Wakarusa festival hopes locals recognize the big deal next door

intern — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 17:51:00 -0400

June 4, 2008

If you’ve been to any of the previous Wakarusa Music and Camping Festivals, this year’s won’t be much different from the others, said Brett Mosiman, the festival’s founder. There’s one exception: The campground will be a little less populated, and you can blame $4-a-gallon-gas for most of that.

“Not a lot is new,” Mosiman said. “We’ve rearranged some tents and the placements of stages, but in general the layout will look familiar to everyone. We have five stages, about 125 bands, around 300 hours of music and the music goes on until 4 a.m.

“We do expect the out-of-state attendance to be down a bit, which is what most people in the touring and travel industry are expecting this summer. People are going to stay closer to home this summer. Overall, we’re hoping to do similar numbers as last year but with fewer people in the campgrounds.”

He hopes that nesting trend means more music fans from Topeka to Kansas City and beyond will attend the area’s biggest music festival.

“For the last few years we’ve been working on getting more local people out and getting them to realize there’s a world-class festival in their backyards,” he said. “That plan is bearing some fruit: Our single-day ticket sales have increased about 400 percent over the past couple of years.

“Think about it: On Friday alone, on one stage you have the Flaming Lips, Cake, Built to Spill and Mates of State,” he said. “Shows with fewer bands do more than 8,000 people at City Market. And that doesn’t include the stage with Blackalicious, Arrested Development and Del the Funky Homosapien. So it’s an amazing value for $50 to $60.”

Long-time festivalgoers will notice one more thing that is different — and more like it used to be: Split Lip Rayfield, now a trio, will close this year’s festival, renewing a tradition that ended last year, when guitarist Kirk Rundstrom died.

“It’ll be good to see them back,” said Mosiman, who helps manage the band.

Some recommendations:

Today

Only four stages are open, but the opening-day lineup is strong, especially in the Revival Tent, starting at 1:30 p.m. Big Smith, Donna the Buffalo, Robert Bradley’s Blackwater Surprise and Limbeck.

7:45 p.m.: Old-school soul/R&B singer Bettye LaVette, Sun Up Stage. She’s Tina T. at one-third the price.

10 p.m.: Buckethead, Revival Tent.

Also recommended: The lineup all day in the Prairie Tent, which includes some hardcore country-punk bands and bluegrass acts like Head for the Hills, Uncle Monk (featuring Tommy Ramone) and Deadman Flats.

Friday

1:30 p.m.: Paw, Revival Tent. In the early ’90s, this Lawrence band was poised to break into the big-time. It was ordained “the next Nirvana,” then signed a big-label deal with A&M Records. Things never panned out, though. This will be the band’s first performance in years.

3 p.m.: A five-hour hip-hop festival, Revival Tent. It starts with Del the Funky Homosapien, then Blackalicious (4:45 p.m.) and Arrested Development (6:30 p.m.).

4:15 p.m.: Built to Spill, Sundown Stage. Doug Martsch’s unfiltered-indie-rock band is now 16 years old, yet it sounds as invigorated and relevant as ever.

5:30 p.m.: The DeWayn Brothers, Prairie Stage. They’re from Kansas; they play rabid Flint Hill-country music.

7:45 p.m.: Pete Francis, Sun Up Stage. When he sticks to the contemporary singer/songwriter vibe, Francis (of the band Dispatch) resembles guys like Pete Yorn, Jason Collett and Lloyd Cole

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