Live Review: Can the Outlandia Music Festival compete with the other big fests?

Category: Reviews — Tags: , — @ 11:41 am August 12, 2024
Buffalo Tom performs at Outlandia Festival, Aug. 10, 2024.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Putting on a music festival is a giant gamble. Every decision is an educated guess that will either pay off in spades or aid in your demise. 

It starts with the location, and in the Outlandia Music Festival’s case, that choice was the right one. Falconwood Park is a bucolic, pastoral paradise uniquely suited to host a multi-day music fest. You can read about Falconwood and its history right here.

But after that, it’s all a roll of the dice.

Will the lineup attract a large audience? Are the bands too obscure or have they played in the area too often?

Are the tickets correctly priced? How’s the economy? Do fans have available cash to make the buy? Is there a competing event that could lure away their dollars?

How about marketing? Where was the festival marketed and was enough spent to get the word out? 

Every dollar is a gamble, from facility and production costs to personnel and security arrangements. Nothing is cheap. 

And then, after all that, there’s Mother Nature, because scorching heat or soaking rain does not entice participation in an outdoor event. 

If you make all the right decisions and the stars align, the only thing left is to execute the plan, and the Outlandia folks definitely know how to execute. 

One of the biggest wild cards was weather, and Outlandia drew aces.  The sky was partly cloudy and temps were in the 70s Saturday afternoon when I visited Falconwood Park. The main festival site felt like a small village. Concert-goes walked to the stage area with folding chairs while festival personnel zipped around the small paved paths in golf carts escorting guests from the parking area to the VIP section or the sponsor cabins. 

A view toward Outlandia’s VIP section with confetti in the foreground.

In the back of the compound were the usual food trucks and beer stands as well as merch tents and other vendors scattered around the perimeter. Beyond the long row of port-a-johns, a triangle of dudes played frisbee in the open field. Everywhere tangled in the brown and green grass were scraps of colored paper – the remnants of the previous night’s Flaming Lips’ confetti cannons. 

The festival suffered a bit of a set-back the previous day when J. Mascis announced he couldn’t play Saturday because of the death of close friend Dave Swetapple, bassist for Witch, Eerie and Sweet Apple, a band that includes Mascis. The schedule change pushed Buffalo Tom back to 5:30. 

Buffalo Tom’s Bill Janovitz performs at Outlandia Festival Aug. 10 while one of Omaha’s coolest sound guys looks on.

The trio of guitarist Bill Janovitz, bassist Chris Colbourn and drummer Tom Maginnis may have looked grayer than they did in the mid-‘90s when their best albums were released, but they didn’t sound any different. They ripped into a greatest hits set that included just about every song any Buffalo Tom fan would want to hear, played to tight perfection. The only thing missing were a couple songs the band had hoped to play with Mascis, who helped produce their first two albums.

I can’t comment on the lighting but the sound was pristine. Outlandia’s huge stage gave the band plenty of room to roam, though they rarely strayed from their fixed positions. About 75 or so stood by the stage while a couple hundred sat behind the “No Chair Zone” area 50 yards or so from the stage. Dozens more sat off of stage-right in the Outlandia VIP section.

The crowd beyond Outlandia’s No Chair Zone.

Execution-wise, Outlandia appeared to be a home run. But what about the numbers?

Tyler Owen, one of festival’s organizers, said he heard they had around 5,000 in the park for the weekend, but doesn’t have the data yet or the plan for 2025. Owen said during our recent interview for Flatwater Free Press that this year’s Outlandia was “make or break.” I talked to another organizer who said that’s the case every year. 

As Owen said, Outlandia has everything it needs to be as successful as Iowa’s Hinterland Music Festival. I searched in vain to find attendance numbers for 2024’s Hinterland, held last weekend, but instead only found article after article that reported complaints about how the enormous crowds put a strain on the festival’s resources, this despite humid temps in the mid-90s throughout the weekend. I’ve heard past festivals drew well over 15,000.

What I do know is that Hinterland quickly sold out their allotment of 3-day General Admission passes on the strength of their line-up, which included major indie artists Chappell Roan, Ethel Cain, The Last Dinner Party, Orville Peck, Blondshell, Vampire Weekend, Hozier, Mt. Joy and more – a line-up that must have cost a gazillion dollars to book. 

If Outlandia had booked just the top three of the above list of artists, they might have doubled their attendance this year. But at what cost?

And at the end of the day, even with that star power, it’s all a gamble.

From behind the lawn chair zone looking toward the Outlandia stage.

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2024 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

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The Flaming Lips, Head and the Heart, The Revivalists headline 2024 Outlandia Festival…

Category: Blog — Tags: , , , , — @ 8:50 am March 29, 2024
Flaming Lips at The Maha Music Festival, Aug. 17, 2013. The band headlines the 2024 Outlandia Festival Aug. 9.

by Tim McMahan, Lazy-i.com

Well I did call them “totally wrong guesses” in yesterday’s blog, didn’t I?…

About four hours after I posted my totally wrong guesses yesterday I received the embargoed line-up announcement for the two-day 2024 Outlandia Festival, Aug. 9-10. Only two bands mentioned in the blog are in the line-up. 

Among them, the Flaming Lips, who will headline the first night. As mentioned, the band just played at Steelhouse Omaha last summer. That show wasn’t a sellout; in fact Steelhouse offered BOGO tickets leading up to the date. Despite that, the Lips are known for their pageantry and outrageous well-staged special effects, confetti, that sort of thing, moreso than their music, which is a shame because their pre-Yoshimi albums are prog-rock gems. Expect grand spectacle.

