Festival review: Big Ears 2024

Santa must have gotten my letters! Or the Big Ears organizers must have read my reviews! Or, more likely, the flavor of the programming for the 2024 Big Ears Festival happened to fall in line with what I had hoped to find there on my two previous visits to Knoxville in late March.  

It was again an incredible weekend of eclectic music that presented plenty of exceptional experimental artists and jazz masters that provided the “deep listen” that founder Ashley Capps envisions for his attendees. Plus, added bonus for me: this incarnation also included more than a few acts — especially the Blacktronika blocks curated by King Britt and the manic Mexican cumbia band, Son Rompe Pera — that skillfully served up music that made me (and many around me) not just nod in appreciation, but pulse and dance in pure celebration. 

I’m not saying that such acts were nowhere to be found in earlier editions of the fest, but this year they were featured in good amounts and at good times.  And I am certainly not saying that Big Ears finally figured out how to put on their increasingly popular festival. They have been doing more than fine with their far-reaching four-day festival for many years — 11to be exact. 

Each year is somehow bigger than the last, with this year's lineup of  outstanding shows stretching well into Sunday night. For me, my 2024 Big Ears felt like returning to a restaurant that came highly recommended — and for good reason, even if not everything on their ambitious menu was for me. On this most recent visit, I was delighted to find the chef serving a preferred special, a favorite of mine that I will order every time. So I did, it was delicious, and I devoured it, knowing it may not be back on that menu my next time through.

I don't know about the organizers, but I have figured out a few things in my three years of making the trip up over the mountain from Asheville for the festival. For one, this year I gave myself more time — not just one day, but two — to better align with the rising and falling rhythms of the festival. It’s so much nicer not to put pressure on every show to potentially make or break your Big Ears. Maybe even stop and sit for a spell on a city bench or over a slice of pizza and let music happen without you. But not for too long — this is Big Ears, after all.  

Here are some other strategies I employed this year to maximize my festival experience:

Molly Lewis (Photo by Rachel Craig)

DON’T KNOCK THE NOVELTY ACTS

In the lead up to the fest, press is fed a steady stream of promotional emails encouraging attendance or attention to various artists. One that popped out for me was for Molly Lewis, professional whistler. \Now, when you see a notice for a niche act, it’d be easy to not take it seriously, to dismiss it as a little too cute and/or a bit too gimmicky. Maybe so, but this gimmick has gotten them all the way to Big Ears. They must be mighty good at this gimmick to merit a sought-after spot in this top-flight festival. Show up and see and hear for yourself.

Lewis performed Friday, March 22, 8 p.m., in the intimate but certainly not small Jackson Terminal. That was a premium prime-time slot for a performer who puckers their lips and blows. But as soon as she made her way to the microphone and started making that musical siren’s call with her mouth, the platform made perfect sense. 

To begin, she’s lovely, affecting the look of an elegant cabaret act, her shoulder-length blonde hair lightly falling on her shoulderless long red dress. (Very Veronica Lake for those who can harken back to the beauty of an earlier era.) The music itself was of another time — mesmerizing, like something that might be used to keep King Kong calm in captivity. 

Lewis is tremendously talented yet demure in demeanor, alone on stage with accompanying musical tracks supplied from the side. She does not strain to summon the sweet lilt of sounds from her lips, but rather does so with a slight tilt of her head, her hand gently weaving through the air as if she was manipulating her whistle like the waves of a theremin. 

She performed mostly originals from her two EPs, 2021’s The Forgotten Edge and 2022’s Mirage, as well as a few covers, like the ethereal “The Crying Game.” The specifics of the songs were less essential than the experience. The virtuosa whistling just washed over me, generating the hugest, dumbest grin on my face. Delightful. Not to be missed. Not to be dismissed.

Another novelty act that piqued my interest with the promise of a prodigy, the mandolin wunderkind Wyatt Ellis. At only 14 years old, he’s already seen as a link to the lineage of the likes of Bill Monroe and The Osborne Brothers. He’s been plucked to perform with Sierra Hull (a former mandolin prodigy herself) and Molly Tuttle (a fellow Big Ears 2024 performer). I was lucky enough to see the banjo golden boy, Billy Strings, somewhat early on in his career in Asheville (although not quite this early), and felt I was being presented with a similar opportunity, so I made a point to catch the kid they say sure can play.

I saw Ellis’ scintillating set on Saturday, March 23, at 11 p.m., at Boyd’s Jig & Reel. I loved that his all-star bluegrass band was almost all young prodigious performers as well (although it did make me wonder what they all were doing out so late, granted not on a school night). Eliis may not play like a 14-year-old, but he certainly looks the part of a 14-year-old, sporting a shaggy brown mane and slight smirk on a wiry frame that has not yet fully filled out. 

