Top 5 moments from the 2026 Big Ears Festival
Festival season is upon us, kicked off yet again by four days in Knoxville, Tennessee that many music lovers consider the gold standard year after year. If you’ve never been to Big Ears, hopefully the following accounts will convince you to give it a shot in 2027.
David Byrne: officially GOATed
Mark another legend off the Blindspot List — and welcome a new addition to my personal all-time Top 5 Concerts List. The Talking Heads frontman brought his Who Is the Sky? Tour to town for a pair of shows, and though not all that dissimilar from his American Utopia show that Spike Lee generously beamed into houses during the COVID-19 pandemic, witnessing one of the top artists of our time and his extremely talented ensemble of musicians, vocalists, and dancers perform his latest stage show in person on March 26 at the Knoxville Civic Auditorium was truly spectacular.
Three giant panels flanked the back of the stage, on which all sorts of creative visuals were projected, including multiple anti-ICE montages. Clad in matching blue suits, the collaborators delivered a feast for the eyes and ears, performing impressive choreography that took them all over the stage in various permutations while sharing passionate takes on songs from across Byrne’s illustrious career.
A few months shy of his 74th birthday, the iconic artist still sounds terrific and it’s inspirational simply to see him moving around and seeming so sound of mind and body. But joyful and witty as his newer songs are, they can’t quite match Talking Heads’ greatest hits. And to experience “Psycho Killer,” “Once in a Lifetime,” “Burning Down the House,” and other gems in this brilliantly designed showcase exceeded all expectations and established a new standard for legacy acts. —Edwin Arnaudin
Lazyhorse (Photo by Taryn Ferro)
Lazyhorse dazzles
The magic of Big Ears often resides in the festival poster’s small-font artists, as unexpected discoveries await in makeshift venues around virtually every corner of downtown Knoxville.
One such band, Lazyhorse, is a mysterious New Mexico-based six-piece collective who had the rare distinction of being undiscovered even by YouTube. The band’s bio touts an intriguing alchemy of disparate parts, featuring the first Native American Pulitzer Prize-winning composer (Raven Chacon), evocative themes, experimental noise, and a reinterpretation of “the tropes of country and spaghetti Western scores with a hint of malice.” The description was sufficiently strange and alluring to draw maybe 150 festival-goers to The Point, a non-traditional church, where Lazyhorse was slated to play one of their first-run shows on March 27.
As advertised, the band launched into an Ennio Morricone-inspired instrumental groove, layering iconic Hollywood atmospherics with an ominous, rumbling undercurrent. Imagine surf rock relocated inland from the California coast and injected with the surrealism of the American Southwest. From there, Lazyhorse’s cinematic opus would expand to incorporate haunting vocal harmonies by two remarkable frontwomen, Mali Obomsawin and Miriam Elhajli; widescreen soundscapes delivered with expert musicianship by Chacon and his band; evocations of American mythology and the violence of the Western frontier; and a thread of subversive performance art, making provocative use of religious sacraments on the church’s altar/stage. Suffice to say, Lazyhorse is a wildly original project brimming with big ideas.
When the band concluded their final song, the congregation rose from their pews and burst into rapturous applause — an extended ovation by festival standards, and a collective acknowledgement of having witnessed one of those extraordinary surprises that have become a hallmark of Big Ears. —Brian Ivey
Perfume Genius (Photo by Billie Wheeler)
The brilliance of Perfume Genius
Having only experienced an early incarnation of Mike Hadreas as Perfume Genius — as the opening act for Beirut at The Orange Peel in 2011 — Big Ears offered an opportunity to witness his transformation as a performer, which was nothing short of stunning.
Hadreas has since emerged as a queer icon of the indie music world, now with seven acclaimed albums under his belt. On March 28 at The Mill & Mine, Perfume Genius performed material from 2014-25, spanning an era that defines the project in its mature form. Hadreas is a dynamic vocalist and frontman, whose intensely emotional songcraft is matched by his visceral, theatrical stage presence. Highlights included a sunny, dance-ready “On the Floor,” the anthemic art pop of “Slip Away,” the driving post-rock of “It’s a Mirror,” and fan favorite “Otherside,” an intimate piano ballad that built to a cathartic crescendo as Hadreas contorted his body in slow-motion under dramatic pulsing lights.
A powerhouse live band is required to execute Hadreas’s singular vision, and this five-piece certainly brought it. Meg Duffy’s command of lead guitar was transcendent, even on a weekend where you can’t throw a rock in Knoxville without hitting a world-class guitarist. (Duffy would return the following day for a performance with their project, Hand Habits, which was also sublime.) The set closed with a rousing rendition of “Queen,” the band’s 2014 breakout single — its sardonic, defiant chorus (“No family is safe when I sashay”) refashioned as a jubilant singalong.
