The drive to Omaha went faster than I expected. One stop for gas and an energy drink, then back on the road with the anticipation building. I knew there were good times waiting at the other end and did not want to waste a minute getting there.

Forty minutes before showtime, the parking lot at Stir Cove at Harrah’s Council Bluffs was already jammed, with cars spilling onto the adjacent street. I found one lonely space at the far end of the lot and took it, even though it left me more than a quarter-mile from the stage. Judging by the number of vehicles already packed around me, nobody was leaving quickly after the final song. The long walk could be tomorrow’s problem.

Still wearing sunglasses in the last stretch of daylight, I headed toward the venue and asked the first security guard I saw where to find the box office. He was standing just beyond the fence from the stage. The box office, he explained, was all the way around at the hotel’s front entrance. Good thing I was early.

Inside Harrah’s, two security workers were handing out 21-and-older wristbands beside a sign that read, “No bags! Clear plastic bags only!” I had a black camera backpack. Not ideal. I explained that I was photographing the show, had not known about the clear-bag policy and needed to find the press entrance. One of the women directed me to the security office, where the staff did everything they could to help. Another employee walked me to the box office and cut through the line so the attendant knew I had been cleared for a press ticket.

Ticket and ID back in hand, I went through another set of doors and onto a sidewalk that seemed to run about 300 feet. I still was not inside the venue. At this point the process had begun to feel like a video game: go here, find this person, speak to someone else, unlock checkpoint A. Yet nobody treated the camera bag or press credential like an inconvenience. At the last gate, one guard shined a flashlight into the main pocket, another scanned my ticket so quickly that I asked whether I was actually good to go.

“Of course, honey. Have a great time!” she said.

Just before I crossed through, the sunset opened above the Omaha skyline. I stopped to photograph it and used the moment to check my camera settings. Then I stepped inside Stir Cove for the first time and finally understood the name. The stage sits against the Harrah’s hotel tower and faces a grassy bowl where people spread blankets and unfolded camping chairs. A bar and elevated “Flight Deck” rise to the left. A VIP lounge and Guy Fieri’s restaurant sit to the right. The whole place folds inward toward the stage, close enough to feel communal without losing the relaxed sprawl of an outdoor show.

People were still claiming patches of grass when the night’s first problem announced itself with smoke.

A small fire before the sunshine

Photographers near the stage had started asking one another why the opener was late when a security guard leaned over with the explanation: one panel in the rear LED wall had spontaneously combusted. Not a metaphor. An actual piece of the production had caught fire before the first song.

Arden Jones arrived shortly after 8 p.m., about five minutes beyond the scheduled start, and spent a moment joking about how the band had nearly been lit on fire. Then he went to work. The 25-year-old California artist, who first gained wider attention after posting “Parallel Parking” to TikTok near the end of 2020, moved constantly, crossing the stage with the looseness of somebody determined not to let a technical scare dictate the mood.

I had saved some of Jones’ music more than a year earlier but did not know he was opening until shortly before the show. That surprise worked in the night’s favor. His songs make room for uneasy thoughts without surrendering their lift. Even when the subject turns inward, the melodies carry a stubborn reassurance: things may be a mess, but happiness has not left the building.

There was also an echo of Oliver Tree in Jones’ elastic vocal delivery and collision of pop, hip-hop and alternative music. After Tree’s death in June, hearing that influence did not feel like imitation so much as proof that an artist’s instincts can keep moving through somebody else’s work. The comparison stayed at the edge of Jones’ set, never swallowing his own voice.

“Serotonin Highs,” “Someone New” and “Mr. Sunshine” gave the lowering sun a fitting soundtrack. Jones had brought the California brightness with him, but the set was not all surface shine. The springy arrangements worked because they pushed against the uncertainty in his lyrics. Joy sounded less like a default setting than a decision he kept making in public.

Behind him, stagehands replaced the damaged LED panel while he performed. During the final stretch, calibration images flashed across the wall as the crew tested the repair. The work was visible if you knew where to look, yet it never became the show. The problem was contained, the panel changed and the production restored without panic.

Hearing “Skipping Seasons” landed differently for me. It was the first Jones song I had encountered, back when it was only something coming through my speakers. Now I was photographing him playing it in front of a crowd. Careers rarely announce their turning points when they happen. Sometimes the circle closes quietly while you are checking exposure through a viewfinder.

Jones finished around 8:40. The crew needed another half-hour to complete the changeover, and the house playlist prevented that time from going slack. A-ha’s “Take on Me,” John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads” and Chappell Roan’s “HOT TO GO!” turned the wait into a loose communal singalong. People danced on the grass. Voices carried up the bowl. Thirty minutes can flatten a crowd when the music between sets is chosen without care; here, nobody near me complained.

At 9:11, the waiting ended.

Please consider Donating to Sponsor an article even $1 helps!

Pop music with moving parts

The stage went dark. The familiar AJR logo appeared alone on the LED wall, multiplied, multiplied again and kept reproducing until the entire screen became a checkerboard of three letters. Then the opening notes of “Bummerland” rang through the cove and the crowd erupted. “Sober Up” followed, its singalong chorus moving across the grass almost instantly.

AJR’s songs are engineered around recognition, but the live show did more than press play on a row of hooks. The arrangements kept changing shape around the musicians. Arnetta Johnson moved between trumpet and keys while Chris Berry’s drums gave the electronic production a physical center. Ryan and Jack Met worked the front of the stage, letting the supporting players carry the details that keep the songs from collapsing into backing tracks.

The audience knew the material deeply enough that each opening sound produced its own reaction. People did not wait for choruses to identify “Karma,” “Bang!” or “Steve’s Going to London.” Recognition arrived in the first few seconds, followed by thousands of voices joining as if everyone had been handed the same private memory. AJR’s best trick is not simply writing large hooks. It is giving anxious, self-questioning thoughts a shape people can shout together without sanding away their awkwardness.

Jack paused at one point to introduce everyone onstage and revive a running joke: when he says his own name, he gets almost no applause, but Ryan’s name makes the crowd lose its mind. To return the favor, Jack produced an “embarrassing” childhood video of Ryan dancing and put it on the big screen. It was sibling warfare scaled for an amphitheater—petty, affectionate and carefully timed. The crowd laughed, Ryan survived and the set moved on.

A cover of Fountains of Wayne’s “Stacy’s Mom” fit the band’s sensibility better than it might appear on paper. Its compressed power-pop writing and joke that grows sharper with repetition belong comfortably beside AJR’s own appetite for songs that make their point quickly. The performance did not require a grand reinvention. Familiarity was the pleasure.

I changed viewpoints throughout the set and spotted Jones standing in the crowd, watching AJR and taking photographs with fans. Openers sometimes vanish backstage the moment their work is done. He stayed. I nearly approached him for a few questions, then decided against it. The people around him might not get these chances as often as I do, and I did not want to turn their moment into my assignment.

AJR kept offering new things to look at. Giant piano keys appeared on the LED wall, and the musicians gathered in front of them, tapping at the screen as though the whole stage had become one oversized instrument during “Bang!” It was playful but exact; the visual gag worked because the movement, music and animation met at the same beat.

Another shift came after “Karma,” when Jack called out, “Oh, hey, we’re over here now!” A spotlight snapped toward the Flight Deck above the crowd, where the band had relocated for the next song. The venue’s odd little balcony stopped being peripheral architecture and became part of the set. When the song ended, Jack announced that he needed to get back to the stage and hurried off, turning the return trip into a piece of the performance.

“Ordinaryish People” delivered the most elaborate stretch. AJR recreated the theatrical language associated with the song’s Blue Man Group video: drumheads splattered paint while a ball appeared to bounce across the LED screen, each physical hit tied to the animation behind it. Many pop tours use video as expensive wallpaper. Here the screen behaved like another band member, responding to the percussion and demanding precise coordination from everyone in front of it.

The show loosened again when the band invited a young fan named Nadine onstage to compete against Ryan for signed merchandise. The contest was simple: stand on one leg longer than he could. Nobody seemed shocked when Nadine won. The band signed a shirt for her, and for a few minutes the enormous production shrank to the scale of one kid trying not to wobble.

That balance kept the performance from becoming sterile. AJR can build a show around cues, animation, comedy and tightly synchronized movement, but the machinery still leaves space for something unpredictable—a fan on one leg, an opener mingling on the lawn, a childhood dance clip deployed for maximum brotherly embarrassment.

There was no drawn-out encore ritual, no extended game of pretending the night might be finished while everyone stared at an empty stage. When the show ended, it ended. The lack of ceremony felt right. AJR had already packed the set with enough entrances, relocations and visual feints that another disappearance would have been redundant.

Afterglow

I made the quarter-mile walk back to the van and discovered that my prediction had been correct: I was not going anywhere. Traffic leaving the lot looked worse than it had coming in. I opened the trunk, sat down and watched people make their own calculations. After half an hour with almost no movement, another thought arrived. I was 30 years old, had never been inside a casino and happened to be parked beside one. Why not?

I entered Harrah’s with $40 and quickly turned it into $150. This should have been the end of the story. Instead, I left the computerized slots and tried blackjack. The table behind me was reserved for AJR, who sounded as though they were doing considerably better than I was. Forty minutes later, my $150 was gone.

Consider this practical advice for anyone attending a Stir Cove show: if your luck is better than mine, the casino is right there. If it is not, bring a cooler, something to drink and maybe a charcuterie board. A parking-lot picnic in the open trunk will cost less than blackjack and probably last just as long as the traffic jam.

I finally pulled out around 11 p.m. and started the drive home with the quiet satisfaction that follows a night when the work and the reason for doing it briefly become the same thing. Not long ago, if someone had told me I would be covering a multiplatinum band with billions of streams as a concert photojournalist, I would have laughed them off.

One question from “The Good Part” stayed with me: “What am I gonna do with mine?” In the song, it is a young person’s impatience with the distance between dreaming about a life and actually living it. After photographing AJR beneath a repaired LED wall, catching Arden Jones at a full-circle moment and losing my winnings one blackjack hand at a time, my answer felt less complicated.

