Recent Stories with tag Blitzen Trapper

The Capitol Hill Block Party kicks off today and stretches through Sunday evening. A few festival updates via their twitter news feed to note: will call opens at 11 a.m. in case you want to beat the rush, the music starts at 3:30 p.m., and single tickets to today's festivities are gone baby gone. While this is sad for procrastinators, it's somewhat good news to those who purchased tickets early: according to LineOut, they restricted themselves to selling fewer tickets than the last year's crowd-crushing Frizzelle-lifting peak attendance (Sonic Youth). Finally, to make more room for meandering, food carts will be sparse within the fences (appropriate, given their sparseness in the city); so plan on patronizing one of the restaurants within the grounds or stepping out of the festival to stimulate the local economy via your hunger and thirst.

Sure, some of the biggest draws may be from out of town, but the festival is also a great place to sample a bunch of local (and locally-connected) bands. The lineup promises a overflowing smorgasbord of Seattle bands on all of the stages, but to catch up with your friendly neighborhood musicians, be sure keep an eye on the Kerry Zettel-curated stage at the Cha Cha. You can also check out the eclectic interests the kids at the Vera Project by visiting their stage, situated away from the lure of the beer gardens. There's also a not-quite-secret stage at Vita's bean room, for those who secured the right credentials (hint: visit the AT&T store).

Below, a few day-by-day reminders of sets to consider, complete with a few videos to help you pass the time until the gates open. As usual, take advantage of the vast comments section to let us know who you're dying to see....

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Blitzen Trapper manage to have their cake and eat it too: They mine traditional pop and folk sounds for their timeless-sounding songs, yet manage to inject just enough strangeness to make their records (and shows) a joyous ride.

The Portland band played a too-brief (blame lead singer Eric Earley's thrashed vocal cords) but enthusiastic show at Neumo's Sunday night to a capacity audience, and I haven't heard so many people sing along at a show in a long, long time. Tracks like "Furr," with its memorable lyrics about a boy raised by wolves and an instantly-adhesive folky melody, turned the jaded cluster of humanity jamming the house into happy grade-schoolers.

Earley and co-singer Marty Marquis made a great team, the former's effusive energy contrasting amusingly with the latter's deadpan between-song patter (incidentally, Earley sounded great despite--or perhaps because of--the wear on his voice). And the entire band played tight, offering a good mix of material from all three of their full lengths. The audience...

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