The 2013 Monterey Americana Festival at the Monterey County Fairgrounds seemed like a big secret that only a few lucky folks knew about.
"Where the hell is everyone?" I asked my festival companion, who shrugged back at me.
The ticket price couldn't have been a deterrent at $40 for the day (folks drop five times that amount for nosebleed seats and a short, mediocre performance.)
This gathering was eight hours of nonstop, top-notch live music featuring renowned musicians Jason Isbell, Todd Snider and Amanda Shires and rising talents such as Ashley Raines & the New West Revue.
The inaugural, short-lived Monterey Americana Festival at the Monterey County Fairgrounds should have been packed: an impeccable sound system and ideal stage placement with room for at least a thousand bodies to comfortably gyrate on the lush Fairgrounds' lawn.
Attendance was so abysmal that some food vendors took off a couple of hours after the doors opened due to the weak turnout.
Regardless, the music was high quality.
Jason Isbell’s early-evening performance was one of the best live performances I’ve ever seen. Touring behind Southeastern, which racked up hefty bags of critical acclaim and rose to No. 2 on the Americana Music Association charts, the Alabama native/former member of Drive-By Truckers and his killer band, the 400 Unit, unleashed about 90 minutes of gripping, mega-soulful alt-country rock.
Isbell’s vocals have no boundaries. He hits every note as if it were his destiny. His music demands the attention of everyone within listening distance.
The set predominantly showcased Southeastern’s instant classics like the tale of rock and roll excess, “Super 8,” and the melancholy ballad, “Live Oak.” Isbell also broke out “Codeine,” the centerpiece of his 2011 Here We Rest.
There was also the unexpected: a smoke-emitting-from-instruments, jamming cover of the Rolling Stones' “Can You Hear Me Knocking.” For an encore—I was later informed that the band didn't plan on playing an encore—Isbell busted out Neil Young’s “Like a Hurricane.”
Todd Snider delivered a very different brand of infectious showmanship, laced with humorous anecdotes, left-wing politics, a couple drug-addled yarns and story-song folk in the tradition of Arlo Guthrie and Loudon Wainwright III.
“I just make shit up and do it for anyone who’s listening,” Snider said.
Accompanied by Isbell’s wife, singer-songwriter Amanda Shires, Snider, an awfully lovable son-of-a-bitch, said he was honored to play in Monterey before opening with “Can’t Complain.”
“Tension” was one of Snider's biggest crowd-pleasers: “It's not what drugs you're strung out on they care about as much as whose/ You see, people still love drugs,” Snider sang. “They're bigger, hell, they're bigger than Rush Limbaugh.”
The singer-songwriter's gift of gab separates him from all the other folk singers out there. Snider's formula is self-deprecation with an open heart and a big smile.
“It’s taken a lot of discipline to keep my life as messed up as it is,” Snider said.
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