"America's on the way out!"
It’s a cry from Arkansas country-punk artist, Nick Shoulders to a sun-soaked crowd of jubilant cowboy-hatted, denim-and-suede fans.
The death of the USA might seem an unlikely statement at a festival dedicated to Americana and country music, but Out On The Weekend is more than an indulgence in the romance of the Old West and Deep South. Whatever the hell is going on over there, the imagined America continues here outside the borders and in new forms. Nostalgia? Abso-tively. You could feel the pull of memory and imagined pasts in the music, see it in our imitation deerskin and bolo ties. But there’s rebel country, and if America’s on the way out then that weekend’s lineup showed Australia is on the way in.
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2024 marks the 10 year anniversary of Out On The Weekend, the annual festival of folk, blues, rock, country and western. Some things change, some stay the same. Jonny Fritz, festival favourite and one of the original 2014 line-up, returned yet again, as did the now-departed Justin Townes Earle, in a fashion, with a memorial bar in his name. Seaworks in Williamstown hosted as usual, but for the first time organisers, Love Police, also took country to country, holding shows in both Ballarat and Korumburra.
These genres, and us fans, live deeply in nostalgia, but we aren’t prisoner to it. This line-up balanced romantic throwbacks and retrospectives alongside rebellion, progress and hope. You see it best in Shoulders, straddling tradition and revolution. Singing in the folk style learned from his grandparents in the hills of Arkansas, he offers country not as a reactionary conservatism, but punk resistance. “Country music is a fist up,” he said, and “a vehicle to push back”. As he sings in ‘Bound and Determined, “I think if you were really country you would fucking care.” Between songs his chat hit topics like colonialism, gentrification, injustice, fear of law enforcement and climate change, prefacing ‘Appreciate You’ with a speedrun on the rebellion origin of ‘redneck’. A yodel and a rebel yell, a mullet and a call for free Palestine, Shoulders encapsulates the true alt country with a joyful, hopeful charm.
It wouldn’t be an Out On The Weekend anniversary without the aforementioned Fritz, a similarly charming performer who terms his style ‘Dad Country’. He was joined by Nashville-based Joshua Hedley and his fiddle, their singing, jokes and matching brown suits all in pleasant harmony. Fritz’s songs are thoughtful portraits of human awkwardness, sex and relationships, observed with levity and a gentle, piping croon. He touched politics with light irreverence, knocking Trump supporters in ‘Debbie Downers’ (“Good luck being black in their general direction”). Part comedic relief, part familiar friend welcomed back, Fritz is a joy amidst crisis.
This year was Out On The Weekend’s strongest contingent of Australians yet. It’s a sign of how far Australian Americana has grown since 2014, including big name local boys Sweet Talk, who joined Charley Crockett on his Australian tour. James Ellis and the Jealous guys, fixtures of Melbourne’s honky tonk scene, were back with old Nashville-inspired dance songs covering everything from romance to their Rooks Return residency. The legendary Emma Donovan offered a return to her roots, both country and Country. Beside an enormous Aboriginal flag across one wall of the venue, she sang back to her long love of Coal Miner’s Daughter and superstar women of American country alongside stories of her grandparents and the rich history of Aboriginal country and folk music.
Young talent was bright and strong here. Hana and Jessie-Lee’s Bad Habits livened up the afternoon with girl-led alt-country, all glitzy western suits and jangly, joyful riffs. William Alexander, star stockman out of Dubbo, brought back that authentic Slim Dusty-style troubadour. Big hat, working tan and understated humour, he yodelled til the mic cracked and shared songs about land, droving and drought, with a Banjo Patterson piece thrown in for good measure. Having only released their first album this year, fresh-faced Smith and Western Jury channel Dead South vibes with a touch of Tarantino noir. It’s rollicking road trip music and Western storytelling, hitting covers like ‘Jolene’ and ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ with their own distinctive energy.
The visiting American acts shared a retrospective quality. On a reunion tour after a hiatus, Uncle Lucius came thundering to the stage with rock and roll, moving seamlessly between old work and new, rich vocals rolling across us with good ol’ Texan blues and bold western sound. I couldn’t help thinking that ‘All The Angelenos’ could apply just as easily to our cowboy costumed city crowd as to the hipster influx in their hometown of Austin. Margo Cilker’s heartfelt acoustic folk storytelling moved across love, loneliness and landscapes, speaking to the loss that necessitates nostalgia, a Sonoma County homeland gone and time past. Even as we drifted into softer psych tones of Rose City Band and soundscapes of slide guitar, twanging reverb melodies with dreamy, echoey blooms and funky synth, it still carried us like a sun-washed, sepia-toned reminiscence. Familiar and past. Festival headliners Hurray For The Riff Raff saw us out at the tail end of their Australian tour. Their sound swayed soft like a moving train, fuzzy guitar swelling with Alynda Segarra’s echoey, dreamy voice, and we melted, transfixed by the poignant, sometimes aching and raw stories of youth in hindsight.
Out On The Weekend drifted between dreamy nostalgia, personal memory, folk and family tradition, but with a blazing streak of rebellion and hope in that imagined, Alternative America taking root and growing beyond the country. 10 years on and this festival can still carry us away, like the Cripple Creek Ferry that took us back to the big smoke when the show’s over. A room full of strangers on dark waters, we joined in chorus for an Uncle Lucius led singalong, jostling and dancing together with beers and whiskey, sailing through midnight. If America’s on the way out, we’ll all keep riding high through chaos. Strangers, friends, travellers. All together, now.
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