Keep shooting.

Please consider Donating to Sponsor an article even $1 helps!

Labor Day weekend means different things to different people. For some, it’s a three day weekend spent camping. For others, it’s a chance to sleep in, relax, or squeeze in one last summer adventure before fall officially arrives. But for thousands of people in Sioux Falls, Labor Day weekend has another meaning: LifeLight.

For decades, the LifeLight Festival has brought a free, all day Christian festival experience to the Sioux Falls community, creating a space where people can enjoy music, food, activities, fellowship, preaching, and, most importantly, hear the message of Jesus. This year’s festival continued that tradition, although Mother Nature seemed determined to make sure everyone remembered that worship doesn’t always happen under perfect circumstances.

From the opening notes to the final song, LifeLight 2026 was a day filled with music, testimony, unexpected moments, rain, and ultimately, people publicly proclaiming their faith in Christ.

Please consider Donating to Sponsor an article even $1 helps!

Starting the Day With Z8 Worship

The day began with the Z8 Worship team warming up the crowd and setting the tone for the day to come.

Z8 is LifeLight’s youth ministry, focused on bringing Jesus to Generation Z. Seeing so many young people in the band on stage was one of the most encouraging ways the festival could have started.

There were young singers, musicians, and worship leaders standing in front of the crowd, not simply performing songs but proclaiming the name of Jesus. It was a reminder that the next generation isn’t something the church should simply prepare for someday. They are already here, already serving, and already capable of boldly proclaiming the Gospel.

Watching them kick off the festival was an encouraging glimpse at what the future of worship and ministry can look like.

StuntDudes Keep the Festival Moving

The music wasn’t the only source of energy at LifeLight.

StuntDudes, a traveling team of professional action-sports athletes, brought bikes, boards and a fearless sense of community to the festival grounds. The group performs almost anywhere—from school assemblies and festivals to indoor venues, outdoor events and even correctional facilities—using action sports as a way to connect with people and share their faith.

That mission made them a natural fit for LifeLight.

Their founder was unable to perform after breaking his arm before the festival, but the rest of the team stepped in and kept the show moving. They launched into trick after trick, combining technical skill with the kind of welcoming attitude that invited people into the experience whether they came for the faith, the sport or both.

They continued until the weather finally made the decision for them. The downpour cut the performance short, but it didn’t send the team running. Even after the show ended, the athletes stayed behind to talk with anyone who had waited to meet them.

The rain stopped the tricks. It never cooled the atmosphere they created.

Jesse Labelle is A Testimony Written in Bullet Casings

Next to the stage was Jesse Labelle, and his set quickly became one of the most memorable musical journeys of the day for me.

Labelle was previously a country music star opening for artists including Garth Brooks. Five years ago, however, his life took a dramatic turn toward Christ following a series of incredible incidents, including being shot.

That testimony was woven throughout his country rooted set, giving the music a deeper meaning than simply hearing another collection of songs.

One of the biggest highlights was hearing “You Have My Attention,” a song that speaks to that journey and his eventual realization of who God is. But the moment that really stuck with me came when Labelle revealed the story behind the cross hanging around his neck.

The cross was made from bullet casings that had been lodged in his car after a road rage incident almost took his life.

That visual alone was powerful, but Labelle summed up the testimony behind it with a line that I don’t think I’ll ever forget, “What was meant to take my life is now in the shape of what saved it.”

That is such a powerful picture of redemption. God can take the things that were meant for destruction and use them as reminders of His grace.

Jesse Labelle was an incredible ride from beginning to end, and I’m grateful I had the opportunity to witness it.

Worshiping in the Rain with Movement Worship

Then came Movement Worship, and this set turned into something many expected, but hoped to avoid.

First, the set was delayed because of weather moving through the area. Eventually, the band was able to take the stage and begin worshiping. Three songs in, however, the rain arrived.

And it didn’t just sprinkle. It rained.

But the worship continued.

There’s something genuinely incredible about looking across the crowd and seeing people pulling out ponchos and umbrellas, while others simply accepted that they were going to get completely drenched. People could’ve left. They could’ve headed for shelter.

Instead, they stayed. They worshiped.

There was something beautiful about watching an entire crowd continue singing while standing in the middle of a storm. It wasn’t a polished concert environment anymore. It wasn’t about perfect conditions or an impressive production. It was simply people worshiping God in the rain.

Movement Worship may have become one of my favorite sets of the entire festival because of that genuine experience. The weather interruption didn’t ruin the worship. In some ways, it made the worship mean even more.

Emerson Day Brings the Music Back After the Storm

After Movement Worship, LifeLight founder Alan Greene took the stage for a brief sermon. The rain continued to make its presence known, but eventually it was time to get the music moving again.

Unfortunately, the weather delays meant Emerson Day’s set was cut a little short, which was especially disappointing because she was one of the artists I was most excited to see.

Even with the abbreviated set, she made an impact.

“Get Behind Me” was one of the highlights, along with one of her newer songs, “No Smoke,” a song referencing the story of the firey furnace. Day has an incredibly powerful voice, and the back and forth energy between her and the rest of the band created a fun dynamic on stage.

Considering everything the festival had already dealt with weather wise, Emerson’s set provided a strong way to move the day forward and get everyone back into the music.

Rhett Walker Brings the Southern Rock

Next up was Rhett Walker, a familiar face at LifeLight.

Walker brought his southern rock sound back to the festival, and his set delivered exactly the kind of energy fans have come to expect from him.

His traditional cover of Creed’s “Higher” remains a fan favorite and once again got the crowd involved.

But one of my favorite moments came when Walker brought the Z8 Worship drummer back onto the stage. She joined the band for part of a song before the crowd and band sang “Happy Birthday” to her.

It was a small moment, but it was another example of the community feeling that makes LifeLight unique.

Walker closed his set with “Man on the Middle Cross,” which is always an important reminder of why a festival like this exists in the first place.

Jesus came for sinners. Jesus went to the cross for us.

And that message was ultimately at the heart of everything happening throughout the day.

Rhett Walker is always a welcome addition to LifeLight, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we see him back again in the future.

Behind the Coverage: Interviews, Rain and Family Reality

Our interview team had been looking forward to speaking with several of the artists throughout the day. We completed conversations with Jesse Labelle and Rhett Walker, but the storm eventually changed our plans just as it changed so much of the festival.

The day also offered a small glimpse of the challenge Josh Brewer had discussed during our earlier interview: when an event depends on a large volunteer team, keeping everyone on the same page can be difficult.

When we arrived for our press passes, we had been instructed to tell the volunteers that Jill had approved us. Neither person working the area knew who Jill was, so we eventually pulled up the approval message to confirm the arrangement. We were then told that every artist interview would take place in the meet-and-greet area.

Jesse Labelle’s interview, however, was being handled at his merchandise tent.

That created a crowded situation, with fans naturally trying to speak with him and get his attention. Labelle handled it graciously. He later made a point of stopping by so we could sit down and conduct a focused interview without pulling him away from the people gathered around his table. That extra effort said a great deal about how seriously he took the conversation—and the people waiting to meet him.

Our children, meanwhile, were experiencing LifeLight in their own way. They loved the bounce houses and children’s activities. Our oldest daughter also decided that dancing in the rain sounded much better than wearing her poncho.

It was joyful for a while. Then came the predictable ending: several extremely cold children who needed to leave and warm up. That meant heading home before we could complete the remaining interviews we had planned.

We also encountered one small issue that could be easily improved at future festivals. When the kids became hungry, one of the first vendors we reached and close to the kids area offered brats—usually reliable territory for children. Only after buying them did we discover how heavily spiced they were. Most of the brats went uneaten.

At an event built in large part around families, a simple notice identifying spicy food would help parents know what they are purchasing before feeding several hungry children. It was a minor frustration in an otherwise strong children’s area, but precisely the kind of small adjustment that could make the family experience better next year.

Festival coverage rarely happens from a comfortable distance. Sometimes it means interviewing artists beside merchandise tables, producing approval messages at check-in and trying to keep children warm after they have danced through a downpour.

That messy, human side of the day belonged to LifeLight too.

Cochren & Co Finally Takes the Stage

After several sets and plenty of time spent on my feet, I finally took a little break to eat and sit down.

Then it was time for Cochren & Co.

I was especially excited for this set because I had recently missed the opportunity to see him at another Christian festival, Bash at the Lake, after getting too sick to travel the 3 hours to it.

Thankfully, LifeLight gave me another chance.

And he didn’t disappoint.

Cochren & Co brought incredible energy to the stage, backed by powerful vocals and an obvious love for performing. He was also hilarious throughout the set, including plenty of jokes about merchandise helping him pay for diapers.

But underneath the humor was a set full of songs that carried meaningful messages.

Getting to hear “Somebody Prayed” (which he co-wrote with Crowder) and “What Grace Can Do” live was a true treat.

After finally seeing Cochren & Co in person, I can confidently say that I hope this isn’t the last time.

KB Brings the Energy

If Cochren & Co had high energy, KB had what I can only describe as space energy.

This man is alive on stage.

As the only hip hop act on the main bill, KB had a unique opportunity to bring something different to the festival, and he absolutely took advantage of it.

KB previously appeared at LifeLight in 2024, so getting to see him return this year was a welcome surprise. It was also a great opportunity to capture him behind the lens for the first time.

By this point in the day, the crowd was as full as it had been all day, and KB certainly seemed to be one of the biggest crowd favorites.

“100” was an especially intense display of crowd energy, with KB’s traditional hoodie slam signaling that it was time for everyone to lose their minds.

Then came “Church Clap,” where KB brought audience members onto the stage to dance along. Watching the crowd participate while KB stood off to the side watching them was one of those moments that simply made you smile.

Another highlight for me was one from the archives in “No Chains.”

I can’t say enough good things about KB’s live performance. The energy is undeniable, but what makes it even better is that all of that energy ultimately points people back toward Jesus.

