Highball Festival 2023: Saturday

An improbable, but not impossible conversation:

Rival Entertainment: “Would you be interested in curating a music festival in the fall where you get to play both days?”
(Athens, GA based) Futurebirds: “Hell yes! We’d love to! One question. Which weekend do the Bulldogs have off?”
Rival Entertainment: “Uh, um, let’s check. Oct. 21st?”
Futurebirds: “That’s the weekend! Let’s do it!”

Thus the card begins to fill with Athens-based The Whigs, Athens-based Hotel Fiction, Augusta, GA-based T. Hardy Morris (from Dead Confederates) and Charleston, SC-based Band of Horses, whose leader sports a Georgia tattoo on his hand. It’s a two-day festival, so add in Asheville’s Wednesday, Louisiana’s Seratones, Kentucky’s S.G. Goodman, and the regional misfit of the bunch to make the festival nationwide, Seattle’s The Head and the Heart.

To polish things off, the festival happened upon gorgeous fall weather and introduced a recently converted area of Pullman Yards, a former repair facility for Pullman Porter railroad cars, to an entertainment venue.

Though the Bulldogs weren’t playing, there were four TVs in the main sitting area featuring different games. Overall, it was a very relaxed atmosphere, with 30 minutes between each band. This allowed plenty of time for football, beer, Bulleit bourbon, Grindhouse Killer Burgers, BBQ, Fried chicken, The Georgia Hemp Co. Codigo tequila, Tarpon Cellars or just chilling. L

Futurebirds

Futurebirds took the stage just as the sun was setting and the larger part of the crowd arrived. With three singer-songwriters, four part harmonies and seven members, there’s plenty of styles to like and nothing not to like. Plenty of fans were in attendance wearing their shirts and singing along with their songs. They’ve been building an audience since 2008, and it was clear that they were a major draw for bringing people in. The band appeared energized and fresh, and their Southern Indie rock set included favorites like “Trippin,” “Wear It Out,” and “Rodeo.” Band of Horses’ Ben Bridwell joined the band for the final two songs, “Neon Moon” and “Trippin,” a great surprise for fans of both bands, Futurebirds also get the best merch award with a logo’d bumpersticker reading “Your Local IPA sucks.”

Band of Horses

As far his own band, Ben Bridwell brings ample energy. That said, when the lights come on, it’s Matt Gentling that ignites the crowd all but attacking his bass, not just on “The First Song,” which began the set…, but the rest of the way through their 19 song set. Bridwell mentioned that they were riding the bus home to Charleston after the show, as this was the final stop on a tour of close to 40 dates since July. Their performance didn’t suggest they ere in any hurry, and there was no sign of physical or vocal fatigue as Bridwell wrested his high pitched, trademark vocals on each song. Plus, the dude likes to talk with the crowd, always a plus. The band has accumulated quite a collection of great songs since they began in 2006. They covered favorites from five of their six studio albums, including their fantastic 2022 release, Things are Great, featuring the stand-out track “Clutch.“