Lowell’s Town and the City fest returns with packed lineup
The Town and the City Festival returns to Lowell this weekend for the fourth time, with events once again taking place in venues across the Mill City’s downtown. The John Doe Folk Trio, Rhett Miller, Pile, Robin Lane, Buffalo Tom, and Ali McGuirk are among the notable national and regional acts appearing this year.
Three festivals in, Chris Porter, the man behind Town and the City, thinks the event is finally starting to establish itself. “I felt last time we were finally on to something,” he says during a recent Zoom conversation. “In year three, I finally saw my vision. I finally saw how I wanted to run operationally. There are always things to tweak, there’s always room for improvement, but I saw that foothold.”
His vision is not just to put on a successful festival, but to have it be a success in and for Lowell, the city in which he grew up and where he is still a part-year resident (the other part is spent on the West Coast where, among other things, he books the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival). He not only wants Town and the City (which takes its name from a book by another Lowell native son, Jack Kerouac) to be something that’s for Lowellians and inhabitants of surrounding communities; he also wants folks from around New England and beyond to see it as a destination. “It’s getting on the radar regionally, which is important to me because it’s about a celebration of Lowell and bringing people to Lowell.”
The attention to the local extends to the festival’s lineup. Porter points out that the prominent music festivals in the New England area have very limited opportunities for regionally based acts. There’s nothing wrong with that, he says, but for him, making a place for regional and local acts is a priority.
This year’s ample local representation includes several acts from Boston-based Red on Red Records. Owner Justine Covault will perform with her band, Justine and the Unclean; roster acts Robin Lane, Girl With a Hawk, and the Jacklights will also play, and recent signing D-Tension will host a hip-hop show and a poetry event.
“I’ve never actually been to the festival, because every time it happens, I have a gig. So I’m really excited to actually be able to go,” Covault remarks via Zoom.
She’s excited, too, for the opportunity it gives her label’s artists. “That’s what I’m all about,” she says. “Let’s get out there, build your audience, and connect with people. The festival is great because people go from venue to venue checking out bands, and so the bands are going to be able to play in front of people who have never seen them and don’t know anything about them.”
She also appreciates the way the festival is structured. “They’ve curated every night. It’s not like here’s a label showcase, here’s another label showcase. It’s very agnostic that way. People walk into a place, see something, enjoy it, go see something else.”
Porter says that he’s all about eclecticism, and that is certainly borne out by the range of acts the festival offers each year. But his curation principle is organized eclecticism; each bill is loosely grouped by genre, be it Americana, bluegrass, indie rock, singer-songwriter, or blues. Porter has found that there are a lot of people who just want to see one band or one show, and he wants to give them that option. “If someone wants to see these two indie rock bands and they’re together on the same bill, that might motivate them even more to attend that show.” As well, his hope is that with these sorts of groupings, the bands will feed off each other and produce something special.
Town and the City isn’t just about music. Every year has featured spoken-word and poetry events; this year the festival is also partnering with a local organization for its “Points of Light” celebration of spring. Earfull, an ongoing Boston-area series that typically pairs performances by a writer and a musical artist, will make its festival debut Saturday evening, with
Bill Janovitz and Warren Zanes, two folks who, since they wear both hats, will talk as well as play. Zanes, the one-time Del Fuegos member who has gone on to a varied and accomplished career as a writer, college teacher, vice president at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and filmmaker (oh, and musician), will discuss his upcoming monograph on Bruce Springsteen’s rough-hewn, folky change-up “Nebraska” and play some of his own music, perhaps selecting material that he thinks has some resonance with what he talks about.
When asked if he sees a connection between the subject of his book and the particular character of the festival, Zanes replies that if Jack Kerouac can be seen as the guiding spirit of the event, he would say yes. “One thing that comes up in my book is Robert Frank’s [photography book] ‘The Americans,’ which Kerouac wrote the foreword for. I think Springsteen would see those things being part of the same fabric. And the way Kerouac wrote was raw, it was unfiltered, it was immediate. When Springsteen sat down to write, I don’t think Kerouac was necessarily a reference point, but they’re absolutely kindred spirits in how they were laying that stuff down.”
‘In year three, I finally saw my vision. I finally saw how I wanted to run operationally.’ CHRIS PORTER, organizer of the Town and the City Festival