Willie Robertson Points the Crowd Back to the Gospel

Before the musical headliner took the stage, LifeLight welcomed a special guest speaker to the stage. Willie Robertson from Duck Dynasty.

Robertson naturally talked a little about Duck Dynasty and the origins of the show, but the focus of his message was much bigger than television.

He spoke about Acts 2 in light of the Great Commission in Matthew 28, emphasizing our calling to proclaim the Gospel, make disciples, and baptize believers.

Then he shared a story that perfectly illustrated why LifeLight exists.

The day before the festival, Robertson met a man at his hotel. They talked, and Robertson shared the Gospel with him and encouraged him to come to LifeLight.

The man actually showed up.

But he didn’t just show up to enjoy the festival.

He showed up to proclaim his newfound faith by being baptized.

Sometimes conversions take years. Sometimes they happen in a single night.

Both are celebrated in heaven.

That message set up what would become one of the most meaningful parts of the entire festival.

The Real Reason LifeLight Exists

After Robertson finished, Josh Brewer came to the stage to make a donation appeal. LifeLight had received a pledge for a matching donation of up to $95,000 to help LifeLight continue into the future.

But more importantly, Brewer preached an altar call and a reminder that the baptism tanks were located at the prayer tent.

So I walked over.

And what I saw put the entire day into perspective.

Several people were being baptized. Including children.

After spending hours photographing bands, watching performances, listening to sermons, eating food, and experiencing everything else the festival had to offer, I was standing next to a baptism tank watching people publicly proclaim their faith in Jesus.

That was the moment that mattered most.

Whether you loved the music or didn’t care for it, whether you enjoyed the food and vendors, whether you spent the day in the sports area or standing in front of the main stage, this was what LifeLight was ultimately about.

Not the food. Not the vendors.

Not the sports. Not even the music.

Jesus.

People hearing the Gospel. People responding to the Gospel. People publicly proclaiming their faith through baptism.

That is the kind of moment that makes everything else worth it.

Danny Gokey Brings the Day Home

And then there was the headliner.

Danny Gokey, the American Idol Season 8 third place finalist, took the stage ready to close out the festival.

The entire band seemed completely invested in the performance. There was dancing, movement, and energy everywhere. Nobody appeared content to simply stand in one spot and play through the set.

But as impressive as the big production moments were, my favorite part of the night came when Gokey and supporting vocalist Vanessa stripped things back.

The first intimate acoustic moment featured “We All Need Jesus” with only a saxophone accompanying them.

Then came “Tell Your Heart to Beat Again,” performed with just the keys.

That was the standout moment of the night for me.

There’s something special about hearing an artist step away from the lights, production, and full band arrangement and simply let the song speak for itself. Those acoustic moments were the perfect contrast to the larger production throughout Gokey’s set.

They also provided a fitting way to bring an incredibly long day to a close.

Afterglow

Overall, LifeLight 2026 was another incredible showing of the Sioux Falls community coming together to proclaim Jesus.

From food vendors and activities to sermons, worship, country music, rock, hip hop, and contemporary Christian music, there was something for just about everyone.

And yes, there was rain.

A lot of it.

But in a strange way, the rain became part of what made this year’s festival memorable.

People worshiped through it.

Artists performed through it.

The festival continued through it.

And ultimately, people still walked to the prayer tent and publicly proclaimed their faith through baptism.

That’s what I’ll remember most.

I love that my town has something like LifeLight. In a world where it can sometimes feel like Christian events are becoming harder to find, having a free festival in my own community where thousands of people can gather to hear about Jesus is something worth celebrating.

LifeLight isn’t perfect. No festival is.

But when you can stand next to a baptism tank and watch people publicly proclaim that Jesus has changed their lives, it becomes pretty easy to understand why this festival has continued for decades.

I can’t wait to see what LifeLight brings to Sioux Falls next year.

Please consider Donating to Sponsor an article even $1 helps!

At 2:30 Thursday afternoon, I got off work with four hours of interstate between me and a Modest Mouse show. The short notice made the whole thing more exciting. There was no carefully planned concert day, no leisurely drive north with time to spare. I changed clothes, kissed my babies goodbye and headed toward the Twin Cities.

Parking in downtown St. Paul nearly broke the momentum before I even reached the venue. I circled blocks looking for something, anything, while the Palace Theatre sat somewhere frustratingly close. Eventually I found a curb spot about a block away, decided it was legal enough for my purposes and hurried toward the marquee, where a few fans were still waiting near the ticket line.

Next time, I’m arriving much earlier.

Not because the Palace is difficult to get into, but because downtown St. Paul gives you plenty of reasons not to rush straight to the doors. Candyland, the candy shop that has been operating in the city since 1932, is right around the corner. Mickey’s Diner is within walking distance. Bars, restaurants and small shops fill the surrounding blocks. You could show up two or three hours early, wander around, eat something questionable in the best possible way and still have plenty left unexplored by the time doors opened.

Walking into the Palace felt like old theater elegance had been allowed to age instead of being scrubbed clean and turned into a theme. The building dates back to 1916, and even after the renovation that brought it back to life as a concert venue, pieces of that history remain right in front of you. Ornamental plasterwork still surrounds modern lighting hardware. The front of the balcony carries the sort of architectural detail nobody would bother building into a new concert hall now. Some surfaces are restored. Others simply look like they have lived a long life.

At first the layout confused me. Hallways seemed to lead in several directions, staircases appeared where I wasn’t expecting them and I had to spend a few minutes figuring out where everything went. Once I did, I started to really like the place. The Palace doesn’t disappear behind the band. You notice the room, which is fitting for a building that has been hosting audiences for more than a century.

Califone was already playing when I made it inside.

Califone Makes You Pay Attention

I had heard of Califone before and spent some time listening in the days leading up to the show. “Experimental” is probably the easiest description, though it only gets you part of the way there. Tim Rutili’s music has always seemed interested in what happens when familiar sounds are nudged just far enough out of place. Folk, blues, noise, electronics and damaged little pieces of melody can all occupy the same song.

Rutili has also worked in film and visual art, and watching Califone live, that part of his brain made sense to me. The music didn’t feel arranged solely around verses and choruses. Sounds appeared, lingered and disappeared as though somebody was paying equal attention to texture and space. His guitar playing supplied much of the color, while his voice sat lower, soft and slightly worn, sometimes almost melancholy without turning theatrical about it.

Behind him, the percussion kept shifting the shape of the songs. It wasn’t there just to hold tempo. Little rhythmic details would appear underneath passages that might have felt loose in another band and suddenly everything locked into place. Califone never needed to overpower the room. They simply gave people enough to listen to that conversations around me gradually disappeared.

People stopped talking. That was probably the clearest reaction they earned.

For me, some of the appeal was personal. My father had a huge influence on my music taste. He grew up as a punk in downtown Chicago in the ’70s, but the music around him was never confined to punk. Chicago blues was part of the city’s bloodstream too, and his taste always reflected that wider mix. I inherited plenty of it.

Califone comes out of Chicago, and hearing Rutili move between experimental sounds, bluesier guitar phrasing and stranger bits of noise hit something familiar in me. Not because the band sounded old. They didn’t. It was more the freedom to let completely different musical ideas occupy the same space without stopping to explain why they belonged together.

You could watch the musicians working through those ideas in real time. Rutili would let a guitar phrase hang for a moment, the percussion would slip underneath it and suddenly a song that had seemed barely held together revealed how carefully everybody was listening to one another. Califone wasn’t just an opener providing forty minutes of atmosphere while people found the bar. The musicianship kept pulling my attention back toward the stage.

Near the end, Rutili told the crowd to love themselves and love each other before the band left to a genuinely loud response.

I used the set change to wander. Looking up, I could see modern stage lights mounted against ornate plasterwork from another era. The balcony facade stretched across the room with its decorative details still intact. You could stand there staring at the ceiling while crew members moved equipment underneath it. A hundred-year-old theater waiting for Modest Mouse felt pretty appropriate.

Please consider Donating to Sponsor an article even $1 helps!

The Rough Edges Stay

Modest Mouse arrived quickly after the changeover and opened with “We Are Between”. The response was immediate. People around me were already singing before the song had settled into its first full stretch, and the band moved straight into “We’re Lucky”, keeping the newer material up front before Isaac Brock stopped long enough to talk to the crowd.

He had recently downloaded an app that warned him about wildfires because of what had been happening in the western United States. Eventually, he said, the alerts became so constant that he turned the notifications off. Before “Breakthrough”, Brock told us he hoped he could scream all the Oregon smoke out of his lungs.

Then he tried.

“Breakthrough” comes from 1996, which makes the song roughly as old as I am. That is a strange thing to think about while standing in front of the people who made it. A little later Brock changed guitars, picking up a cherry SG-style guitar that immediately made me think of Jack Black in School of Rock, and then came “A Different City”.

The set kept jumping decades without making a ceremony out of it. Modest Mouse didn’t present the older songs like protected artifacts, and they didn’t suddenly stiffen up because a song had been on a record for twenty-five years. Newer material and songs I had listened to since grade school were played with the same looseness.

Loose is not the same thing as careless.

Before this show, I had been getting bombarded with conversations about how artificial live music can become. Anybody who spends enough time behind concert production eventually sees things the average ticket buyer may never notice. Amplifiers can be onstage while the real signal is coming from somewhere else. Vocal tracks can be ready at the soundboard. Playback systems can make a complicated show run with astonishing precision.

I’m not arguing that using technology somehow makes a concert fake. Some productions would be nearly impossible without it. But there is a point where polish starts removing evidence that humans are involved, and Modest Mouse left that evidence everywhere.

There were tiny tempo corrections. A lyric would occasionally become a muttered piece of syllabic noise instead of the exact recorded line. Brock sometimes sounded like he had decided halfway through a phrase that getting the feeling across mattered more than reproducing the album. Maybe he forgot a word. Maybe he was tired after singing for nearly two hours. Maybe he simply felt like changing it. The song kept going, nobody looked panicked and nobody needed to pretend it hadn’t happened.

Watching a band that has been doing this for decades handle those little moments without letting them derail anything was far more interesting than watching somebody reproduce a studio recording with surgical accuracy.