He and his fellow bandmates looked like they had asked the Zoltar genie to make them big, but the spell had expired and there they stood on stage, still holding their instruments, in their leftover adult outfits, hanging baggy on their bodies. The one exception was the mustachioed guitarist, who seemed a bit older, but not by much. He possessed plenty of talent, but possibly also the only driver’s license in the bunch. 

It may not be fair to brand a band adorable, but they were. They were also incredibly accomplished and in tune to the traditional music that they performed with aplomb. They tore it up on such classic songs as The Stanley Brothers’ “Ain’t It Hard,” and a gracious Ellis had no problem stepping to the side with his mandolin to let the other musicians have their moment in the spotlight. When it was his time to hold the center, he showed he belonged there, blazing fast but with an inspired feel for the spirit of the music that he has already played, like many before him, on the stage at the Grand Ole Opry.

Now, it would be hard to regard the rapper Andre 3000, from the hugely popular group Outkast, as a kind of novelty act. But when he recently released his first new album in 17 years, and that album featured him as a solo flautist, he had definitely stepped out of the mainstream into the River Niche.

When it was announced that he would be playing a few shows as part of this year’s Big Ears, his first in support of the new album, New Blue Sun, and that those shows required an additional ticket or press pass request, I was panicked that I had not seen the email in time and may have missed my window to beg on the list. I had not, hallelujah, but I also had not listened to much of his music from that recent release. At first, it feels largely ambient, as if someone had butt-dialed you from church where a bird had perched on the pew. How would this gossamer music translate to a live show? 

Tremendously well, it turns out. First, Andre 3000 was not solo on the stage of the beautiful Bijou Theatre, but had assembled an amazing band to follow his flute fugues: drummer Carlos Niño, guitarist Nate Mercereau, keyboardist Surya Botofasina, and percussionist/keyboardist Deantoni Parks. 

The Friday late-afternoon show began slowly, a blue laser beam projected and refracted through a clear glass container of water. Light flutters came from the figure in the shadows playing flute. Was it even Andre? How could we be sure? Maybe this was a niche show that I did not need to see. 

But then the music began to swell gradually, and the individual instruments began to meld to make a greater sum. The footlights eventually revealed that it was indeed Andre 3000, and he was as charming and endearing as you would imagine, copping to the fact that it was weird that he, a famous rapper, was up there playing flute in front of us all. 

He shared how, one day, he heard a woman playing the flute and felt very connected to the sounds that were coming from it. He added that he enjoyed how he could travel while playing his newfound favorite instrument, literally walking down paths and through parks while he played, but spiritually transported as well. And heck if he didnt take us all along for the ride. Thanks to the marvelous meshing of the musicians with Andre on flute, electric flute, and giant water-bong flute, along with the interplay of the portal-looking lights around the perimeter of the stage, that theater was converted to a spaceship that lifted off the ground by show’s end. Amazing. Glad I RSVP’d in time to be transported.

Herbie Hancock (Photo by Cora Wagone)

HEAD TO THE HEADLINER

Yes, we come to Big Ears to nod knowingly at bands no one has ever heard of, and by all means do that as much as you can. But don’t miss out on the big music acts just because you may have seen them before, or your mom might actually recognize their name.

I was so glad I got to see Andre 3000. He is a bonafide star for a reason. He’s wonderful, even when playing a woodwind instrument. And I was likewise so glad that my friend and I went to see another popular hip-hop act from a few decades back, Digable Planets. I’d seen them many years ago, and I had just seen them only a few months earlier. 

No matter. We marched down to the Knoxville Civic Auditorium early Saturday evening to see Ishmael “Butterfly”Butler, Mariana “Ladybug Mecca” Vieira, and Craig “Doodlebug” Irving do their thing. As always, I loved their positive ’90s New York rap overlap routine, and they still seemed to enjoy performing it as well. And I very much enjoyed moving down from the balcony to view it up close from the venue’s VIP seating section right in front of the stage which, in a sign of good things to come, was more of a VIP moving and grooving section.

And I was quite happy that we came back later that same night to be in the company of the iconic jazz musician and composer, Herbie Hancock. I had never seen him before and made sure not to miss him here, being mindful that with him in his mid-80s, there may not be many more opportunities.

The draw of the headliner is usually enough, but an extra enticement is who they may bring along in their band, and Hancock had trumpeter Terence Blanchard on board. That would be seven-time Grammy Award winning and two-time Academy Award nominee, Terence Blanchard. My mind was blown, and I am not exactly what you would call a jazz enthusiast, but great is great. 

