Knoxville’s Big Ears Music Festival.

Andrew WK @ big ears

Vampire Weekend @ big ears

DJ/Rupture @ big ears

St Vincent @ big ears

Last month Michael Byrne and myself covered this festival for SPIN. You can see the coverage here. We saw, among other things: Andrew WK performing classical music with Calder Quartet, the Ex, Terry Riley and Bang the Can performing In C, Saint Vincent, Vampire Weekend, Ben Frost, DJ/Rupture (several times), the xx, Joanna Newsom, Adrian Belew… and many more.

Knoxville is also a great town! So many great and beautiful music venues and every seems to be really nice. One thing that I thought was really great is all the people working at the various venues that were hosting the festival seemed VERY knowledgable about both the history of their venue and music in general. And they were super polite and friendly. Also don’t miss King Tut’s Egyptian Diner if you ever are in Knoxville… its a treat!

See all my photos from Big Ears here.

Big Ears Experimental Music Festival 2009, Knoxville.

michael gira @ big ears.   fennesz (with sparklehorse) @ big ears.
big ears.   matmos @ big ears.
matmos @ big ears.   DJ Dog Dick / Baltimore Round Robin @ big ears.

This weekend I went to the big ears music fest in knoxville. I saw so many artists, but the highlights were: philip glass, michael gira (swans, angels of light), christian fennesz (performing with a variety of collaborators), negativland (performing It’s All In Your Head FM), dan deacon and the baltimore round robin (ed schrader, cex, smart growth, adventure, dj dog dick, height)… It was a really great festival, small, low key, with the emphasis on the music and the artists and not a million sponsorships. Seriously, it was a great event and I really hope the organizers can keep it up with this level of quality in the future! Don’t miss out next year!

Oh yeah, and here is the full Big Ears set!