“Bukowski,” a Wrong Key and a Guitar Pick

A few songs later came “Bukowski”, one of my personal favorites. I know that song well enough that when the rhythm guitar started in the wrong key, I heard it almost immediately.

They fixed it almost as quickly.

There was no awkward stop, no discussion and no dramatic restart. The mistake was caught while the band was moving and corrected so smoothly that somebody less familiar with the song might never have known anything happened. I loved it, not because somebody made a mistake, but because of what happened next.

Nothing.

They kept playing.

By then Brock had grabbed his banjo. Somewhere during all of the switching between playing styles, he apparently got tired of dealing with the guitar pick holder. When he started fingerpicking, he began sticking the pick to his forehead instead. Somewhere inside a production full of professional musicians, lighting cues, guitar changes and decades of touring experience, Isaac Brock had solved a practical stage problem by sticking a guitar pick to his face.

Then came “Dashboard”, and somewhere during the back half of the set I realized the band had started running through what felt like an increasingly suspicious percentage of my favorite Modest Mouse songs.

The setlist reached across their career instead of camping out in one period. There were songs from the early records, material from The Moon & Antarctica, Good News for People Who Love Bad News, We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank, The Golden Casket and the newly released An Eraser And A Maze. Nobody stopped every few songs to remind us what year something came out. They just played, with Brock switching instruments, the band making small adjustments and another song starting almost immediately.

For a band with this much history, there is probably no version of a setlist that satisfies everybody. One person wants “Float On.” Someone else wants the deepest possible cut from 1996. Somebody discovered the band ten years later. Somebody standing five feet away may have come specifically for the newest songs.

Modest Mouse didn’t appear very interested in solving that problem. They played a lot of music.

Eventually the band walked offstage and stayed gone for several minutes. The room waited, knowing what was probably coming but still holding onto that little bit of uncertainty before an encore.

Then they came back.

The encore started slowly with “Picking Dragons’ Pockets”, followed by “Guilty Cocker Spaniels”. Then I heard the opening of “Dramamine”.

That one hit differently.

I have listened to Modest Mouse since I was in grade school. Some songs become so embedded in your life that you stop thinking about where you first heard them. They are simply there, attached to old rooms, old cars and old versions of yourself. Hearing “Dramamine” live snapped some of those years back into focus.

The performance wasn’t frozen to the album. It still had the roughness I had been hearing all night. Brock’s voice carried the wear of the set, and the band let the song breathe instead of tightening every corner. It sounded like people playing it.

That was enough.

They finished the night with “Night on the Sun”, a strange, sprawling way to close and probably the right choice because of it. There was no giant farewell speech or forced final explosion. The song stretched out, finished and eventually the house lights came up while people started filing toward the exits still talking about what they had just heard.

I went outside and kept walking.

Afterglow

Every bar I passed around the Palace seemed to be playing Modest Mouse. Maybe I was just catching the right places at the right moments, but the effect was funny. We had already left the concert and the concert kept following us down the block. Songs drifted out of doorways while groups of fans separated and disappeared toward parked cars, hotels and whatever came next.

I wandered downtown for a little while before reality checked the clock. It was nearing midnight. I had roughly four hours of driving ahead of me and needed to be back for work at 6 a.m.

There was still one stop I wasn’t skipping.

White Castle.

It is an old ritual passed down from touring with my parents. Somewhere along the way, White Castle became tied to road trips and shows, one of those family habits that makes complete sense to you and probably none whatsoever to anyone else. I hadn’t been to my favorite restaurant in more than twelve years, so I ordered a 30-pack of sliders for myself and my family, grabbed a red cream soda and got back on the road toward Iowa.

The Palace disappeared behind me. My ears were ringing. Work was getting closer by the minute. A few hours earlier I had watched a band I’ve listened to since childhood play songs that have been following me around for most of my life. They missed a key and fixed it. Brock forgot or replaced a few words. A guitar pick ended up stuck to his forehead. “Dramamine” sounded worn-in instead of preserved.

None of those things weakened the show. They are some of the reasons I remember it.

I pulled onto the interstate with thirty White Castle sliders riding home beside me and four hours of dark highway ahead.

Worth it.

Please consider Donating to Sponsor an article even $1 helps!

Saturday was always going to be the hard one.

Four stages were active around the Gatlinburg Convention Center, the Rock N’ Roll Market was packed and the artist photo experiences were pulling me upstairs while bands I wanted to see were starting below. Before the first real decision of the day, I already knew I would miss something. That is the bargain at The Mountain Music Festival: there is no perfect route through the building, only the route you choose and the music you hear bleeding through the walls while you are somewhere else.

Then the schedule changed.

Bret Michaels had to cancel because of health complications. His doctors and physical therapists were working with him on medication adjustments, blood sugar and blood pressure after a recent show and cross-country travel. It was disappointing news for everybody who came ready to see him, but the important thing was for Bret to rest and get better. Brother, we missed you on the Mountain and cannot wait to see you return.

The festival crew moved fast. BulletBoys shifted into Bret’s 9:15 p.m. spot on the Creekside Stage and Bad Marriage moved upstairs for the late-night Summit Stage set. On paper, those are two changes. Inside a sold-out building with artists, fans, crews and photographers already in motion, it felt like the whole day had been picked up and set down at a new angle.

A place to land

Covering a festival like this means long days, late nights and very little time between the last ringing guitar and the next morning’s schedule. We want to sincerely thank our housing sponsor, The KiN Way, for giving us a place to recharge throughout the weekend and making this coverage possible.

Our gratitude goes to Channing and Rhiannon McGee for supporting independent music journalism and helping put IronTrakksMedia in the room for three packed days on the Mountain. You can find The KiN Way on Facebook or Instagram to learn more about the work they are doing and booking with them.

Plans change on the Mountain

My Saturday started upstairs at the noon photo experience with John Corabi & Friends, The Cruel Intentions and White Lion. It was a strong group for the early session and exactly the kind of conflict that makes this festival both great and mildly maddening. There were photographs to make upstairs and music starting elsewhere. I could not be in two places, though I spent most of the day trying to prove otherwise.

WildStreet had the Summit Stage at noon, followed downstairs by another acoustic set from Hoekstra/Gibbs. Their Friday appearance had already shown what Joel Hoekstra and Brandon Gibbs could do with a stripped-down setup, and Saturday gave them room to change the set instead of repeating themselves. That mattered. Several artists played more than once during the weekend, but the better repeat appearances never felt copied and pasted.

Bad Marriage came next downstairs for the second of three sets they would play during the festival. They had already hit hard on Friday and now had an unexpected third assignment waiting for them late Saturday. There is a practical lesson in that for a first-timer: when a band has multiple sets, do not assume you have already seen what they are going to do. Rooms change, crowds change and, as Saturday proved, the schedule can change underneath everybody.

Crazy Lixx became one of my compromises. I had been looking forward to them, but by midafternoon I was at the beer garden in the back of the arena with a barbecue sandwich. The pulled pork and brisket were affordable, convenient and badly needed. I could hear the band clearly and follow them on the video screens, so I was not exactly absent, but I still wished I had moved back toward the stage. A screen will tell you what happened. It will not give you the same feeling as being in front of the amplifiers when it happens.

Please consider Donating to Sponsor an article even $1 helps!

Texas, Corabi and old records

John Corabi & Friends sat high on my personal must-see list, and I was in place for them. Corabi pulled from his 2026 solo album, “New Day,” while making room for the songs fans connect to the other chapters of his career. A newer version of “Hooligan’s Holiday” reached back to the self-titled 1994 Mötley Crüe album, which remains one of my top three Crüe records behind “Too Fast for Love” and “Shout at the Devil.” I know that ranking will start an argument with somebody. I am comfortable with that.

The “Friends” part of the billing was no throwaway. Jeremy Asbrock brought his history with Ace Frehley, Gene Simmons and Rock City Machine Co. to guitar. Troy Luccketta of Tesla was behind the kit, Michael Devin of Whitesnake and The Dead Daisies held down the bass and Paul Taylor of Winger and Alice Cooper handled keyboards. Put that much road experience around Corabi’s voice and the result is not a loose collection of guests. It is one hell of a band. I caught up with John and Troy the next day, but on Saturday their playing did all the talking I needed.

I made sure there was no hallway between me and Dangerous Toys, either.

They are one of my absolute favorite bands from Texas, and this was the first time I had finally seen them in far too long. The whole set felt like a payoff. “Scared” landed exactly the way I wanted it to, and when “Sport’n a Woody” came around, the crowd was ready. The songs still carry the crooked grin that made that first record such a good one: heavy enough to hit, strange enough to have its own fingerprints and never too proud to let the clown out of the box.

Where was he? That is part of the fun.

The band took the room through a greatest-hits set and the Mountain crowd gave it right back to them. Later, I ran into guitarist Scott Dalhover in the hallway. He was an awesome dude to talk with about just about anything, which is another piece of this festival that does not fit on a schedule. One minute you are watching a band you have loved for decades, the next you are standing in a convention-center hallway talking with one of the people who made those records.

Mike Tramp was next with the songs of White Lion. I first saw White Lion open for Aerosmith on their first tour, so hearing that catalog again carried its own timeline into the room. Tramp still delivers those songs with respect for what people remember while sounding like a singer who has continued living inside the material rather than simply visiting it.

Stone Whiskey played the Summit Stage later in the afternoon and sounded great from what I caught. This is where honesty matters in festival coverage: I heard more than I saw. Between the photo opportunities, the downstairs sets and the distance between rooms, Saturday demanded choices faster than I could make them. The music never stopped simply because I was in the wrong hallway.

Then came Lita Ford. There are artists you anticipate because you have never seen them and artists you anticipate because, well, it is Lita F’kn Ford. Guitarist Patrick Kennison gave me another connection to Nashville, where I had met him when he performed with his wife at The Basement. On the Mountain, he and Lita worked through the songs everybody came to hear and made a few moments feel bigger than a normal catalog run.

