Hiya, everybody! If you’re just joining me, I’ve documenting my awesome journey through the Format Festival 2022 here in Bentonville, Arkansas and you can check out Day One HERE and Day Two HERE. Everybody caught up? Cool.
Today I have some family stuff (groceries aren’t gonna get themselves), so I’m heading to the festival a little later than the previous day. Also while I’m tired, I’m not feeling as dead as I was yesterday morning, so hopefully that’s a sign I paced myself better yesterday. On the way to the North of Oz stage for Jamila Woods, I wolf down a chicken skewer from a food truck that’s actually pretty dang tasty.
5:45 p.m. I arrive at the North of Oz stage to Jamila Woods serenading the audience with her distinct rock-tinged neo soul stylings. The crowd isn’t huge but they’re digging her. Jamila herself has a nice husky yet smooth vocal style and a winning personality that the crowd finds endearing. Her backing band is on fire with some cool guitar solos punctuating the evening. Jamila works in covers of “Fast Car” by Tracy Chapman and Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” to show the breadth of her influences (and I later I get to hear an extremely drunk couple arguing with each other on the shuttle bus ride back whether “Smells like Teen Spirit” is a song that Jamila Woods wrote or not).
6:20 p.m. Jamila Woods finishes up and while I’m heading over to the South of Oz stage to get ready for Herbie Hancock, a high school drumline from Pine Bluff, Arkansas comes marching out with Nick Cave’s soundsuits, giving the dancers in the suits another opportunity to twirl and gyrate their multi-colored fuzzy butts off. It’s an odd little diversion, but I don’t mind.
This is probably also a reasonable time to talk about another art piece by smell experimentalist Sissel Tolars (yea… I know…). It’s a series of groups of jumbled ducts with chairs placed around them with smells of the ozarks piped in to breathe in and experience or something. I actually tried to check out the installation several times throughout the festival since it’s right in the middle of the grounds but there were always tired people just crashing in the chairs, sometimes even sleeping, for hours. As such I stoop to wandering around the pipes just smelling them like a weirdo. One I can distinctly tell is actual pine (not that grody scent that so many detergents come in) but the rest I can’t identify. Weird art but I at least appreciate it for being something more than just a weird thing sitting there. It’s a weird thing sitting AND smelling there.
6:30 p.m. Herbie Hancock is a living legend, folks. The man was a fixture of the ‘60s post-bop jazz scene, playing with Miles Davis in one of his most celebrated quintets that also included Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter and Tony Williams before become one of the biggest figures in jazz funk in the ‘70s, releasing his seminal and highly influential album Head Hunters (it’s front to back nothing but bangers, folks). He even scored an electronica hit in the ‘80s with “Rockit” and its accompanying wonky music video in constant rotation on MTV at the time. If you can’t tell, I’m pretty excited to see Mr. Hancock live and in-person. When Herbie and the gang come out on stage, I’m given another reason to get excited because he’s touring with another jazz legend that wasn’t even mentioned anywhere on the press material, trumpeter Terence Blanchard! He has been a fixture of the jazz scene since the early ‘80s but if you aren’t a big jazz fan yet still recognize his name, it’s because he also has a long career as a film score composer of over 50 films, including many of Spike Lee’s joints (mostly recently getting Oscar nominations for BlacKKKlansman and Da Five Bloods). Herbie is also accompanied by guitar, drums and flute, and they are all so magnificently talented, it’s dizzying to watch. The quintet immediately launches into what Herbie deems an Overture, a career-spanning medley of kickin’ tunes (I know I heard great stuff like “Watermelon Man” and “Maiden Voyage” in there… even “Rockit”). Hancock’s set is just dynamite, and this is one of the most enthused and packed crowds I’ve seen the whole festival. He ends his set by busting out the keytar and launching into the amazingly funky “Chameleon” which gets everybody bobbin’. Great stuff!
7:30 p.m. I’m not too keen on seeing the retro-disco sound of Jungle over on the North of Oz stage, so I head over to Next Door to catch DC post-punk provocateur Ian Svenonius (The Nation of Ulysses, The Make-Up) with his latest band Escape-Ism. If you’ve followed this guy’s career at all, you have a pretty good idea what to expect here. Escape-Ism is possibly his most stripped down project to date, just he on vocals and guitar and Alexandra Cabral on bass, accompanied by a drum machine. Despite the small crowd, Svenonius is giving his all here, thrashing around to the throbbing bass and persistent drum machine with intermittent spiky guitar hits of fuzzed out distortion while ranting and raving like a madman. His nihilistic lyrics (on songs like “Rome Wasn’t Burned in a Day” and “Last of the Sellouts”) are caustic and fit the style of music to a tee. He’s both exhilarating and exhausting to watch, but I’m glad I did.
On the way to Escape-ism I also checked out another art installation at The Hangar by Jacolby Satterwaite that features two separate projections, one a running loop of bizarre animation that I found both hypnotic and grotesque in equal measure. Apparently if I were to hang around until 8 p.m., they have some sort of “special performance” here featuring “Pat”… I dunno know what that is but Escape-ism interested me more, so that’s where I ended up going.
8:00 p.m. After Escape-Ism, the Meux Beignets food truck nearby calls my name, so I have to answer and eat some extremely tasty fried treats (voted #1 Best Dessert in NWA 2021 apparently). The beignet food truck is located next to the Drag Me to the Disco barn, and while I was chowing down, I heard some pretty cool music wafting out of the venue. So once I finished my snack, I headed over to check out Vieux Farka Toure, son of internationally acclaimed Malian musician Ali Farka Toure. If you’ve never heard music from Mali, I definitely suggest it. Both father and son Farka Toure create a very cool hybrid style of grooves using a unique finger picking style that blends traditional delta blues with afrobeat rhythms to create an exuberant and imminently danceable good time. I had planned to just stop by for a minute and then continue on to see the end of Jungle’s set, but Vieux Farka Toure is just too good to not watch until the end of his performance. The barn is definitely jumping tonight.
8:30 p.m. Time to head over to Thundercat at the South of Oz stage. If you’ve never heard of him, just know that the dude’s skills as a bass guitar are unparalleled (he also toured with Suicidal Tendencies for several years in the ‘00s). His music is a kind of odd hybrid of Frank Zappa, Earth, Wind & Fire and Jaco Pastorius with lightning fast proggy jazz fusion riffs and retro soul vocals and even a little punk/metal mixed in occasionally. Interestingly Thundercat also has one of the busiest, liveliest crowds of the whole festival. Cool to see so many people appreciate this virtuoso of his craft (or maybe they just like dancing to the soul in between the craziness… I dunno).
9:10 p.m. To be honest, while it’d be kinda cool to stay and see Khruangbin, I’m a grown man with responsibilities that require me to get up early Monday morning. So with heavy heart, I must bid you adieu Format Festival. You have provided me with tons of awesome music that I probably never would have experienced otherwise. Let’s hope you’ll be back next year!