The Saturday night headliners are The Head and the Heart and The Revivalists – a band I’d not heard of prior to this announcement. Head and the Heart just played Pinewood Amphitheater seven months ago with Father John Misty. They have a huge fanbase for a style of music that can only be described as Adult Contemporary. The Revivalists is an 8-piece “collective” that describes its sound as “soulful.” Their mega-hit, “Wish I Knew You,” — a song destined to be heard the next time you’re shopping at your neighborhood Baker’s — topped the Billboard Adult Alternative Songs chart. Fun fact: Revivalists used to be on Wind-up Records, the original home of the band Commander Venus (but that’s another story); now they’re on Concord Records. Hmmm. 

Here’s the remainder of the line-up for this year’s festival: 

Friday, with The Flaming Lips: 

Men I Trust – Yet another band I hadn’t heard prior to this announcement. Led by singer/songwriter Emma Proulx, the Canadian trio’s last studio album, Untourable Album, was self-released in 2021 — warm, shimmery, electro-indie-pop that reminds me of Khruangbin, which makes sense since they released a split live album with Khruangbin last year.  

The Faint – Our hometown heroes are back. Next month, they celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the release of Doom Abuse, and the 20th anniversary of Wet From Birth. If you’re thinking ‘Hey, didn’t they play Outlandia last year?’ you’d be right. And I bet that performance is what got them asked back for an encore this year.

Aussie band Vacations has been kicking around since 2010 but only recently broke through in the states with “Next Exit,” a song they’ve been playing the shit out of on Sirius XMU. Veterans of Nettwerk Records, their latest, No Place Like Home, was released on No Fun Records this past January. I’m beginning to see a trend with all this adult contempary-style indie pop. 

Real Estate – They played the inaugural Outlandia Festival in 2022 and their latest album, Daniel (2024, Domino Records), is an early favorite of mine so far this year – sweet, laid-back indie rock. A band that frankly used to bore the shit out of me, their sound has really grown over the past couple years. 

In the local band spot opening the day is Twinsmith, who released a couple albums on Saddle Creek Records, including 2017’s Stay Cool

Saturday with The Head and the Heart and The Revivalists:

Dinosaur Jr. J Mascis and company are ‘90s rock royalty whose albums Green Mind (1991, SST), Where You Been (1993, SST), and Without a Sound (1994, Blanco y Negro/Sire), were part of every young college dude’s CD collection. I’ll be curious to see who’s playing with Mascis in this interation of D Jr.

Flipturn – If you’re thinking, “Hey, didn’t Flipturn just play at The Slowdown a couple weeks ago?” you would again be right. I hadn’t heard of them before that show. Again, easy-going indie-pop, this time influenced in part by Vampire Weekend. After listening to some tracks, I kind of wish I’d seen them down at Slowdown earlier this month; now I’ll have another chance.

Buffalo Tom — I didn’t know this classic ‘90s college rock band was even still together. Back-to-back albums Let Me Come Over (1992) and Red Letter Day (1993) were impossible to miss at the time of their release. Their sound encampsulated early post-grunge college music and Let Me Come Over was one of the first records I reviewed for The Note, a music magazine based out of Lawrence where I did my first tour of duty as a music critic. The band just released a new single earlier this month, “New Girl Singing,” and their last proper studio album was 2018’s Quiet and Peace. No doubt this band alone will draw a share of Gen X-aged college music fans.

DeVotchKa – The rousing gypsy folk-rock act has played The Slowdown a number of times over the years. Their last studio album was 2018’s This Night Falls Forever, released on Concord Records (the same label as The Revivalists). Lots of local fans and a rep for putting on a good show.

Kelsey Waldon – Here’s another new one on me. Country music. Waldon is on John Prine’s Oh Boy label. 

The Eye has the honor of being the local band that opens Saturday’s festivities. Fronted by Tyler Owen, one of the folks behind the Outlandia Festival, they play at The Waiting Room every six months or so. I’ve yet to see them, but have heard their cover of New Order’s “Leave Me Alone.”

Overall, this line-up feels more like adult contemporary than indie, though Saturday has a couple Gen X-era aces up its sleeve with D. Jr. and Buffalo Tom. Look, these folks know what they’re doing and this line-up is consistent with what they’ve done the past couple years. For me, the highlights are Buffalo Tom, Real Estate, Vacations, The Faint and D. Jr.

Single-day General Admission tickets are $99 while weekend GA tix are $179 (plus fees, etc.). This year in addition to their VIP tix ($269 single; $469 weekend), Outlandia is offering Ultra VIP tix that include a “merch pack” and a camping pass along with “other surprises” that include exclusive campground performances by as-yet-to-be-named artists. Outlandia says it also revamped its parking layout “to ease the flow of traffic in and out of the park.” VIP/Ultra VIP tix will get direct access from the lot to the VIP area. GA parking will be free again this year. Tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. today at outlandiafestival.com.

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Tonight, Pasadena-based two-piece synth-heavy outfit System Exclusive plays at The Sydney in Benson with Carrellee, Jeff in Leather and Specter Poetics. This four-band bill doesn’t start until 9 p.m. so it’s gonna be long night for someone. $12.

That’s I have for this weekend. If I missed your show, put it in the comments section. Have a great weekend!

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Read Tim McMahan’s blog daily at Lazy-i.com — an online music magazine that includes feature interviews, reviews and news. The focus is on the national indie music scene with a special emphasis on the best original bands in the Omaha area. Copyright © 2024 Tim McMahan. All rights reserved.

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