Two days. That doesn’t seem like much time for a lot to happen, but attend an outdoor music festival in the middle of a Texas summer and prepare yourself for a bit of crazy. Free Press Summerfest has established itself as a “to heck with the elements, we’re here to party” destination. Over the span of eight years, organizers have filled stages with local and national talent. Acts ranging from The Flaming Lips and St. Vincent to underground lo-fi legend Jandek and Welcome To Houston which was nine of Houston’s best rappers (Z-ro, Bun B, Lil Keke, Lil Flip, Paul Wall, Scarface, Devin the Dude, Mike Jones, Slim Thug) backed by THE finest genre-bending soul band, The Suffers.
Recently Houston’s weather has had zero chill.
We’ve experienced city-wide flooding and I’m sure that tons of folks thought that Free Press Summer Fest was doomed to be cancelled.
Just days before the gates opened, organizers made the decision to switch over from the bayoutastic and scenic Eleanor Tinsley Park to the parking lot near where sportsball players practice sportsball at NRG park. It’s totally not the same feel, but manageable if done right. Despite the hour long weather evacuation on day two, the stages were still FULL of talented artists who should be applauded for bringing us the fun despite the crummy weather.
The lineup really had a good mix of sweet soulful goodness of Leon Bridges, Blue Healer, Walker Lukens and the Sidearms, and Allen Stone plus punk attitude of Gogol Bordello, Plague Vendor, The Coathangers, Refused, and Against Me! A great offering of hip-hop acts like ILL Faded, Oxymorrons, A$AP Ferg & Tory Lanez plus some acts that are not as easy to categorize like Violent Femmes, Moving Units, San Fermin, Sir the Baptist, White Denim, and Trampled by Turtles. No shortage of talented artists on stage all weekend and that made the weekend pretty dang great.
I spent quite a bit of time outside of the photo pit this year shooting portraits with artists. It was neat to watch fans eyes light up when they saw the band they’d just watched perform on stage out in the festival mix. We shot photos inside an air-conditioned Metro bus parked inside the fest, on the back of golf carts, sitting at picnic tables, and oh yeah OF COURSE inside port-o-potties. I must admit that you could FEEL the growing pains Free Press Summer Fest is going through, but all in all it was a fun time with a pretty incredible lineup of bands. Take a look at the photo gallery and look up the bands who’s names you don’t recognize.
A ton of pics from FPSF 2016 in the slideshow below:
Violent Femmes