One fan came onstage and received Lita’s “Cherry Bomb” guitar, a scene that meant far more to the person holding it than any description could capture. Her Ozzy moment with Kennison was handled beautifully, and their performance of “Only Women Bleed” found another gear entirely. Lita did not need to prove that the songs still belonged in a room like this. She played them as if the question had never been worth asking.

Jackylstock takes the room

For me, Jackyl stole Saturday.

Jesse James Dupree and company came out with a purpose: take control of The Mountain Music Festival and do it the only way Jackyl knows how. On a hot Saturday night in a packed, sold-out arena, it turned into Jackylstock. We rocked, rolled and Jackyled everything in sight.

Some sets have that little extra before anybody can put a finger on why. The musicians were moving all over the stage. There were bullwhips, whiskey, a chainsaw and barstools. Jesse even became a runaway singer for a stretch, heading toward the other stage to make sure the people on that side were part of the show too. It was awesome as hell, honestly. Not polished into submission, not held inside an invisible box, just a frontman reading a big room and refusing to leave any corner of it alone.

“I Stand Alone” became one of the night’s best moments when Jesse invited his son, Nigel T. Dupree, out to play guitar. Nigel came on with a black Les Paul and lit the stage up. It was not a sentimental cameo that needed the family connection to work. His playing earned the reaction on its own, and the father-son part made it hit harder.

The set also made room for Bret. Jesse led the crowd through Poison’s “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” as a tribute and get-well wish, turning the song into something larger than a replacement-slot acknowledgment. Bret later thanked the bands, crews and fans for the shout-outs from the Mountain, and you could understand why. A cancellation leaves a hole in a festival day. Jackyl did not pretend it was not there; they filled it with everybody’s voices.

Jesse alone with his Telecaster for “Suspicious Minds” brought another huge singalong. After the bullwhip and chainsaw, that stripped-down turn could have felt like a hard left. Instead, it showed how much control he had over the room. Noise is easy when the production is built for it. Getting thousands of people to lean into a familiar melody takes something else.

Night Ranger followed with a catalog built for exactly this kind of crowd. I had not seen them since their second album, but “(You Can Still) Rock in America,” “Don’t Tell Me You Love Me” and “Sister Christian” closed that distance in a hurry. Brad Gillis still brings it, Jack Blades still knows how to carry those choruses and the band gave Saturday another full hour of songs people did not need introduced.

BulletBoys then stepped into the changed closing slot on the Creekside Stage. Asking a band to move from a late-night room into the main arena after a headliner cancels is no small adjustment. They took the assignment and carried the day to its official finish downstairs. Bad Marriage still had its added 10:45 p.m. Summit Stage set ahead, their third performance of the weekend, but by then I was tired, hungry and ready to sit for a spell.

Punchlines after backlines

Sitting down did not mean the night was over. A short walk brought me to Smith & Son Corner Kitchen for Punchlines & Backlines, the festival’s late comedy show. Saturday’s rock-star guest was Dangerous Toys singer Jason McMaster, with host Izzy Presley and comedians Don Jamieson, Courtney Cronin, Jim Florentine and Mike Dawson on the bill.

It was especially good to see Courtney again. I first met her in Sarasota, Florida at the Kiss Cancer Goodbye event, and running into familiar people is one more way a festival weekend starts to feel like its own temporary town. The laughter flowed even with a few annoying people who refused to be quiet. Other people in the crowd shushed them several times. The comics mostly laid off them that night, which may have been an act of mercy nobody requested.

After a day of sprinting between stages, standing in photo lines, eating barbecue while watching Crazy Lixx on a screen and watching Jackyl turn a convention center into a chainsaw revival, a chair and a room full of jokes made perfect sense. My ears were still ringing. At least now the noise had punchlines.

Afterglow

Saturday began with the certainty that I would miss something and ended by proving me right. I missed sightlines, caught songs from hallways and ate lunch while a band I wanted to see worked through its set on a video screen. The headliner canceled, the schedule moved and everybody adjusted.

What stayed with me was not the frustration of choosing. It was how much survived every choice: Dangerous Toys finally in front of me, Corabi backed by a ridiculous amount of talent, Lita handing a guitar to a fan, Nigel Dupree lighting up a black Les Paul and Jesse leading a room through a song for Bret. Then Night Ranger, BulletBoys and a late comedy set down the street.

Day two was the Mountain at full capacity, in every sense. Too many bands, too many rooms, too many decisions and just enough time to realize I would gladly do it all again with a better plan next year.

Please consider Donating to Sponsor an article even $1 helps!

Not metaphorical squirrels. An actual backyard squirrel operation that had apparently escalated to the point of planting its own corn.

“I have more issues with the squirrels at my house than I do with any of the owners of these venues,” Bernardino said while talking about the relationships Sanctuary Goods has built around Sioux Falls’ music scene.

Tarian immediately identified the enemy.

“The squirrel cartel.”

It was funny, but the conversation around it said quite a bit about Sanctuary Goods.

Spend enough time talking with Bernardino and Tarian and the lines between business, art, friendship, music and community start disappearing. A question about vending turns into a story about discovering metal bands. A discussion about jewelry becomes a story about family. Ask about their store and eventually they are talking about the people who come through the door just because they need someone to listen.

And when Four Winds needed somebody to build the vendor side of a festival sprawling across downtown Sioux Falls, putting more than 100 bands alongside dozens of artists, makers and businesses, Sanctuary Goods suddenly found itself doing on a much larger scale what it had already been doing one table, one conversation and one local show at a time.

They were building the room around the music.

Please consider Donating to Sponsor an article even $1 helps!

Built out of conversations

Sanctuary Goods did not begin with some carefully engineered business plan.

It began with bartending, a shower and a phone call.

“A whole bunch of bartending,” Bernardino said, laughing.

In October 2024, his friend James Landon called about space becoming available inside the Jones421 Marketplace in downtown Sioux Falls. The lease could be short. Bernardino called Tarian.

“What do you think? Should we try it out?”

They started hunting through Marketplace, making phone calls and piecing together what would become Sanctuary Goods.

Bernardino had returned to Sioux Falls after years in Colorado, where he worked in the hemp industry and ran an apothecary. He brought that experience home with him, from product sourcing to understanding holistic wellness products and the people looking for them.

“I learned my lessons in Colorado,” he said. “And all those lessons I learned, I brought back here.”

Tarian brought something less visible on a store shelf but just as important to what Sanctuary Goods became: relationships.

She and Bernardino were both raised in Sioux Falls and had known each other for roughly 24 years. Between the two of them, there always seemed to be another artist, friend, maker or family connection waiting to be rediscovered.

“If she doesn’t know somebody, I do,” Bernardino said. “If I don’t know somebody, she does.”

Those connections began populating the store.

Among them was local artist Kevin Taylor, a longtime family friend of Tarian’s who creates etched mirrors, custom framing and calligraphy. Tarian had known him since childhood, when he worked at her uncle’s downtown restaurant, Touch of Europe. Decades later, his artwork was hanging inside Sanctuary Goods.

The store became difficult to categorize because Bernardino and Tarian never seemed particularly interested in forcing everything into one category.

There is jewelry and leatherwork. Crystals and tinctures. Artwork. Wellness products. Curiosities. Handmade pieces. Goods connected to their families and heritage, including pieces sourced from Oaxaca, Mexico as well as Armenia, Russia and Estonia.

Some products disappear almost as quickly as they arrive.

There is a wonderfully simple test for whether something belongs.

“If I don’t want to sell it, then it’s usually a good thing to have,” Bernardino said.

There are pieces they secretly hope nobody buys. Things they want to wear themselves, open themselves or simply keep around because they like looking at them.

That personal attachment keeps Sanctuary Goods from feeling like inventory arranged according to a purchasing algorithm. The store changes because their interests change. Workshops move from leatherwork to jewelry to nutrition to candle-making depending on the season. Bernardino works with silver clay and shells. Tarian has been preparing to return to making candles. Both keep finding new things they want to learn with their hands.

But the name tells you more about the place than the merchandise does.

It took road trips to the Black Hills and Minneapolis before they found it. Bernardino’s mother eventually suggested “Sanctuary.” Bernardino added “Goods.”

The word sanctuary stuck because people were already treating the place like one.

“We have a lot of people that come in just to have a conversation with us,” Bernardino said. “And we’ll spend an hour talking to them.”

Tarian put it even more simply.

“We love love. We love people.”

They want somebody walking through the door to feel seen even if that person never buys anything.

“Even if you don’t look at any of our products and you just need a listening ear,” Bernardino said, “we’re usually there.”

That approach follows them when they leave the store.

A table beside the stage

Sanctuary Goods has become increasingly familiar outside its Jones421 walls because Bernardino and Tarian keep turning up where Sioux Falls gathers.

Especially where Sioux Falls gets loud.

They have worked vendor shows at Bigs Bar and other community events while becoming regular faces around local music. They have popped up alongside live music at ICON Event Hall. Some nights the table carries jewelry, stones, wellness products, art and handmade goods. Other nights the most valuable thing happening around it may simply be another conversation.

Vendors can change the geography of a concert.

A room with nothing but a stage and a bar moves in two directions: toward the band or toward the drink. Put artists, makers and local businesses into the same space and suddenly people have somewhere else to drift between sets. They stop. They look at something. Somebody explains how it was made. A stranger joins the conversation.

The night opens sideways.

Sanctuary Goods understands that partly because Bernardino and Tarian have spent so much time standing on the other side of the table themselves.

And those shows have changed them too.

“Just from April to today we’ve probably seen easily over 200 artists just because we’ve been vending,” Tarian said during the August interview.

They were hearing genres and discovering musicians they might never have encountered otherwise.

Metal, in particular, surprised them.

“The metal kids are, you would think the metal kids would be the bad boys, but no, they’re the kindest, sweetest little kids,” Bernardino said.

“We like metal music now,” Tarian added.

That might be the best advertisement possible for keeping vendors in music spaces.

Sanctuary Goods did not enter those rooms pretending to understand every corner of the scene. They entered, listened and stayed long enough for the scene to introduce itself.