Those two, along with the rest of Hancock’s long running band — Lionel Loueke, James Genus, Kevin Daniels, and Trevor Lawrence — delivered a dynamic set that covered a wide swath of the bandleader’s brilliant career,including “Come Running To Me” and “Actual Proof.” I didn’t necessarily want to walk all the way back to KCA, the most remote of the several Big Ears venues, but, blisters be damned, that was a damn good show.

I was sorry to have missed a few of the headliners, but until cloning becomes more common, you can’t see everything. I did not see Laurie Anderson, which I understand was a great set, but I did see her a lot when I lived in New York City — in performance but also just in line at the cinema. And I did not see Jon Baptiste because he was there when I wasn’t, one of many frustratingly fantastic Sunday shows that made me wish my two days had been three. 

I didn’t see legendary Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones’ solo set on Friday afternoon where he rose up from the pit at the equally legendary Tennessee Theater and played “Your Time Is Gonna Come” on the house Wurlitzer pipe organ. Missed opportunity, but that line was iPhone-launch long. Instead, I saw him on Saturday afternoon with his side project, Sons of Chipotle, which featured him on piano and electronics along with Anssi Karttunen on cello and electronics. It was cool to see what Jones was up to these days, but it was weird, esoteric, atonal, and other words that mean “not entirely easy to listen to.” 

Fred Frith & Ikue Mori (Photo by Taryn Ferro)

IT’S GONNA GET WEIRD AND THAT’S A GOOD THING

Go see the big names acts when you can, but Big Ears is not a big tent mainstream music fest. It’s for the music nerds — those who know what to listen for between the notes. Weird is what they do best. Be willing to wade into those waters. 

On Friday mid-afternoon, I followed my friend, and his appreciation for the peculiar, to The Point to see Fred Frith & Ikue Mori. I knew little of what I was watching. I did not know that Frith is a multi-instrumentalist credited with reinventing the electric guitar or that Mori is a recent MacArthur Genius recipient. And I did not know that their collaboration involved Mori sitting at a computer, processing the sounds that Frith makes with his small wood and metal music box captured by  pointed microphones. 

Sitting in that lovely converted church venue, for all I knew Firth was demoing a prototype for some sort of harmonic human cat toy, plucking at tiny piano strings and scratching at a miniature sandbox, while Mori sat and looked up the latest Zillow listings. Turns out they were teaming up, as they had many times before, to create a shared sound experience, improvising the creation and distortion of these sounds on their respective devices. Weird, but isn’t that part of why we were there?

Leyla McCalla (Photo by Taryn Ferro)

BANJO BUT NOT JUST HOW YOU'D THINK 

Trust that the touch of weirdness that’s woven throughout the festival will elevate conventional music to be something more in this setting. Big Ears also chose to feature some bluegrass music as part of this year’s programming. I like me some bluegrass music, but I didn’t necessarily feel like I needed to see more typical bluegrass music on my two-day tour of eclectic artists. I was reminded that Big Ears tends not to trend typical. Yes, there were artists that brandished a banjo, but bluegrass was not always where they were going with it.  

There was folk singer Rhiannon Giddens (formerly of Carolina Chocolate Drops) who was at The Tennessee Theatre on Saturday night playing her banjo along with the brilliant bassist Chritian McBride and pianist Fracesco Turrisi, singing traditional songs about the American Black female experience that sounded more cabaret then country bluegrass.

There was Leyla McCalla (a member of Giddens’ supergroup Our Native Daughters) who played her banjo, as well as many other instruments in combination with her band to create her signature Haitian-influenced, New-Orleans-informed, new Afro-folk. Her powerful voice rang out at The Point early Saturday afternoon, more reminiscent of Brittany Howard than bluegrass. 

And there was Sam Amidon (married to singer Beth Orton, also at Big Ears this year), who played his banjo on stage at The Standard on Friday afternoon in front of his folk band that felt more Fringe Fest than standard bluegrass, his drummer drawing eerie sounds by scraping the sides of the cymbal with something that resembled a whisk. Much more haunting than hoedown.

And even when the bluegrass was what you might typically find in the bluegrass bin, it was a step above — as was shown with the outstanding set by the band Mighty Poplar at Mill & Mine as part of my satisfying second-day Saturday afternoon.

Secret Chiefs 3 (Photo by Ross Bustni)

FIND THE NOISE FARMERS

I will gladly stand with the weird while at Big Ears, but I am much happier to go wild with those bands and artists that have learned how to tie a string around the wind and how to grow a groove with a vibrant blend of noise, musical notes, and momentum. 

