Tyler Walker is just about the most ambitious dude in Nashville. Somewhere between running his own music venue/art collective (Queen Ave.), touring across America (as Meth Dad) and making his own brand of ultra-postive sea-punky jams, he managed to plan a bicycle-powered music festival that claims a vast swath of East Nashville as its grounds. Somebody give that dude a medal, because he knocked it out of the park with this year’s Tour de Fun. Now in its fifth year (and its second transplanted to East Nashville from Murfreesboro), Tour de Fun is a well-oiled machine that this year managed to coordinate 29 bands, 10 venues and hundreds of cyclists without so much as breaking a sweat. You know who did break a sweat? The Spin did. Holy shit, did we sweat.
We huffed and puffed our way to Riverside Village just in time to catch the final bit of Ojio, who served as a post-rock starting gun for the bicycle shenanigans that were about to transpire. The 45 seconds or so of Ojio’s math-y instrumental rock sounded pleasant enough, but we were mostly just relieved that the pack hadn’t left us behind.
Quichenight at Foobar Too
After winding our way through the side streets of South Inglewood, we landed at FooBar for our first stop on Tour de Fun, where Prophet Nathan was banging out emotive space-rock vibes next to the bar. The core of Prophet Nathan has a familiar twinge of “opener at The Muse in 2002” to it, but with a complexity that’s about as novel as bassist Scott Fernandez’s monstrous 12-string bass. Over in FooBar Too, Quichenight was trading in simpler Big Star-inspired power pop for a growing crowd. Principle member Brett Rosenberg is obviously the star of the Quichenight show, but his backing band — which includes Rosenberg's PUJOL bandmate Daniel Pujol on drums and Fox Fun’s Asher Horton on guitar — really brings those songs to life.
We crossed back over Gallatin to scope Hot Tub Club, which dispensed of performing entirely in favor of giving Tour de Funsters the chance to play with water guns and kiddie pools next to Brandon Jazz’s freshly spray-painted gold car. We really hope that the babies playing in the swimming pools couldn’t understand HTC’s filthy (but fun) lyrics, which were blasting out of a P.A. in The East Room’s parking lot.
Mom and Dad
Back on the road, the pack descended upon The Groove and Dino’s for sets by folkies Don Coyote, gutter punks Mouth Reader and indie-pop darlings Mom and Dad. We managed to catch little bits of each, but our main event on Stop 2 was Sainthood and RI¢HIE, performing outside of Barista Parlor. Sainthood has only been around for a handful of months, but they’re already figuring out a charming pop formula that draws from the disco-influenced rock of the early 2000s. RI¢HIE frontman Richie Kirkpatrick followed with a handful of songs dedicated to riding bikes and partying, backed up by bassist Jon Shoemaker and TDF MVP Jeff Ehlinger, who played drums in no fewer than three bands that day.
Down in Five Points, the party converged on The 5 Spot, where Chalaxy and Linear Downfall were set to perform in a neon-duct-tape-covered psychedelic vortex. The best compliment we can pay to Chalaxy, who blew us away, is that they sound like The Mars Volta with restraint. The second-best compliment we can pay is that it felt like being at Bonnaroo, right down to the dope in boat shoes who asked us if we knew where he could buy some molly. Linear Downfall’s angular, Wayne Coyne-approved experimental psychedelia followed, but we booked it over to the Grassy Knoll to catch what wound up being the last chords of what sounded like one hell of a team-up between Idle Bloom and Churchyard. Damn it.
Chalaxy at The 5 Spot
After a breather (and a sandwich) in the Edgefield smoke dungeon, we rejoined the party at Crying Wolf to catch Body of Light, the genre-bending duo of brothers Mike and Mitch Kluge with Tyler Walker and Jeff Ehlinger on board. Self-billed as an experimental pop band, Body of Light is one of the most compelling fusions of indie pop and EDM we’ve ever seen. Glitchy and unconventionally time-signatured like 65daysofstatic, the electronic flourishes provided by Walker meld into the conventions of pop music seamlessly. It never felt like a gimmick, but rather an essential component of the music. That’s impressive, to say the least.
Terror Pigeon Dance Revolt at Crying Wolf
As the sun began to set, the festival wound down with a one-two positivity punch in the form of Terror Pigeon Dance Revolt and Meth Dad. Terror Pigeon, which featured a band mostly drafted earlier that morning (including Sainthood’s “Muscle” Bruce Ervin), brought the party through sheer force of will. Lead Terror Pigeon Neil Frith paraded out into the crowd, incited sing-alongs, started a dance party under an enormous sheet and ended his set with one big group-hug. Terror Pigeon takes the goofy outsider pop of bands like Atom and His Package and turns everything up to 11.
Finally, after eight hours of partying across the entirety of East Nashville, Meth Dad’s Tyler Walker and Taylor Jensen appeared onstage to close out Tour de Fun 2015 — calling out on-lookers by name to bring them into the party. The thing about Meth Dad (and really, Tour de Fun as a whole) is that it can only be appreciated as a participant. As soon as you remove yourself from the crowd to, say, gawk smugly from the deck of the Crying Wolf, the magic is gone. For the few dozen folks still standing after a long day of riding, Meth Dad’s closing ceremonies for Tour de Fun were cathartic. For the on-lookers keeping their distance, it probably looked insane. But you know what? Fuck 'em. Tour de Fun 2015 was one of the best parties we’ve experienced, and we’ll be there on the front lines next year. Count on it.
Meth Dad at Crying Wolf