Hundreds of performances later, the people behind the booth were becoming music fans too.

They also saw something from the road that concert audiences rarely think about. A healthy local music culture needs more than bands.

It needs venues willing to open their rooms. Promoters willing to take chances. Photographers, journalists and production crews. Artists selling something they made at home. Food trucks outside. Small businesses putting tables against walls. Fans willing to show up early enough to see the opener.

None of those pieces look particularly enormous by themselves.

Together, they are the scene.

The other side of the booth

There is another reason Sanctuary Goods’ presence at local events feels different: Bernardino and Tarian know what it feels like to make something and then put a price tag beside it.

Selling somebody else’s artwork, Bernardino said, can actually be easier.

When it belongs to somebody else, admiration comes naturally. You can explain why it is beautiful. You can tell somebody what went into it.

Selling your own work means listening to the small voice asking whether anybody will actually pay what you believe it is worth.

“It’s easier to sell somebody else’s work than your own,” Bernardino said. “Because when you make it yourself, you’re always nervous.”

For him, vending helped turn that uncomfortable calculation into something more personal.

“The biggest thing I’ve learned is finding my worth.”

That understanding matters when Sanctuary Goods turns around and creates room for other artists.

Inside the store, makers can put work in front of people who otherwise may never encounter it. At events, artists can step out from behind a social media account and talk directly with the person holding something they made.

Sometimes those relationships have decades behind them, as with Taylor and his etched mirrors.

Other times they begin across a vendor table.

Bernardino and Tarian have spent enough hours working events to understand both sides. They know the vulnerability involved in laying your work on a table and hoping somebody stops. They know what a good event can do for a maker who needs people to discover them.

They also know how much easier the whole thing becomes once “networking” stops feeling like a business term and starts feeling like friendship.

“We know most people by first name,” Bernardino said while talking about the vendors preparing for Four Winds.

That is a small sentence.

For a local arts scene, it is a fairly important one.

Building a village at Four Winds

The scale changed when Four Winds came calling.

Festival organizers Corey Church and Taylor approached Bernardino and Tarian about taking charge of a vendor village for the 2026 Four Winds Music & Arts Festival.

By the afternoon before the festival, more than 35 vendors were expected alongside more than 100 bands spread through the weekend.

That is no longer setting up a table.

It is organizing a small neighborhood.

Sitting inside ICON while the festival was beginning to take shape around them, Bernardino and Tarian seemed almost amused by how naturally they had arrived there.

“Here we are here now,” Bernardino said.

“We’re sitting inside Icon Event Hall,” Tarian replied.

There would be local vendors, artists and food trucks. Some of the artists whose work Sanctuary Goods already carried inside its store would have booths of their own, giving them space to present their work directly instead of letting the shop speak on their behalf.

For Tarian, that was part of the excitement.

“It’ll be special to see them doing their own, you know, presentation of their work in their own way.”

They called it a vendor village, and the word fit.

A marketplace can be transactional. A village has people in it.

Four Winds has always carried “arts” in its name, but a festival with more than 100 bands can easily let everything beyond the stages disappear into the volume. The vendor village gave the other half of that identity somewhere physical to live.

The musicians brought records, riffs and songs.

A few feet away, somebody else brought a mirror they etched, a piece of jewelry they shaped, clothing they designed or an object nobody knew they wanted until they picked it up.

Sanctuary Goods’ role was to help those worlds share the same weekend.

For Bernardino and Tarian, the assignment also represented a quiet evolution.

They had started as vendors.

Then they became store owners carrying the work of other artists.

Then they became familiar faces at shows.

Now they were helping decide who else got a table.

Their own experiences gave them an unusual perspective on the responsibility. They knew what it felt like to wonder whether a booth would be worth the time. They knew how much a good crowd could mean to somebody selling handmade work and how quickly a bad experience could sour an artist on returning.

By the time Four Winds arrived, their job was no longer simply to participate in the local creative community.

They were helping create opportunities inside it.

Afterglow

The squirrel cartel never really left the conversation.

It was one of those strange little detours that happens when an interview stops feeling like an interview for a minute. Somehow we had traveled from holistic health to etched mirrors, metal shows, Oaxaca, candle making, Four Winds and finally agricultural rodents running an unauthorized corn operation.

That wandering quality feels appropriate for Sanctuary Goods.

The shop itself invites wandering. So does their table at a concert. Pick something up. Ask where it came from. Discover who made it. Hear somebody’s story. Maybe leave with jewelry. Maybe leave having discovered a local artist. Maybe you only talked for 20 minutes.

The transaction is almost secondary.

Sioux Falls’ music community needs bands worth hearing, certainly. It needs stages and sound systems and people willing to book the next show.

It also needs people willing to occupy all the spaces between those things.

That is where Sanctuary Goods keeps turning up.

Beside the stage. Behind the table. Inside the shop. Among the artists. At the vendor village. Somewhere in the crowd hearing a band they had never listened to before and discovering, apparently, that the metal kids are actually pretty sweet.

A sanctuary does not have to be quiet.

Sometimes it has a guitar roaring through the wall.

Please consider Donating to Sponsor an article even $1 helps!

The first real jolt in my conversation with John PayCheck came when he started talking about a song almost nobody outside the tour has heard yet.

“Battles You Never Knew” arrives September 11, one of the final stops on the road toward his third studio album, Better Plan, due November 27. PayCheck expected the song to get a reaction. What he did not expect was how quickly that reaction would begin, even from the small samples released ahead of it.

“It’s intense,” he said. “It was a little bit of a push for me to write the song.”

Then he explained why.

“A lot of it is just, you know, me talking about how I don’t appreciate other country artists taking advantage of veterans and using them as props, right?”

PayCheck is not approaching that subject from the outside. He is a U.S. Army combat veteran who still serves as a major in the Army Reserve, following years as an aviator and military intelligence officer. He has also worked as a firefighter, another job where the aftermath of terrible days tends to follow people home.

His objection is not that a songwriter without military service should never write about veterans. It is what happens when somebody else’s experience gets flattened into costume, sentiment or marketing.

“If you’re going to write a song about veterans and what we go through, don’t pretend like it’s what you’ve been through,” he said. His answer was simple: bring a veteran into the writing room. Listen. Give them credit for the story being told. If a song is going to draw attention from veterans and their families, he wants artists to consider putting some of the money and attention back into organizations serving those communities.

The timing of “Battles You Never Knew” is deliberate enough to sting. September 11 sits inside PayCheck’s own story. The attacks pushed him toward service, and the calendar does not get much easier from there. As the year moves into the holidays, he said, memories can become heavier for veterans, himself included.

PayCheck also told me he is working to establish a charitable organization that can direct grants toward veterans’ health initiatives and Western heritage preservation. It is another version of the argument inside the song: if you are going to say something matters, eventually the saying has to become doing.

That idea kept resurfacing throughout our conversation, sometimes in places that had nothing to do with the military. What do you inherit? What do you earn? What do you refuse to repeat?

For somebody carrying the PayCheck name through country music, those are not abstract questions.

Please consider Donating to Sponsor an article even $1 helps!

A better plan isn’t a clean slate

PayCheck’s 2024 album “More Days Behind” was unusually willing to stare at the clock. The title itself carries the realization that eventually the math flips and there may be more life behind you than there is waiting ahead.

Listening to that record before our interview, I wondered whether Better Plan was the natural next question. Once you recognize that time is finite, what are you actually going to do with what remains?

PayCheck laughed slightly at the suggestion that he had engineered some careful multi-album narrative. He hadn’t.

“The albums aren’t meant to progress that way,” he said, though the songs sometimes seem to arrange themselves into a sequence after the fact. His writing follows whatever part of life he is examining at the time, which means one question has a habit of producing the next.

Better Plan moves from measuring the years toward deciding what kind of man is going to inhabit them.

The title track is built around that pursuit, not the fantasy that anybody reaches a finish line where all their flaws suddenly disappear. PayCheck described the album as “about being a better man and it’s about, you know, trying to improve yourself and constantly struggling with that.”

There is another piece to it too: figuring out whose judgment deserves a seat in the room.

“People that, you know, want to criticize you and weigh you down, they’re not part of your plan anyway,” he said. “So why are you focused on that? Keep moving forward. And that’s really what it’s about.”

Recorded at Gnome Studios in Nashville with producer Bill McDermott, Better Plan still plants its boots firmly in traditional country. PayCheck is not interested in shaving away the instruments that make the music expensive to carry from city to city. His Cavalry Band travels with the fiddle and steel guitar he considers essential to the sound.

That choice comes with arithmetic. PayCheck has spoken openly about making sure his musicians get paid, housed and taken care of even on nights when doing so leaves very little for him. A smaller acoustic configuration would be easier. He does occasionally strip the show down, but he has no desire to make that the default.

“Musically, we’re protecting the sound, right?” he said. “We’re protecting the heritage of country music a little bit too, I think.”

For PayCheck, fiddle and steel are not museum pieces. They are working parts of a live show meant to fill a dance floor.

“It makes the music interesting,” he said. “It gives you just such an awesome sound on stage and it, the experience is better for the listener and for the audience.”

There is inherited muscle memory in that decision. His father liked a big band. John grew up around that sound and still hears something missing when those pieces are removed.

Not every lesson handed down from Johnny Paycheck has been that easy to keep.

Inheriting the spark without repeating the fire

“Sons of the Spark”, PayCheck’s collaboration with Struggle Jennings, could have been sold on surname alone. Two artists from complicated country-music families, two men with ancestors whose reputations arrived in the room before they did.

The more interesting question is buried in the title.

How do you inherit somebody’s spark without repeating the damage caused by the fire?

“You learn from the lessons they left you,” PayCheck said.

His father left plenty.

Johnny Paycheck could be defiant to the point of self-destruction, a man who did not react well to being shoved into corners. John tells a family story about a bruising record-label negotiation where his father told executives exactly what he thought, then parked a car they had given him in their lobby. As PayCheck tells it, an executive responded by telling Johnny that nobody in Nashville would remember his name and he would never have another record deal.

