the industry kiss-off “This Town Gets Around” with a newly-acquired Cajun flavor, from a tender rendition of Doug Sahm’s “Give Me Back the Key to My Heart” to a fire-breathing take on Loretta Lynn’s “Rated X.”

Langhorne Slim and his band the Law opened to a lean crowd, but still had plenty of devotees. Slim is fond of long, rambling talks over chords as he introduces his songs, but so are his fans, so it works out. After playing most of the set with the band, he gave them a break and played “Song for Sid,” a eulogy for his deceased grandfather, on his own. It was beautiful and surprisingly moving despite the sweat rivulets running down our back.

It must say something about the health of country music — a certain segment of it, anyway — that just as reigning It Girl Margo Price neared the end of her set, fellow trad-country revivalist Kacey Musgraves was walking onstage across the farm. Accompanied by her bolo-tied backing band and neon cacti, Musgraves played a set heavy on tunes from 2015’s Pageant Material with the obligatory tracks “Merry Go Round” and “Follow Your Arrow” from her hit debut Same Trailer Different Park. But what made the show special was a handful of covers mixed in throughout the set: Miranda Lambert’s “Mama’s Broken Heart,” which Musgraves co-wrote; Gnarls Barkley’s mid-Aughts smash “Crazy”; Bob Marley and the Wailers’ “Three Little Birds"; and Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Are Made for Walking,” which served as a suitable closer.

With the slowly sinking sun in their eyes, The Arcs came out like a band of psychedelic desperados armed with guitars and drumsticks. This time, Dan Auerbach and band appeared without the mariachi trio Flor de Toloache in their corner, but they did boast pedal steel master Russ Pahl as a special guest. Our only real complaint is that most of his time onstage was spent playing a rhythm guitar that was buried in a mix that had to balance twin drum kits, dubby liquid keyboards and Richard Swift’s eerie Ennio Morricone falsetto vocals — not to mention riffing and gnarly solos from Auerbach. We got our fix after about half an hour, when Pahl moved over to steel to rip tasty auto-wah solos during their cover of Gary U.S. Bonds’ “I Wanna Holler.”

The gravel ground in front of the Harpeth River stage didn’t stop folks from getting down for the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. The hot jazz combo has become a staple of the music festival circuit, appealing to the broad spectrum of festies and normies alike. Always a favorite for potential guest spots, the NOLA supergroup brought out members of Houston neo-soulsters The Suffers for an extra layer of horns and voices. The vibes were getting funky, but we had to step out in order to catch Jason Isbell.

If you’ve ever seen Isbell and his stalwart backing band the 400 Unit live, you know what came next was great. Fans who have turned out to his annual sold-out Ryman residencies (Three nights? Four nights?) react to the first chords of just about every song — be it from Southeastern, his latest Something More Than Free or old tunes from his days with Drive-By Truckers — as if they were each his biggest hit, and cheer as he identifies each member of what must be the most warmly introduced band in the business.

That group almost always includes Isbell’s wife, Amanda Shires, but on Sunday night the couple’s one-year-old daughter, Mercy, got an introduction, too, which only added to the familial dynamic that takes hold at a Jason Isbell show. That’s not to say it’s all earnestness and Americana poetry. At one point in the evening, having spotted a drone hovering toward the back of the crowd, Isbell pointed it out to the crowd: “I thought T Bone told y’all to cut that shit out,” he said, warning that the legendary producer might shoot it out of the sky “with a blunderbuss.” If only.

There seemed like no better way to cap off the day than with catchy, ubiquitous soul-pop under an orange-and-purple-streaked Tennessee sunset, as Daryl Hall and John Oates took the stage for the final headlining set of Pilgrimage 2016. The rapid-fire stream of mega-hits started with an arty, slack-paced version of “Maneater," and eventually came the real Murderers’ Row of adult-contemporary classics: a prog-tinged version of “I Can’t Go for That (No Can Do),” segued into a buoyant “Rich Girl” followed by an uppercut of “You Make My Dreams.”

We noticed that their set list hasn’t really changed since they played the Ryman a few years back. Mr. Hall may not always have the same ability to hit the notes that he once did, but his hair still looks fantastic. The band left the stage, but the festies chanted for more. Hall and Oates eventually came out, seemingly so that Daryl could plug the next season of his show, Live From Daryl’s House, but then they pulled out two last classics: “Kiss on My List” and “Private Eyes.” The house music came up, and when we heard it was a terrible Bonnie Raitt cover, we knew it was time to jet.