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| JIM JAMES at LouFest 2013 | PHOTO BY JASON GONULSEN |
Your final reminder: LouFest is this weekend in St. Louis, and tickets are still available here.
Gates at Forest park open at Noon tomorrow. Get familiar with this year’s map here.
And before this year’s music begins, take a trip down LouFest lane with us. Here are the 10 Best LouFest Sets from 2010-2014…according to Jason.
JIM JAMES, 2013
One day My Morning Jacket will headline LouFest and it will be a wonderful thing. But until then, I’ll just remember how Jim James owned his solo set — dancing, singing, and playing the sax.
TEF POE, 2013
Hip-Hop/Rap (are they the same thing?) is a rare thing to pull off on a Sunday afternoon. And so is yelling “Fuck My Job!” which Tef Poe encouraged the crowd to chant, you know, about their jobs that would be waiting for them on Monday morning.
JEFF TWEEDY, 2010
The biggest LouFest debacle came after Tweedy’s set when She & Him played for about an hour and were super lame. Like going through the motions lame. Jeff Tweedy — he was not lame, and even went over his allotted time, giving us solo acoustic versions of Wilco’s “A Shot in the Arm,” “Casino Queen,” and Uncle Tupelo’s “New Madrid.”
DAWES, 2012
LouFest 2012 came during a month I would rather just forget, but I still remember Dawes’ rain-shortened set, and the beautiful version of “A Little Bit of Everything” that ended just as the rain started to pour down.
THE NATIONAL, 2013
They began their set with “I Should Live in Salt,” which featured this amazing, cathartic solo from Aaron Dessner, the kind that could have charged admission on its own. The set closed with Matt Berninger running through the crowd during “Mr. November.”
OLD LIGHTS, 2011
I always thought Old Lights was the best band from St. Louis in the past five or so years. If they wanted it, they could have gone further than they did — I truly believe that. Sadly, they sort of faded away, but I’ll always remember their LouFest set, which hit its peak during “Loud Song.”
DELTA SPIRIT, 2014
I’m not saying they were drunk, but I definitely am saying they hit the bottle before they stumbled on stage. It could have been a train wreck, but instead it was sloppy in a great way, and I’m mildly surprised lead singer Matt Vazquez didn’t pull a Dave Grohl and break a leg.
OUTKAST, 2014
While Andre 3000 and Big Boi didn’t tour behind any new material, their reunion tour was still special, even if it was more or less a money grab, and even if Andre 3000 said in interviews that he didn’t get anything from the performances. Still, though, that opener of “Bombs Over Baghdad.” Yeah, that still cut it.
EDWARD SHARPE AND THE MAGNETIC ZEROS, 2013
What a surprise this was. It was one of those coveted “sunset sets,” and I was only expecting a bunch of mediocre songs and then “Home” at the end. This was not that. This was a celebration from the minute it began.
WILCO, 2013
I know I already mentioned Jeff Tweedy, but deal. I remember in 2010 when the thought of Wilco playing LouFest was some kind of fantasy. But it became real, and we got an opener of “Misunderstood” and quite possibly the best “Impossible Germany” I have ever heard.