Local Bands Invade MidPoint

You might be surprised or shocked at just how many of the bands playing MidPoint this week are from the Cincinnati area. Why not just take a guess? Go on. I urge you. How many bands from the area do you think are playing the festival? What would you say if I told you that over ninety bands playing the festival are from the Cincinnati area? Crazy, I know. But the thing is, not all the bands from the area are on the bill this year.

If you spend your weekends at places like the Southgate House, the Mad Hatter, Northside Tavern or The Comet, to just name a few venues, you’ve probably heard a bunch of these band names thrown around. Maybe you’ve seen them, maybe you’re close friends with them or maybe you’re in one of these bands. Just to think that over ninety bands from the area are on the bill, and not every band in the area is on the bill, I just think that really says a lot about our city.

Outsiders may look at Cincinnati and see bad sports teams and odd styles of chili, but aside from the things most of us like such as Skyline or Gold Star, Montgomery Inn, LaRosa’s, goetta, Kings Island and Coney Island, what I see is one of the strongest music and arts communities in the country. And let’s not forget we have Bootsy Collins, the histories of Kings Records and Herzog Studios, Indian Hill resident Peter Frampton and Chuck Garvey from moe. We also used to have one of the greatest radio stations in indie rock in WOXY, however they took off to Austin, Texas but fortunately we still have the great people over at WNKU.

MidPoint has certainly helped put Cincinnati on the music map, and in return I would hope that MidPoint and Cincinnati will help by putting some of these local bands on the map. Let’s take a gander at some of the local bands playing this year’s festival.

No matter what styles of music you prefer, you’ll find it right here in Cincinnati. Every style and genre you can think is represented. Because Kentucky is “the Bluegrass State”, it’s only fitting that so many bluegrass bands call the tri-state area their home. Not just bluegrass music but various incarnations of this style that could include Americana, roots and folk and anything in between that you wish to call it. If this is your thing, you’ll find bands and artists like Jeff Scott Roberson and Len’s Lounge, the Rubber Knife Gang, the Rattlesnakin’ Daddies, The Tillers, Straw Boss, the Crick Gypsies and of course, Jake Speed and the Freddies. Take a few steps to the left of those styles of music and you can find country rock in the Kentucky Struts and Mack West.

Perhaps most of the bands from the area fit into styles like indie (although is it really a style?), pop, folk, alternative and rock, which include, and get ready for this: Cash Flagg, Mike Fair and the Adventure Seekers, johnnytwentythree, the Koala Fires, the Atriums, the Fairmount Girls, Sohio, the Minor Leagues, Stick Figure Drawings, the Chocolate Horse, Wonky Tonk, Chick Pimp,Coke Dealer at a Bar, Frontier Folk Nebraska, the Happy Maladies, the Seedy Seeds, Serenity Fisher, the Harlequins, the Sleeping Sea, Enlou, Pomegranates, Tristen Shields, Watson Park, Flaregun, Samantha Tieger, Whitney Barricklow, Tracy Walker, Scott Metcalf, Brandon Dawson, the Mighty, Goose, Noctaluca, the Electric Souls, Mad Anthony, Sparrow Bellows, the Black Owls, Black Saints Cartel, Oxford Cotton (which features former members of the Greenhornes and Heartless Bastards), Buckra, Wake the Bear, Ric Hordinski, Sirens on Sunday, the Moon and the Stars, Matthew Shelton’s Picnic, Ellery, Messerly & Ewing, Eric Matthew Tepe, Shiny and the Spoon, Wussy, For Algernon and Fists of Love.

If that’s just not heavy or fast enough for you, maybe you’d enjoy hard rock, punk, post-punk, ska, reggae, blues or garage and surf rock bands like the Prohibitionists, the Lions Rampant, the Sundresses, the Buffalo Killers, Banderas, Ampline, the Read, State Song, Loudmouth, the Frankl Project, the Pinstripes, the Flux Capacitors, the $yd Natanists, 46 Long, II Juicy, J. Dorsey Blues Revival and the Jon Justice Band.

If you’re looking for something a little more electronic, you may want to check out some bands like You, You’re Awesome, Eat Sugar, Culture Queer and the Eagle to Squirrel Variety Hour.

And then there are bands who mix of number of styles like R&B, Hip Hop, soul, jazz, experimental, funk and even progressive into one big crazy sounding thing like Abiyah, Giselle Grayson, Where They Landed, Daughters & Sons, Eclipse, Crazy Legs and Spookfloaters. You can even find some Salsa and Latin music in the area with Son del Caribe.