Festival Review: 30A Songwriters Festival
I think they might have let me into the artists’ party by mistake at the 30A Songwriters Festival.
I wandered to the back bar of AJ’s Grayton Beach on opening night to check if anyone was performing there. Attendants at the door asked me if I wanted the free drink tickets. Momentarily confused but also not a fool, I said, “why, yes, thank you” and sauntered in.
The room was abuzz with musicians catching up with each other. I greeted a couple and wandered the room, soaking in the atmosphere and catching bits of conversation. These festivals are a treat for artists. So often touring alone, a fest allows them to chill and catch up with friends.
There’s a relaxed vibe throughout the 30A Songwriters Festival. It’s held every year over Martin Luther King Jr. weekend in the Florida panhandle at about 30 venues along 20 miles of Highway 30A. Some 175 performers settle in for the weekend, playing multiple sets. You see them in coffee shops, walking along the beach or attending shows, and they’re often open to a chat or photo.
The festival is chock-a-block with some of the best songwriters alive, both legends and relative unknowns. I could easily have written five or six stories about completely different lineups. Alas, you can’t see everyone. So here are a few of my favorites this year.
The Krickets
The Krickets were the first full set I caught, and just barely. The Beach Happy Cafe was packed, with me and dozens of others on the sidewalk watching and listening through open doors. Even from that remove, the trio’s honey-sweet harmonies brought a lump to my throat at the sheer beauty of it all. They stunned the crowd to rapt silence with “Redbird” and inspired a spontaneous mid-song clap-along to “Guinevere.” The sweetly soulful harmonies of the trio – Emily Stuckey, Lauren Spring and Rachel Grubb – are gorgeous, just gorgeous.
Amy LaVere and Will Sexton
Every festival I attend, I come home evangelizing about an artist. Last year at 30A it was Amy LaVere and Will Sexton. I love their sound – a little bit of soul, a little bit of rock, a hint of jazz, with LaVere’s voice dancing sweetly above the sound of her upright bass and Sexton’s subtle, flashy-only-when-needed guitar work. Shawn Zorn lays down a ready-steady beat and Krista Lynne chimes in with cherry-on-top violin.
At 30A, the band spiked “Last Rock N’ Roll Boy to Dance” with a border-sounding guitar line and performed a smoky version of their wistful love letter to their adopted hometown, “Not in Memphis.” They played three songs planned for an upcoming album: “I Go Dark,” about how couples sometimes drag each other down; “Tiger Lover,” a stalker tale; and “Bad Liars Dance,” of all things a combo political folk song and dance number complete with an “oh-oh-oh-oh” chorus and a packet of “shimmies.” Take my money and gimme that album.
Meg McRee
My evangelizing pick of this year is Meg McRee, a terrific young songwriter who released her debut, Is It Just Me? in spring 2023 and followed with an EP in December, History of Heartbreak. McRee’s songs remind me of Sheryl Crow’s: Deftly written, they feel fresh but also like they’ve always been there. Like putting on your favorite jeans, so comfy they make you feel good all day.
McRee can turn a phrase: “Halfway drunk and halfway sober / he ain’t mine and it ain’t over;” “We got a lot to say but nothing to talk about;” “When we tied the knot, we mighta shoulda tied it in a double knot.” But the rare songwriter can fit a big thought in just a few words, like in “Golden,” where she realizes these are the good old days: “Tomorrow will paint tonight golden.” But my favorite is “Wildflower,” a two-minute meditation on the possessive nature of love: “Could you love somebody for who they are / Not what they are to you?” The crowd at 30A leapt to a standing ovation.
The Pink Stones
You can hear a lot of Waylon Jennings in the Pink Stones. Their covers of “Wurlitzer Prize” and “Rainy Day Woman” at 30A were spot-on and Waylon-worthy. They can play classic country weepers, complete with pedal steel guitar, and hard country rockers. “Who's Laughing Now” is a good-riddance breakup song, and “Baby I'm Still Right Here (With You)” is mid-tempo love song.
But they’re throwing curveballs, with a wink and sense of humor. A synthesizer often takes them in unusual cosmic country directions. Two other covers at 30A exemplify their approach. Buck Owens’ “Before You Go” includes a mid-song freakout, and in George Jones’ “Her Name Is,” a tale of illicit love, the identifying descriptions of the lover are replaced with fast guitar strums. You have to be a master of the craft for musical jokes not to fall flat. The Pink Stones pull it off.
Reverend Shawn Amos & the Brotherhood
I once saw the Reverend Shawn Amos on an outdoor stage at 2 in the afternoon. They’re not a sunny afternoon band. Midnight on the jumping bar stage at AJ’s – that’s more like it. "You're Gonna Miss Me (When I Get Home)" swaggers just as much as Amos does, commanding the stage with a blues shouter voice and an unbuttoned shirt, the better to show off some serious abs. Blistering guitar and attitude for days – the blues rockers got the party started right.
