Coming Up: Untapped Fest Unfolds This Weekend (And Hey, A Giveaway!)

Alright, people — remember just the other day when I talked about Houston’s current bounty of music-type festivals? Well, another’s happening this weekend, and it promises to be pretty spectacular. This is the third (I think?) year of the Houston edition of the Untapped Festival, and from what my non-beer-drinking self can observe of the fest these past couple of years, it’s gotten steadily better and bigger.

This year, there’s not only the main event, the big-ass pile of bands and beers going on at Discovery Green this coming Saturday, September 20th — and yeah, I’ll get back to that, don’t worry — but there’s also a pre-party this Friday, September 19th at The Flying Saucer from 6-8PM, a post-fest Hangover Brunch on Sunday, September 21st at The Hay Merchant (from 11AM-3PM), and an official karaoke after-party hosted by none other than Robert Ellis and Kam Franklin starting at 10:30PM on Saturday at the MKT Bar. Hot damn, y’all.

And then, obviously, there’s The Big Day — i.e., Saturday. The gates open at 3:30PM, and from then on there’s a slew of excellent beers (see the full list over here), including those from tons of cool local and non-local breweries. As I mentioned above, I’m not a beer drinker; I occasionally drink an Irish whiskey or Bailey’s, and that’s about it. From my layman’s viewpoint, though, Untapped looks like Beer Nerd Paradise.

For me, the draw’s the music, as always. This year’s festival has ’90s alt-rock icons the Toadies in the headlining spot, and while I’ll admit to being somewhat “eh” on ’em back in the day, I like ’em a lot more these days. Next down the list is H-town expat and all-round awesome guy Robert Ellis, whose The Lights From The Chemical Plant is flat-out brilliant, not to mention Manchester Orchestra/Kevin Devine side project Bad Books, and ex-Final Fantasy one-man-band Owen Pallett; haven’t heard any of his stuff under his own moniker, but I liked the old FF stuff, definitely.

Other than Ellis, though, it’s the earlier names on the lineup that are more my thing. Austin party-down retro-rockers The Bright Light Social Hour are in there, as are Houston’s own rocksteady kings & queen {The Suffers}, who’ve had a pretty great year — and who deserve a heartfelt “congrats” for recently getting signed by New Frontier Touring — great psych-pop guys {Featherface}, and excellent synth-pop up-and-comers {BLSHS}, who I just caught at Yes, Indeed! this past weekend.

So basically, the whole weekend’s one big, long Untapped Festival, from this Friday night onwards. Tickets are still on sale — click here for that — at $30 for just the concert, $38 for the concert and beers, or $62 for a VIP Pass that gets you early entry. Not bad for what you get, in my book.

But hey, why pay if you don’t have to? Courtesy of the Untapped folks and the inimitable Mark C. Austin, we’ve got a pair of tickets to give away to the some lucky fan of beer and music. If you want ’em, all you have to do is one of these three things:

• Email us at “contests” at “spacecityrock dot com”, with the Subject line “Beer good. Music better!”.
• Comment on this post on our Facebook page.
• Reply to this very same tweet on our Twitter feed.

Whoever does it first, wins a ticket for you and some undoubtedly grateful friend or loved one. Cool? And even if you don’t win, you still need to go to this thing; it’s gonna be a blast.