John does not tell the story as uncomplicated outlaw mythology. He understands the price that can accompany satisfaction in the moment.

“There are people that have a lot of sway in Nashville and they’ve got a lot of money, and money talks,” he said. “So if you burn those bridges, that’s what can happen.”

Then comes the part he enjoys.

“People ain’t forgotten who Johnny Paycheck is.”

No, they haven’t.

His father’s signature recording, “Take This Job and Shove It”, written by David Allan Coe, remains one of country’s great working-class middle fingers. The song reaches its 50th anniversary in 2027, and John plans to mark it with several special tribute performances.

Those shows will be an exception to a rule he has guarded carefully.

“I’m not a tribute show, and I don’t want to be,” he said.

That line explains much of John PayCheck’s career better than any family tree could.

When his first music began attracting attention, he remembers one early review essentially complimenting his ability to sing and write before adding that the song was not as good as a Johnny Paycheck song.

John’s internal response has not softened much with time.

“You’ll never be as good as Shakespeare either, so I don’t know what to tell you, man.”

He laughed.

“I take it with a grain of salt, let it go and look at, I’m on album three now and we’re doing our thing and people are enjoying it.”

That is also the idea he hopes listeners hear inside “Sons of the Spark.” A famous parent is only the most visible version of the problem. Somebody can inherit a farm, family business or reputation in a small town and still spend years being measured against the person who came before them.

“You do not have to live in their shadow,” PayCheck said.

He knows because he has spent most of his life moving in and out of one.

The road taught him what not to carry

Long before he was the name on the marquee, PayCheck learned touring from the bottom of the ladder.

As a kid he experienced the road around his father. Later he returned as a roadie, then eventually became Johnny’s road manager. Being the boss’s son offered no magical exemption from the ugly work.

“When I went on the road with him, I am just one of the crew and he treated me accordingly,” PayCheck said.

New band members sometimes tiptoed around him until somebody explained that John was not there as royalty. He was there to work.

Becoming road manager changed the dynamic because he was suddenly involved more directly in the family business, but there was never much confusion over who had final say. It was Johnny’s operation.

“Hard to tell him different,” John said.

Those years also taught him what he did not want to reproduce. His current band operates under clear rules about drugs and drinking before shows. What musicians do when they return home is their business, he said, but if it interferes with the job, the relationship ends. Some of those boundaries were formed by watching what life on the road could do when nobody bothered to draw any.

Still, the road got into him.

He talked about “the smell of the diesel coming off that engine of a tour bus or a sprinter van,” about waking up and needing a second to remember what city is outside. There is work before the lights come on, loading, setup and all the anonymous labor that disappears once a band takes the stage.

Then comes the trade.

For roughly 90 minutes, an audience gives you its attention.

PayCheck gives it back.

That relationship with the road became far more difficult during his father’s final years. John left college when Johnny’s health declined, not because of a dramatic calculation about sacrifice but because his dad needed him.

“I don’t think I thought as deeply about it,” he told me.

There was also a denial familiar to anyone who has watched a parent become seriously ill.

“I didn’t really conceptualize a world without my dad until it happened.”

As Johnny became frailer, John and the band tried to keep him performing as long as they safely could because the stage remained one of the places he wanted to be. John remembers an oxygen tank behind his father, the nasal cannula, the difficulty of watching him push through songs while his body was losing the argument.

Eventually John had to be one of the people saying the road was over.

Outside opinions about appearances, publicity or career consequences meant nothing by then.

“I didn’t care what the optics were,” he said. “This is my dad.”

College could wait.

Years later he went back, largely because earning his degree opened the route toward becoming an Army officer. His life moved into technology, firefighting and military service before music eventually pulled him back toward Nashville after roughly two decades away.

The years outside the industry did not interrupt his education in storytelling. They complicated it.

That becomes especially obvious when PayCheck talks about the way military service is represented in songs and movies.

Some mistakes are almost funny to him: incorrect rank, uniforms worn wrong, covers sitting strangely on an actor’s head. The fix is basic.

“Get an advisor,” he said.

The deeper mistake bothers him more. Veterans are frequently portrayed as if service leaves every one of them permanently ruined.

“We’re all broken. We’re not all broken. We’ve survived more than many people have.”

PayCheck does not deny trauma. He talks openly about memories, loss and the things people carry home. His objection is to turning veterans into a single character type, whether that character exists to generate pity, patriotism or applause.

That circles directly back to “Battles You Never Knew.”

He is not asking country music to stop telling these stories.

He is asking people to tell them better.

Lavender after diesel

For a life that has moved through tour buses, technology, firehouses, aircraft, military deployments and recording studios, the lavender farm arrived almost accidentally.

PayCheck and his family were searching for property with enough room for horses when they came across an existing lavender farm in Virginia.

“We dove in,” he said.

Several years later, HorseBite Farms is part of the family business. There are chickens for eggs, rabbits, lavender fields and the normal collection of chores that do not care whether somebody has a show the night before. PayCheck admitted he wanted Flemish giant rabbits but could not win the family vote, so they ended up with lop-eared rabbits instead.

“I’m still going to get me one of them,” he said.

Touring once meant returning home and immediately facing fields that needed cutting. These days, his wife and three daughters have absorbed much of the farm work during the heaviest stretches of the tour.

“I am extremely thankful for my wife and my three girls because, yeah, they’re taking care of everything,” he said. “They really are, and they’re doing a fantastic job.”

The contrast is almost too neat: diesel on the road, lavender at home.

For PayCheck, though, neither life seems to cancel the other. The farm is not an escape from music any more than the Army erased it. They are different rooms in the same house, each one handing him material.

The Better Plan Tour now carries him and the Cavalry Band through 26 states and 43 cities. On September 17, that road reaches Bigs Bar in Sioux Falls for a 7 p.m. show, bringing the full-band version PayCheck insists is worth the cost.

“Battles You Never Knew” arrives September 11. “Texan One Day” follows October 8, with “Daddy Are You Listening” scheduled for November 6 before Better Plan arrives in full November 27.

Afterglow

The interview began with John PayCheck talking about the danger of borrowing somebody else’s pain and pretending it belongs to you. By the end, he was talking about his daughters handling farm chores while he crosses the country playing fiddle-and-steel country music under a last name everybody already recognizes.

They are closer subjects than they first appear.

PayCheck has spent much of his life surrounded by stories he inherited: his father’s triumphs, his father’s mistakes, the mythology of outlaw country, the language surrounding veterans, the expectations attached to a famous name. Better Plan finds him less interested in escaping those stories than deciding which ones deserve to travel with him.

He can honor Johnny Paycheck without becoming a tribute act. He can love the road without repeating everything he saw on it. He can write about military service without turning veterans into scenery. He can carry the spark without setting the same fires.

And when somebody decides the son can never measure up to the father, he has already answered that one too.

Album three. A national tour. Another city outside the window.

“Keep moving forward. And that’s really what it’s about.”

Please consider Donating to Sponsor an article even $1 helps!

Six hours of mountain roads will tell you plenty about the person in the passenger seat. Susan, my better half, spent the drive keeping track of places we wanted to revisit. She was not nearly as fond of the curves Google sent us through. I loved them. They reminded me of learning to drive the back roads of northeast Monroe County, back when “youth gone wild” was less a song title than a fair description of how some of us believed a car ought to be handled. There were nights back then when a guardian angel must have been riding shotgun.

This trip came with a long list of firsts. Like our first visit to Gatlinburg, my first major multi-day rock festival, the first time seeing several names that had lived in my record collection for years and, before Friday was over, my first bear encounter. That last one would have to wait. There were guitars to hear first.

The Gatlinburg Chateau gave us a view down over the city, including the Space Needle lit against the night. The walk to the Gatlinburg Convention Center looked harmless enough going downhill. The walk back made a convincing case for wheels. By Friday, I had learned my lesson and called an Uber. My friend Weston Hooper drove in from Chattanooga later for Tuk Smith, Sebastian Bach and Pearcy/DeMartini, which saved me from another uphill hike and, as it turned out, put both of us on the path of that bear.

Inside the convention center, The Mountain Music Festival was built for movement. Multiple stages meant the day did not wait around for anyone. One set rolled toward another, acoustic performances broke up the electric assault and the hallways kept filling with musicians and familiar faces. For a first-timer, it was a lot to take in. Friday did not ease me into it. It opened the door, turned up the volume and kept going.

A place to land

Covering a festival like this means long days, late nights and very little time between the last ringing guitar and the next morning’s schedule. We want to sincerely thank our housing sponsor, The KiN Way, for giving us a place to recharge throughout the weekend and making this coverage possible.

Our gratitude goes to Channing and Rhiannon McGee for supporting independent music journalism and helping put IronTrakksMedia in the room for three packed days on the Mountain. You can find The KiN Way on Facebook or Instagram to learn more about the work they are doing and booking with them.

The first climb

No Love Lost had the job of getting Day 1 moving, and there is a special pressure in that spot. The room is still arranging itself. People are finding the stages, checking the schedule and deciding whether they are ready to commit. The band did not treat it like a warm-up. They came out together, worked the front of the stage and gave the early crowd something firm to lock onto.

Rebels Opera followed as one of the newer names on a weekend stacked with history. The photographs tell the story of bodies leaning into the same moment, guitars crossing the frame and hair dropping forward as the players crowded the lip of the stage. It looked a trying to carve out its own territory before the veterans arrived.

Stone Whiskey kept the electric side of Friday moving, while the acoustic appearances from Soto/Bieler and Hoekstra/Gibbs changed the temperature. The Soto/Bieler pairing was one of my favorite parts of the weekend. Stripped of a full-band wall, the songs had room to show their shape. The humor mattered just as much. The stage banter and antics were not simpy solemn unplugged interludes. They turned the performance into something loose, almost personal.

Joel Hoekstra’s impersonations were a show of their own. He is a serious player with a long résumé, but he did not carry himself as though everyone needed to stand at attention and admire it. That balance—elite musicianship without the museum glass around it—became one of Friday’s recurring pleasures.

