Right Damn Now: Love Street Music Fest Is Happening, Over at Karbach Brewing Company

Yeah, I know this is stupidly late, but I didn’t want to let it slip completely by, because it’s a very cool thing going on at a very cool late. Today — as in Sunday, May 21st — is Love Street Music Fest, a cool music-and-brews festival unfolding at Karbach Brewing Company, up off of 290.

It’s a little bit pricey, admittedly, with tickets starting at $35, but it’s a neat idea nonetheless, with the name paying tribute not only to the brewery’s Love Street beer but also to its namesake ’60s club down on the north edge of Downtown. Plus, Karbach itself is a truly neat place, a brewery that looks like it was built halfway for making beer and halfway just for aesthetic reasons, so it’d be a cool place to hang out, drink, and eat at.

Oh, and to listen to music at, too. We visited a few months back and had a blast hanging out on the roomy back patio; it’s a great location for a festival, seriously.

I’ll admit to not knowing a lot about the headliner, Saint Motel, other than my kid freaking loves them in spite of the fact that they’re not EDM, and they’ve got a relatively-new album out, saintmotelevision. The former is a pretty good recommendation, actually; I’ve found myself liking a lot of bands/musicians the kid liked first, which is a bit of an odd feeling.

Then there’s JR JR, possibly better known by the band’s previous name, Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. — they changed names back in 2015, although I’m not sure why, since apparently the real Dale Earnhardt Jr. was a fan… I liked what I heard of the indie-pop band, but haven’t heard anything since the name switcheroo, so I can’t say what they’re like these days.

I am pretty familiar with Lewis Del Mar, on the other hand. I saw them back at FPSF last year and was mightily impressed — when they started playing, the crowd was sparse, but by about a third of the way through their set, they had people flooding over to the stage or staring in rapt fascination. Their self-titled full-length is damn cool, a mishmash of poppy sensibility, funky rock, and outright experimental weirdness that comes off like a crossbreed between the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Beck, and Citizen Cope.

Check out the video for “Loudy,” below:

Korean-American band Run River North are very cool, too, with a raw, anthemic vibe to their sweetly melodic folk-rock (which is much more on the “rock” side than the “folk,” to my ears). If you haven’t checked ’em out before now, you absolutely should.

Don’t know Cobi, East Coasters Foreign Air, or the awesomely bearded Charley Crockett at all, sadly, but I dig local boy Gio Chamba quite a bit — the guy seems to be everywhere lately — and I’ve loved everything I’ve heard from Adam Bricks, who has deftly shed his folkie skin to become a more fully-fleshed-out singer/songwriter who dabbles in whatever sound he feels like and does it well.

This thing runs from 1-9PM today, which means, yes, it’s already going on. Sorry about that — get up there quick, alright?