As I walk down the street to the convention center, I can already hear faint music. On the first night of Hopscotch, the streets of downtown are bizarrely empty. It could be that it’s just too early in the night or maybe attendance is low this year. Outside of the cop cars blockading the entrance to Red Hat, you’d never know a massive music festival is currently taking place. Walking farther, it becomes clear to me that the music I’m hearing is in fact trailing in from City Plaza about two blocks away. This is where Hopscotch begins.
The first night of any music festival, as it turns out, is always a bit tame. Despite how energetic and frantic the acts of that night might be, attendance is usually a touch lower. Especially when the opening night is a Thursday. The first stop of the night was Lincoln Theatre with a friend. Not because either of us particularly knew what was playing. We decided to meet up with yet another group of friends who happened to be at the concert for P.A.T. Junior, a local rapper.
P.A.T. was a lucky stop; a skilled musician with a sizeable following and an active audience at just the right time to put our night on a good start. The crowd made up for its size with pure energy, and it should be no surprise that P.A.T. was well received. After all, P.A.T. is exactly the type of artist that perfectly represents the local scene of Raleigh at Hopscotch. Up and coming with a metric tonne of potential, local artists often find their spotlight at Hopscotch. The festival acts as the perfect stage for a collection of oddball underdogs rising out of the woodworks right smack dab in the middle of “Raleighwood.”
Such is the case with fellow local act Museum Mouth, who played Friday night. A local act that brings both a sizeable following to Hopscotch and stands to gain new fans from it, Museum Mouth has the perfect set of attributes to fit perfectly in with the other non-headliners at Hopscotch. A togetherness forms at their concert, as lead singer and drummer Karl Kuehn yells to the crowd “Does anyone want earplugs? I’m gonna pass ‘em around.” It’s these kinds of acts that bring out that lively indie spirit that draws in so many people, some local and some from afar.
Not to mention a routinely killer lineup. On Thursday alone I saw Mount Eerie, Oh Sees, Gobbin Jr, and METZ, all of whom are fantastic, reputable performers. Mount Eerie was toned down for the festival, quietly situated at Fletcher auditorium in the Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts. Phil Elverum, the artist behind Mount Eerie, took to the stage with only an acoustic guitar and a microphone, pouring out raw emotion to the seating, silent crowd.
The funny thing about it was that Fletcher, being a concert hall and not a rock venue or bar, didn’t really fit many other artists. The seated, still atmosphere was out of place for a festival like this one, but for an artist like Mount Eerie, it was strangely fitting. The experience was as personal as it was immensely depressing. Perhaps an odd set to cram into a 30-minute window at Hopscotch, but a profound one nonetheless.
Still traveling with my group of companions, we caught our last show together before parting ways at The Basement, a rented-out chamber of the convention center that could have easily housed upwards of 500 people at once. This timeslot belonged to Oh Sees (formerly Thee Oh Sees), and showcased one of the more raucous sets of the festival. This was also the only show of the festival at which I can say that I saw moshing take place; even METZ, an aggressive metal-esque indie alternative band whose show I attended later that night, played to a spacious, head-bobbing crowd. Regardless, both concerts were well played and their live sound-setup was fantastic. It still seems odd to me however, the decision making process behind assigning the bands certain different venues.
Take for example METZ, who were assigned to play at CAM (Contemporary Arts Museum). The stark white walls of the modified space were no help to the band’s gritty vibe, nor was the overly sanitized setting. Such can be said of any band that attempted to play at the temporary venue. The main issue with the venues of the festival came from crowd size accommodation however; far too many bands were either crammed into a space too tiny for their tremendous following, or forced to play in an oversized venue to spread out the crowd and disrupted the vibe of the performance. Japanese Breakfast, who played Saturday night at Neptune’s, suffered a line the ran almost a block past the venue due to the space being over-capacity half an hour before the show. I’ll put it this way: if a band can sell out Cat’s Cradle, they’ve got no business being crammed into Neptune’s. And for that matter, no band should be tasked with trying to make Red Hat Amphitheater look full at 3 on a Sunday afternoon. As much as I love them and will attest to their popularity, Cloud Nothings certainly had no business doing so, and deserved a more fitting venue and time slot.
Despite these issues however, the festival lived up to my expectations and beyond. Rushing from concert to concert each night provides a brilliant thrill and a renewed sense of belonging in a City that I’ve called home for three years now. To be an attendee of the festival is to see the city in a new light; it’s like the flat avenues, stop signs and sky scrapers were all just boring images in a picture book before now. For those four days, downtown Raleigh sprung into 3-D, like pictures from a pop-up book. Hopscotch is a festival that breathes life into our town, and it’s a tangible feeling to many in attendance.
“The entire city is the venue,” said Kyle Kilgo, an attendee of Future Islands’ Friday night show.
The crowd fills in rapidly behind him as he smiles and professes to just having come from the Hurricane Irma evacuation site in South Carolina. Nothing stops a man determined to feel the life of the city.
“It’s all in downtown, whereas other festivals are in like, a field,” said Elizabeth Hawkins, another attendee. “You’re walking around downtown, you’re in all the places you normally go to, but in the spirit of a festival.”
These thoughts and more echo one particular sentiment; that Raleigh comes alive during the festival in a way unlike any other night. It’s a fantastic feeling that’s nowhere more prevalent than the makeshift outdoor venue at Raleigh City Plaza, which for Friday night only was home to Future Islands.
“We ran from the city of Baltimore, but we rep for NC, baby!” Samuel Herring, lead singer of Future Islands screamed in-between songs.
The enthusiasm displayed, the packed audience and the glowing lights all set forth the perfect image of the night. Perhaps better yet, the perfect image of Hopscotch, right at the heart of the city.
Fans cheer from the pit and throw up the Run the Jewels hand sign. The concert was a part of the Hopscotch music festival and took place at Red Hat Amphitheater on Sept. 9. The entire festival took place on Sept. 8-10 in downtown Raleigh.