At Big Ears, Perfume Genius delivered an arena-sized performance in a club space, wowing their most passionate fans while inspiring new converts to take a deeper dive into their impressive catalog. —BI
Tune-Yards (Photo by Taryn Ferro)
Merrill Garbus gets loopy
Rare is the artist who grows increasingly animated and youthful with time. And yet, 15 years after Tune-Yards’ breakout sophomore album, Whokill, their frontwoman is more engaging and energetic than ever. While bassist/partner Nate Brenner held down steady grooves, Garbus made multiple circuits of The Mine & Mill stage on March 27, her ambitious live-looped vocals, percussion, and ukulele emanating from the speakers like magical sounds, conjured from a distant universe.
Starting with Garbus’ pre-music land acknowledgment, the early afternoon set felt like a gathering of friends — a sense amplified by a harmonized singalong to “How Big is the Rainbow.” Fellow new tracks such as “Heartbreak” and “Limelight” likewise sounded great, but it was the inclusions from Whokill that truly electrified the crowd. “Powa” and “Bizness” feel as fresh as ever, as does “Gangsta,” which transitioned to an especially fiery cover of Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing in the Name,” whose lyrics gain more relevance by the day. —EA
MJ Lenderman & The Wind (Photo by Andy Feliu)
MJ Lenderman takes a victory lap
As one Robert Plant was concluding his set at the nearby Tennessee Theatre on March 28, Asheville’s own MJ Lenderman & The Wind took the stage at Big Ears’ largest venue, the Knoxville Civic Auditorium. The cavernous 2,500-seat space has dwarfed certain festival acts over the years, but Lenderman and crew proved worthy of their primetime billing.
Leaning heavily on their 2024 standout album, Manning Fireworks, Lenderman’s road-tested band ripped through 19 songs in a briskly paced 90-minute set, hitting their stride with an inspired version of “Wristwatch.” A cover of Greg Sage’s “Sacrifice (For Love)” followed, ramping up the guitar feedback and the decibels. Concluding the sequence was a poignant, country-tinged break-up dirge titled “Pick Up the Pieces,” offering a possible preview of a future Lenderman project.
As one of the festival’s youngest performers, Lenderman’s musical lineage was well represented in this year’s Big Ears lineup. In The Wind’s louder moments, one could hear echoes of indie rock titan and fellow guitar shredder Thurston Moore. A fiddle freakout punctuating the end of “Rip Torn” recalled a Friday night performance by Warren Ellis. And the wry lyricism of Ryan Davis has often been cited as a touchstone for Lenderman’s songwriting.
Late in his set, prompted by an appreciative crowd, Lenderman commented that he couldn’t believe his allotted time was almost up. In the moment, one could imagine a Saturday night appearance on the biggest stage of a prestige festival like Big Ears must rank among the highlights of the band’s formidable early career. Or, as Lenderman soon deadpanned, perhaps his exuberance was just the pre-show Red Bull talking. —BI
Tunde Adebimpe (Photo by Christian Stewart)
Honorable Mention
Tunde Adebimpe – The TV on the Radio frontman had the misfortune of playing right before Byrne on March 26 and at Mill & Mine, one of the venues farthest from the Civic Auditorium. But even an abbreviated version of his one-man-band, track-by-track take on his severely underrated 2025 album Thee Black Boltz was a treat. —EA
SML – This elusive L.A.-based jazz-electronica quintet appeared for an in-demand three-night residency, performing in-the-round at an abandoned Greyhound bus station March 28 with minimalist percussion and ambient textures building patiently to an ecstatic jazz-funk release. —BI
Medeski, Martin, Metzger & Cline – The improvisational all-stars make acid jazz experimentation not just tolerable but downright exciting. Their Mill & Mine set closed out the festival’s opening night and produced multiple stunning sequences. —EA
Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band – One of Big Ears’ most acclaimed lyricists demonstrated his live chops, bringing a raucous close to the March 28 slate, with The Roadhouse Band decidedly in their natural habitat in the beer-soaked confines of Barley’s Taproom. —BI
Reggie Watts – Joking that he was only delivering “matinee content” for his 2 p.m. March 27 set at the Civic Auditorium, the genius improv comic/musician nevertheless delivered primetime laughs with another mesmerizing series of hilarious on-the-spot tunes and ramblings. —EA
(David Byrne photo by Andy Feliu)
