With Woodsist Fest 2024 around the corner, I wanted to take some time to give last year’s festival a retrospective review. The 2023 lineup featured headliners Kevin Morby, Avey Tare, and Kurt Vile alongside many more great acts that covered a span of genres – garage rock (Tyvek), world music (Cochemea, Bombino), folk (Anna St. Louis, Cass McCombs), dub (Scientist), art-pop (Water From Your Eyes), and many more (really, no misses from the festival curators). Check out the full lineup below.
Getting to Arrowood Farms was a bit of a mission for someone coming from California as it required driving two hours outside of the city after landing in Newark, NJ. Driving upstate, I watched the urban landscape change to rural alongside the setting sun. Houses became more and more spread out as porch lights flickered on. I arrived in Accord/Kerhonkson after dark and then carried myself to the neighboring town of Kingston where the Woodsist “warm up” pre-party was going down at Tubby’s. I made it just in time for the intimate event’s surprise headliner, Kevin Morby, who was joined onstage by a Waxahatchee cameo.
Day One
Festival-goers were faced with a pretty heavy rainstorm on day one of the festival. I posted up on the lawn in my orange raincoat with a chair and umbrella, forming my own little bubble of semi-dryness surrounded by others who formed their own rain-proof pods. I’ll be honest, coming from San Diego I did not think to prepare for a spontaneous storm so this gear was kindly borrowed from my hosts who were truly a godsend. The festival wasn’t very crowded, so any place on the lawn passed as a pretty decent seat. While the artists alternated between the adjacent stages, there was still plenty of downtime to explore what the farm had to offer. There were chickens and roosters, who interjected their calls with comedic timing during some of the sets. There was an indoor bar that had a cool cocktail lounge-cabin vibe complete with a fireplace, and a large outdoor bar and seating area which boasted the farm’s local beers and some items from their menu. This included their weekend special brewed exclusively for the event, the Woodsist Wanderer.
The Aquarium Drunkard DJs had a great selection of tunes spinning for those who arrived to the festival early. Being excited for the day of music ahead, I was one of those people. Water From Your Eyes kicked off the live music with their unique art-pop-post-punk-electronic-driven sound, complete with having the coolest laid-back vibe a band like that could have. Tyvek from Detroit were up next, who apparently don’t play too often so it was even more of a treat to witness their energetic garage rock performance. Cochemea flipped the energy into a real cool percussion-driven folky-world sound. The 8-piece had several different rhythmic instruments (bongos, shaker, standing drum kit) along with some wind instruments (saxophone, flute), string instruments (guitar, bass), and keys. The rain started really coming down around this time, which functionally fit with the band as the pattering raindrops hit our heads and umbrellas.
Scientist were a real vibe, playing towards the end of the daytime segment of the festival. They played off the two official stages in a tent more central to the festival grounds, and they even had Ryan Jewell from Woods join in on the controls for some of the set. Woods followed this back on the main stage, and they continued the energy. As the sun set, Woods played their iconic folky-psychedelic sound guiding us into night.
As the weather got a little less forgiving during parts of the night, the indoor bar became even more of a cozy mainstay at the height of the storm, where the weather forced us to abandon our lawn-stations and retreat to this stronghold. Fortunately this didn’t throw off the momentum of the festival too much. It actually ended up being a really great time, an outdoor festival turned temporarily to a party driven by refuge, where everyone had to turn to each other for entertainment during the slight delays. People were playing drinking games, and I ended up having so many different conversations with the people around me. I met a couple from the Albany area who drove a few hours to the festival for the day, and they bought some of us a round of Fernets. Some of us also bonded over the port-a-potty that somebody at the festival absolutely wrecked. The door to this bathroom in question was tagged with some sort of band sticker, which I think made a lot of us drawn to select that particular one. I also met someone who learned I was from San Diego and then shared how they wrote their Master’s thesis on the uniqueness of the SD School District. Who would’ve thought I’d learn something new about my own city in another one on the opposite coast.
In the newly dimmed and rainy atmosphere of the fest, Avey Tare played solo on the second stage resembling a streamer mobile home. With some looping pedals and a guitar, Dave took us on a journey through his mind and was even kind enough to take a detour through a beautiful solo rendition of “Man of Oil.” I witnessed the security guards enthusiastically bopping their heads and widening their eyes as the psychedelic noises reached their ears. Kevin Morby closed out the night with his band on the main stage, playing a full 90 minutes of music. He played many songs from his most recent album, This Is a Photograph, but also played a handful from the rest of his discography.
The early curfew of the festival (9:30pm) allowed me the energy and encouragement to bop over to the Grateful Dead after party at Inness Golf Club. It really felt like a continuation of the festival and it had a similar energy to the indoor bar at the festival grounds, with people coming down from their festival-buzz over grilled cheese sandwiches. Over spinning Dead cassette tapes, there was much chatter between old friends, new acquaintances, and artists from the festival mingling amongst the attendees.
Day Two
Day two was more of the same, although the weather did not get nearly as intense as the previous day. I built another rainproof-pod to protect me from the elements, but found that I did not need to use it and it was left abandoned for most of the day. Following round two of the opening Aquarium Drunkard DJ set, Anna St. Louis eased us into the second day of the festival with her light-hearted folk music. Following her performance was Alabaster DePlume, who melded modern jazz with inspirational voiceovers. You can tell that front person Gus Fairbairn has great banter and chemistry with his backing band and vocalists, who all seemed like they were having a great time entertaining his candor. MJ Lenderman was the definition of slacker rock, with his long hair draping over his face for a majority of the time on stage, revealing glimpses of a crooked smile through the locks. MJ kept the crowd fixated for the duration of their set, drawing us in and holding us close while they whispered their deepest secrets into our receiving ears.
Bombino from Niger played in their full burka wear. Between the setting sun and the instrumental world music, I couldn’t help but feel a little sad and already nostalgic for the weekend, knowing that the festival only had a couple of hours left. Cass McCombs played to an eager crowd from the second stage as the festival settled into the final night. Cass and his band played many songs from their discography including “Bum Bum Bum” and some songs from 2021 release Tip of the Sphere.
Kurt Vile and the Violators closed the festival out, playing to a crowd who were both exhausted from the long days of music, weather, and dancing, but also energized by the long days of music, weather, and dancing. There was a sense of community that had formed among the full-weekend attendees of the intimate festival, bonded by the ups and downs and beauty of the weekend. Being in a place as quiet and beautiful as Accord allowed for full absorption of the music provided by the curators of Woodsist festival. Having no overlapping set times gave us dedicated music fans the ability to see every set in its entirety, should we choose to do so. The intimate grounds also allowed us to stay connected to the music and experience the sets from wherever we were on the map.
Woodsist 2024
This year, the festival will take place at the same location on September 21st and 22nd and will feature another exciting, diverse lineup. Headliners Yo La Tengo and Real Estate will be joined by Jessica Pratt, Rosali, The Messthetics, and so many more. See the full lineup below and visit woodsist.com to purchase tickets. I’m very excited to see what adventures this year’s festival will bring and cannot wait to soon be engulfed by the sonic experience again.
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