I knew little of Secret Chiefs 3 other than I liked their name (the same way I pick horses on my rare trip to the racetrack). They’re an avant garde group led by guitarist Trey Spruance (of the metal band, Mr. Bungle) and they did not seem to make many missteps in their soaring set on Saturday afternoon at Mill & Mine. I was glad to be at Big Ears for two days, but I wish this had been my first show on Friday because this visceral vibe was what I had come to find. Spruance and his bandmates Shanir Ezra Blumenkranz (oud), Shahzad Ismaily (bass), Ches Smith (drums), Eyvind Kang (viola), and Matt Lebofsky (keyboards) blew me away with their Moroccan market meets monster rock maelstrom sound. Remarkable!

Ismally and Smith were back on that stage later that night, superbly playing in support of Marc Ribot’s Ceramic Dog, another great groove group pairing inspired improvisation with pop songcraft. Ribot’s the rock ‘n roll curmudgeon, speaking his complaints over strident chords and pounding rhumba rhythms, as could be heard on their song “Ecstasy.” This was a show that many spoke of in superlatives last year. I made sure I was able to speak of it with first-person praise this year.

Two other great build-a-sound workshop shows were The Horse Lords, again at Mill & Mine on Saturday (a musical Murderer’s row), and Bitchin Bajas at Old City PAC on the flume-ride rainy Friday night. These bands are not quite as aggressive in assaulting their ascending grooves as, say, Secret Chiefs 3, but the elevation gains in their respective grooves are enough to give someone the bends. The Horse Lords leaned more into repetition, almost a live looping , to introduce the instrumental ingredients that would be used to make their rising musical souffle. Bitchin Bajas (who, along with Hurray for the Riff Raff, win the award for “most misleading band name”) were more prone to plant small musical seeds and see how and how wide they would grow, like wild vines. All while I went wild. 

Dibia$e (Photo by Billie Wheeler)

DO YOUR DANCE, DO YOUR DO YOUR DANCE

To have come to Big Ears the previous two years in search of a dance party was a mistake on my part. Read the fine print on your festival before faulting its dearth of dance floors. But when provided, as was the case this year, place yourself on the edge, or smack dab in the center of that dance you were so desperate to find.

Big Ears made one of their best decisions ever when they announced they would be featuring Blacktronika sets at this year’s festival, curated by American DJ and producer King Britt. They lined up a series of DJs spinning consecutive sets at certain venues. On Saturday at Jackson Terminal, they presented LA-based hip-hop producer Dibia$e, followed by London- based Charlie Dark MBE. How fantastic on a Saturday afternoon, amidst so many amazing shows, to step in and soak up some chill hip-hop vibes! The perfect palate cleanser. 

The organizers made an interesting staging decision with the DJ sets, choosing to put them on the floor rather than up on the stage. We could see them and watch them work their magic, but unlike with live music, this was not meant to be a spectator sport. As we all stood around these curators of killer tracks, we saw each other moved by the music — we were meant to move; we were things meant to be watched.

Saturday was cool. Friday night was full-on insane. The string of DJ sets that night was at Meek & Mill, clearly my favorite venue. They started at 8:30 p.m. with King Britt himself, followed by Chicago’s dance shepherd DJ Heather, then NYC’s  Suzi Analogue, who would pass the baton to Detroit’s Carl Craig sometime after midnight. That was more than four hours of hip-hop electronic dance music, and I was there for the last few.  

Again, the DJs were front and center on the floor, sometimes spinning music, sometimes spinning around and inciting the crowd to  go crazy. Phrases were shouted for rowdy call-and-response reactions. There were dance battles and mosh-pit movements, and a growing whirlpool of people going wild. You can’t go home disappointed when you dance like that.

And the festival knew to give attendees the option to end their Saturday night on a similar, if more international, note. At Meek & Mill again (my Mecca), they wisely went with the chaos-in-motion cumbia from Mexico, Son Rompe Pera, to close out the evening at 11:59 p.m. The combination of Jesús "Kacho" Gama (marimba), Allan "Mongo" Gama (marimba/ electric guitar), Raúl Albarrán (bass guitar), Ricardo "Ritchie" López (drums), and José Ángel "Kilos" Gama (percussion) is a good time, any time, any day, in any language, on any land. They make a bed of churning maracas-like sounds and pepper that with festive percussion and lay on top rousing lyrics or even just vocal outbursts as the energy builds and builds. 

I was no longer just at a music venue — I was now at the best block party ever and there were no noise complaints. By the end of the set, everyone on and off stage was bouncing and brimming with excitement and exaltment. One of the players was so pumped that he just lifted his marimba up over his head and carried it off stage.

I can’t think of a more perfect visual metaphor for my 2024 Big Ears experience, where I was swept up and let myself get carried away. It’s as if they made this one just for me.

(Lead photo of Andre 3000 by Andy Feliu)