I approached this year's first annual Baltimore Independent Music & Arts Festival with an odd mixture of anticipation and trepidation. It was essentially a reboot of the Baltimore Music Conference that had happened the last three years, and after witnessing the fiasco that was the 2008 BMC, I swore off ever attending the event again; more because I'd say nothing at all than have to write another scathing review. But when BMC’s Lisa Chaplin Suit got together with Morphius Records founder David Andler to try and make a fresh start with a new, but undoubtedly similar, event, it looked good enough to give another shot, and I'm happy to say it was.

The first night of BiMA, on Thursday, August 26th, I decided to venture to the Windup Space to see the Adam Hopkins Presents show, curated by 1/2 of the brain trust that puts together the Out Of Your Head improv nights that I wrote about in the Urbanite earlier this year. It was a pretty awesome show, and definitely not the kind of scene that would've ever been featured under the umbrella of the old BMC. Jerseyband, from New Jersey, natch, were this crazy avant garde goofball band with lots horns, skronky guitars, head-spinning time signatures, cross-dressing and bizarre spoken word interludes. And it was cool to finally see Hopkins's own steady band, Quartet Offensive, who on this night were an quintet, and sounded pretty great, even if it was hard to top Jerseyband. On an organizational note, the press pass Andler said would be waiting for me at the Windup was not there, or at least the guy working the door couldn't find a list with my name on it and made me pay, but I won't hold that against them since they straightened out on the second night. And as far as everything else I saw, it was a pretty well run festival.



On the second night, I mostly kept to the Windup again, but saw a lot more bands. The one playing when I got there was Avec, who for my money are one of the most underrated bands in Baltimore, and marry mathy time signatures and complex riffs to stirring, dramatic songcraft like noone since Shudder To Think. Their last album 2007's Lines, was my 77th favorite album of the last decade, but they haven't done much since then other than the occasional show and a new song for a benefit compilation that as far as I know hasn't come out yet. Their set at BiMA seemed to be all old songs, but that was OK since I love those songs, but since they were technically playing on a showcase for Birdnote Records, who didn't release any of their previous records, I hope that means they signed to the label and are working on something new. After Avec, Birdnote's best known band Thrushes played. I like Thrushes, saw them very early on and heard real growth with their latest album, Night Falls, earlier this year, but I gotta admit the shoegaze thing only holds so much interest for me. I like them best, though, when they remind me of Evol-era Sonic Youth, and apparently someone else thinks the same thing since a song from Evol played over the PA before their set.

Then I walked down the street to another Station North venue, the Hexagon, to see some of the showcase for the Beechfields, a label that's run by and has signed a lot of people I've known or run in the same social circles as over the years, although there's some bands on the label I'm not really familiar with. One band that I heard a bit of recently and was really intrigued by is Among Wolves, who apparently have one or maybe even two new albums dropping in the near future, and don't seem to play out too often. They play kinda twangy, midtempo rock, but just do it really fucking well with damn impressive songs, and their set that night was extremely loose and drunken, but just enough that it added to the charm of the music instead of detracting from it. The next band was Gary B & The Notions, a fun power pop act I interviewed a few months back, but hadn't seen live in a few years. And I gotta say, I've listened to their latest album a hell of a lot in the past year and it was great to finally hear those songs performed, and they really sound tighter and a little more muscular live than you might expect from the records. I watched a bit of the next band, Jason Dove's new ironic riff rock band Beard, and I dug what they were doing but kinda wanted to see what was going on back up at the Windup.

At the Windup, I wanted to once again test my theory that every band from North Carolina is good, and so far it continues to hold up. The Moaners were a kickass female guitar/drums duo with a great song about terriers, and Hammer No More The Fingers are a NC band that Gary B had told me about, and they really lived up to his praise, just really solid classic '90s-style indie rock, I gotta check out their albums sometime. I watched one more short set, from a local band called Sal Bando who played a release show for a new 7" and had a hilarious song called "Cocaine Werewolf," and by that point it was pretty late and I decided to call it a night. I thought about making it out to the third night or seeing some of the seminars, but that didn't happen, which is just as well since I ended up not getting to write up the even for anyone that would pay me for it and posting it here on my blog 3 weeks later.

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