Aaron Lee Tasjan
A guy next to me was as enthralled with Aaron Lee Tasjan’s set as I was. “Why isn’t he a huge star? He’s got the voice, he’s got the songs, he’s got the guitar chops....” My new friend from Georgia has a point. Tasjan has had a successful two-decade career as a songwriter, producer and performer, with multiple Americana Music Association and Grammy nominations under his belt. In a better world, even the most casual music fan would know Tasjan’s name just as they know Bruce Springsteen’s. He’s a guitar whiz and producer, and a star performer in his own right. His material leans toward power pop and Americana, with dribs of glam and drabs of new wave and garage rock.
Tasjan played keyboard for the George Harrison-meets-Jeff Lynne set-opener “Up All Night,” but showed off virtuosic guitar skills the rest of the set, casually dropping in a Hendrixian solo here and blazing chord strumming there. He played three songs from his new album (Stellar Evolution, due out April 12), including “The Horror of It All,” an ‘80s pop tale of coming out in high school. (The hilarious video pays homage to “Teen Wolf” and nods to a friend with a reference to Kevn Kinney High School.) And he tried out a couple even newer songs, including “East Canton Lowlife,” a spunky garage rocker, and “Punk Rock Joy,” which could be a lost Ramones track.
I shouldn’t forget the headliners...
Elvis Costello
Partway through his set, Elvis Costello teased the audience: “I’ve got two kinds of songs left – songs with girls’ names in the titles and songs about confectionery, so you have to yell out what you want.” Sorry, “Alison” fans, Costello and band launched into “Like Licorice on Your Tongue,” an unreleased R&B romp highlighted with a blazing Charlie Sexton guitar solo. Worth it. “Alison” fans had to wait until the end of the set, when Costello mashed up that song with “Everyday I Write the Book.”
In between, Costello and band were in fine form, feisty and playful. Classics “Pump It Up,” “Chelsea,” “Radio Radio” and “Clubland,” the last one tweaked with a bossa nova beat, made the cut, along with lesser-knowns like “Waiting for the End of the World,” “Hetty O’Hara Confidential” and a trio of songs from Costello’s long-planned Broadway show.
Roseanne Cash and Rodney Crowell
Legends Roseanne Cash and Rodney Crowell, former creative partners and spouses, are still friendly, and it would have been nice to see one join the other onstage. Instead, each gave us a solid hour-plus set.
Cash played several songs from her landmark album The Wheel, celebrating its 30th anniversary. Songs on The Wheel touch on the dissolution of her marriage to Crowell and budding relationship with John Leventhal, whom she would marry and who plays lead guitar in her band. Some kind of full circle there.
Cash did bring out one guest: A nearly unrecognizable Costello, swaddled in a huge fur hat and giant pink scarf, joined her for a spellbinding performance of Bob Dylan’s “Farewell, Angelina,” recorded by Joan Baez in 1964. A fine way to end the set.
If you don't know Rodney Crowell well, his show might feel like a country cover band with impeccable taste. But no, he wrote all those stone cold classics, and many, many more. Check out his debut album, which included “Leaving Louisiana in the Broad Daylight” and “I Ain’t Living Long Like This,” later No. 1 hits for the Oak Ridge Boys and Waylon Jennings, respectively. Those two highlighted his set, with fiddle and piano workouts.
Grace Potter
Grace Potter’s set leaned heavily on her new album, Mother Road, so it’s fortunate that it’s excellent. That includes two songs co-written with the aforementioned McRee, “Rose Colored Rearview” and “All My Ghosts” (“I ain’t scared of my ghosts / the thing that scares me the most is me”).
Potter rocked hard and brought the drama, no mean feat when the audience is soaking up the sun on lawn chairs.
Jeff Tweedy
Jeff Tweedy played a loose, relaxed set. He messed up the lyrics on the opening song, the lovely “Remember the Mountain Bed” – “Sure, sing a song with nine verses,” he chuckled – laughed off a tragically wrong note to start another song, then said “my ride’s here” when a helicopter flew low overhead mid-song. Solo, with just an acoustic guitar, Wilco songs like “Box Full of Letters” and “Jesus, Etc.” sounded sadder, less wistful.
But maybe too relaxed. Some of the crowd began filtering out halfway through the set as the sun set and the weather turned chilly. Even Tweedy admitted that 90 minutes of solo acoustic is a lot to ask at a stadium-ish show. “Where are you going?” he said. “It's not that cold. I'm not that bad! Come back! Well, I guess I'll do another song about my dead father, just to liven things up.”
It was like sitting around the campfire, except the guy wielding the guitar is one of the best in the biz. The rousing finale, the joyous “I'm the Man Who Loves You,” provided evidence of that.
Find out more about 30A Songwriters Festival at the links below: