Peace, love and psych rock rule at Santa Barbara’s Starry Nites Festival

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Photos by Michael McGrath, Story by Amy McGrath

On St. Patrick’s Day, Michael and I ate a late afternoon seafood lunch by the foggy, gray Malibu seaside, the heaviness of work, parenting and “grown-up life” falling away moment by moment as we laughed and drank mid-afternoon fruity martinis. We meandered the empty beach across from the restaurant and reminisced about a long ago Irish honeymoon. Then we headed for the hills above Santa Barbara to spend a few days under the old oak trees, seeing some amazing live music at the Starry Nites Festival.

“What’s the secret to staying married?” I’m often asked. “Forgive liberally and have as much fun together as you possibly can,” tends to be my standard answer. What this has looked like in my life, married to a rock and roll photographer, has been spending lots of time seeing live music; fortunately, we share similar tastes and a mutual passion for going to shows. At some point early on, we started the tradition of traveling around the country to check out shows and festivals- sometimes with our kids, who, fortunately, are also music-obsessed, and sometimes just the two of us.

I know that trudging off to multi-day music festivals in a variety of locations isn’t everyone’s idea of a deeply romantic getaway, but it works for us- which is why we were especially excited to find out about a festival upstart this year, The Starry Nites Festival- in a beautiful but easy place to get to- the San Ynez mountains above Santa Barbara- happening right around our 18^th wedding anniversary. For a romantic weekend getaway in a dreamy, beautiful place with a killer line-up of psych and indie rock bands, Starry Nites delivered in a big way.

We arrived at the gorgeous festival site, The Live Oak Campground, and immediately met guitar player Howie Anderson of the classic psych-pop band The Strawberry Alarm Clock, waiting online to check in. This is the magic of a festival like this- a mélange of fans and musicians all hanging out in a relaxed, gorgeous environment- everyone excited to see their own favorite bands and the ones they haven’t discovered yet.

The festival’s three stages featured a nicely curated collection of both new and established acts ranging from garage rock to glam, with a healthy dose of psychedelia thrown into the mix. Asheville North Carolina’s lo-fi darlings Elvis Depressedly delivered a sweet, sunshine drenched set of late afternoon sadness. Starry Nites offered plenty of interesting new music: LA’s Band Aparte gave a high energy shot in the arm to the sleepy afternoon with their gothy, dark wave sound. Husband/wife duo KOLARS featured the most interesting percussion of the festival- drummer Lauren Brown pounding out fierce rhythms, tap dancing a-top a bass drum for the entirety of the rocking, glam/blues set.

 

Along with highlighting new artists, the festival booked a variety of classic acts. The Strawberry Alarm Clock, featuring our smiley new friend Howie, put in a solid set of classic psychedelic pop music featuring their 1967 smash hit “Incense and Peppermints.”  The Dandy Warhols have been churning out cheerful psych-pop for over 20 years, and their set at Starry Nites was a focused, driving 90 minutes of garage rock fun. Saturday evening’s headliners The Kills drew the biggest crowd of the festival and their performance was a high-energy romp through the sexy, slithery glam that duo Allison Mossheart and Jamie Hince have become known for.

In addition to a great lineup, the festival featured some truly inspired flourishes- especially the  projections of psychedelic images onto the large oak trees of grounds that turned the whole place into a trippy playground after dark. There was good food, great drinks (alcoholic kombucha!) and a solid selection of vendors. What there wasn’t- a huge crowd- made the festival feel intimate and relaxed. Hopefully there were enough ticket sales to warrant bringing Starry Nites back next year, but the carefree atmosphere of this year’s festival was a special treat for music-lovers accustomed to the big crowds of festivals like Austin Psych Fest and NOLA Jazzfest.

Sunday’s line-up featured exceptional sets from Black Mountain– whose wave of sound evokes lots of early heavy metal/psych rock influences like Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin, and features the unassuming stage presence but ferociously compelling vocals of Amber Webber. Scottish Teenage Fanclub, a staple of early 90’s alt-rock, contributed a set of super bouncy, fun jangle pop including their memorable single “The Concept.”

Though Santa Barbara resident, prog-rock pioneer, and “Eye in the Sky” Alan Parsons closed the festival, for me, the true headliner of the night was the profoundly moving, laudanum-paced set from Cat Power. One woman powerhouse Chan Marshall has a disarming and unpredictable nature on stage- she seems to meander trying to find herself musically, and her songs often end abruptly. But once Chan sat at the piano and channeled her deeply sorrowful voice into Cat Power classics like “Names” and “He War,” a powerful, transformative hush fell over the crowd- and I fell down the rabbit hole of her mesmerizing voice and raw vulnerability. “The Moon” was so magical and deeply poignant that it left me floating through the rest of the evening.

The light fog that kept the festival cool and dream-like intensified on Sunday night as we parted the festival grounds- grateful for and gratified by two days of excellent music in a gorgeous, relaxed place. We would love to see Starry Nites become an annual event. We plan to stay married for another year in hopes we can do it all again.