Please consider Donating to Sponsor an article even $1 helps!

New favorites make noise

WildStreet arrived as a band I had never seen and left with a new fan. They were everywhere. Eric Jayk’s blond hair, streaked pink, flashed against the stage lights as he worked from the microphone to the edge of the crowd, arms raised above his head one moment and reaching outward the next. The rest of the band matched that restlessness. Nothing about the set felt contained to one square of the stage.

Ted Poley followed with another strong performance, another reminder that Friday’s schedule was not simply a march toward the larger logos at the bottom of the poster. The early and middle stretches kept producing sets worth stopping for.

Then came The Cruel Intentions, a Scandinavian band built from Norwegian and Swedish players carrying the kind of dirty, street-level hard rock that made immediate sense in this lineup. My first reaction was part Guns N’ Roses, part Ugly Kid Joe—not because they copied either band, but because they shared the same mix of danger, humor and hook-minded swagger.

They also understood how to use the stage. Guitarists folded toward one another, the singer worked the open spaces and a vertical blast of smoke punched upward behind them without swallowing the players. I spoke with Christian a few times during the weekend, and the offstage impression matched the set: serious about the music, easy to talk to and clearly enjoying the fact that a band from across the Atlantic could walk into Gatlinburg and connect this quickly.

Memphis blood and Nashville teeth

Tora Tora brought Memphis into the room the way only Tora Tora can. I have been a fan for years. The logo filled the screen, the crowd pressed in and Anthony Corder worked the stage in front of a band that did not need to pretend these songs were new to make them feel alive.

The following day, I learned that Corder is also a fellow Mississippian. I love those “small-world” connections, especially at a festival where people have traveled from every direction. A conversation in a hallway can suddenly make a stage feel closer to home.

The Reb Beach Fusion Band came next with the kind of playing that can make a crowded festival room focus on a guitarist’s hands. Beach’s résumé is enormous, but the pleasure of the set was immediate rather than academic. He smiled through passages that would tie lesser players in knots, the red guitar bright against a stage built from stacked black amplifiers—a natural.

Then Tuk Smith and his band hit hard enough to make the transition feel like getting smacked in the face—in the best possible rock ’n’ roll sense. Eddie Trunk introduced the set and talked about how long he had wanted to see the band live. Once the music started, he came down and joined the rest of us on the floor. I liked that. Trunk has spent a career talking about rock, but in that moment he was simply another fan in the crowd, watching a Nashville favorite prove why the introduction carried so much anticipation.

Smith’s set supplied a needed generational jolt. Friday respected the past, but it was not trapped there. WildStreet, The Cruel Intentions, Rebels Opera and Tuk Smith all made the same argument in different ways: this style of rock still has people willing to sweat for it, write for it and throw themselves across a stage for it.

The room gets heavier

Lynch Mob roared in with renewed fury. Andrew Freeman fit the band naturally, singing with the force needed to stand in front of that much guitar. Jaron Gulino remains one of my favorite bass players to watch and photograph because he does not disappear into the bottom end. He performs every part of it. The bass anchors the band, but Gulino keeps it visually alive as well.

And then there is George Lynch. What can be said about his six-string work that has not already been said? The useful answer is what happened in the room: heads turned toward the guitar, the band tightened around him and the set landed as a full sonic assault without becoming shapeless noise. The volume had detail inside it. Nobody seemed interested in complaining.

That blast became the setup for Sebastian Bach, who came out swinging and never really stopped. He still performs as though the stage might be taken away if he leaves any breath unused. His son Paris Bach was behind the drums, playing with the same fearless attack his father brought to the front of the stage. There was something genuinely fun in watching that family resemblance travel through two different parts of the band.

During “Big Guns”, Bach invited a woman from the crowd onto the stage and leaned all the way into the song’s bawdy joke. It was ridiculous, loud and completely on brand. She is not likely to forget it. Neither is anyone who saw Bach keep pushing past the natural ending of the set until his sound man had to physically steer him away. Some performers leave a little in reserve for tomorrow. Bach appeared offended by the concept.

RATT ’n’ roll at the summit

Friday’s headliner brought Stephen Pearcy and Warren DeMartini back together around the music of RATT, backed by Carlos Cavazo, Matt Thorne and former Slaughter drummer Blas Elias. That lineup put an absurd amount of hard-rock history on one stage without turning the performance into a nostalgia display.

The set reached through the obvious classics and into deeper cuts from “Dancing Undercover.” “Lay It Down” had the guitar bite people came to hear. “Round and Round” became the room-wide payoff it has been for decades. My personal favorite guitar lick arrived with “Way Cool Jr.”, a song that still moves with a different kind of swagger than the rest of the catalog.

DeMartini’s playing was the center of gravity for me. Pearcy worked the crowd while the band filled the stage around him, and the guitars kept returning to those familiar shapes without sounding embalmed. There is a difference between replaying old songs and stepping back inside them. Pearcy, DeMartini and company chose the second option.

Afterglow

After the final notes, Weston and I started toward the parking lot. We turned between two buildings and found a good-sized young bear beside an overturned garbage bin, enjoying whatever late-night snacks Gatlinburg had provided. We tried to give it room and slip around without disturbing dinner. The bear noticed us anyway and seemed just as uncertain about the two humans as we were about it.

We made it to the car. When we rounded the corner, there was the bear again, still looking for an escape route from us. That felt like the only fitting ending to a day this overloaded with firsts: twelve hours of guitars, old favorites, new discoveries, a headlining run through the RATT catalog and one startled bear trying to figure out why the rock crowd had spilled into its night.

The mountains had welcomed us with curves, amplifiers and teeth. Day 1 was done.

Please consider Donating to Sponsor an article even $1 helps!

Rhett Walker had not taken the LifeLight stage yet when he sat down for our interview, but he was already in performance mode—just not the polished kind.

Asked to introduce himself, Walker looked straight ahead and answered with a near-perfect repetition of the prompt.

“I’m Rhett Walker at LifeLight, and I’m going to be playing in a bit.”

There was no résumé, sales pitch or carefully prepared description of his Southern rock and country-influenced Christian music. Just a dry joke, delivered from beneath a thick beard by someone who has been interviewed enough times to recognize an opening he can play with.

The humor disappeared when the conversation moved back to age 17.

Walker grew up as a pastor’s son. His father remains in ministry, but familiarity with church did not spare the family from public judgment when Walker and his future wife, April, learned they were expecting a child as teenagers. In a small town, the news traveled quickly. The criticism reached beyond the couple and landed on his father.

“How can a pastor run his church if he can’t even run his own family?” Walker remembered people saying.

He was expelled from his Christian school during the summer before his senior year. People he had known as believers “trashed” the family’s name. Already frightened and publicly exposed, he watched Christians provide evidence for every reason he might want to leave Christianity behind.

“Everything inside of me was like, ‘Man, if this is how believers are, I don’t want nothing to do with it,’” Walker said.

Then a small church responded differently.

Please consider Donating to Sponsor an article even $1 helps!

Diapers, formula and staying put

The congregation did not pretend the pregnancy would be easy. Its members also refused to treat Walker and April as a scandal to be removed from view.

“They rallied around us, going, ‘It ain’t going to be easy. It’s going to be hard. We’re going to help you,’” he recalled.

Diapers appeared. So did formula. Those purchases mattered to two teenagers preparing to raise a child, but Walker remembers the instruction and steady presence more clearly than the money. Members of the church taught them how to remain married, how to become parents and how to keep moving once the town had formed its opinion.

Walker had spent his childhood inside churches. This was the first time he understood what one could be.

“That was when I saw the church be the church,” he said. “I’m already kicked down, and they’re helping us.”

Twenty-two years later, Rhett and April are still married.

The household they built now includes four children and a goldendoodle. Their days are governed less by dramatic testimony than by volleyball schedules, soccer matches and evenings on the back porch. Walker spoke with the amazement of someone who still occasionally looks around his own home and needs a second to accept that it held together.

His 2024 album, Days That We Dreamed Of, grew from that recognition. Its title does not point toward an arena, an award or a career milestone. Walker hears it in the noise of his children’s lives.

His 14-year-old daughter recently won a volleyball game. His son scored his first soccer goal. Walker watched the joy on their faces and recognized something he had wanted long before he possessed the language to write about it.

“I can’t believe that this is life,” he said. “To see them so full of joy, that’s what I always wanted as a teenager.”

The dream turned out to have practices, game times and a dog underfoot.

“I don’t know how to change my voice”

Early in his recording career, Walker encountered another institution uncertain about what to do with him.

His debut single, “When Mercy Found Me,” introduced the gravel, drawl and heavy Southern inflection that remain central to his singing. Before its release, however, Walker was told he sounded too country for Christian radio. He had to sing the song again. Even promotional decisions became negotiations over authenticity: perhaps the cowboy hats should be left out of the photo shoot.

“I was like, ‘I don’t know how to change my voice,’” he said.

The irony is difficult to miss now. Country phrasing and rural imagery have moved into the center of contemporary Christian music, part of a broader industry appetite for acoustic production, Southern accents and songs built from everyday testimony. The things once treated as commercial obstacles have become marketable signals.

Walker laughed when the contradiction came up.

“I’ve learned that no one in the industry knows what they’re talking about, including myself,” he said.

It was a funny line, but not an empty one. Music companies make decisions by predicting what listeners will accept, often by comparing a new artist with whatever succeeded last. Walker’s career pushed against that instinct. His voice did not sound less Southern because a radio format preferred it. Removing the hat would not change where the songs came from.

So he stayed with it.

“The right song will open up the doors,” Walker said. “You’re not going to stop God from doing what God wants to do.”

He pointed to messages received from listeners far outside his own community, including the account of someone in Arizona who heard one of his songs and decided to become a Christian. The distance mattered. Walker had written the song for himself, unaware of the person who would eventually hear it several states away.

For him, that response settled an argument the industry could not.

“Whatever God put on your heart and your life, do it,” he said. “Do it with obedience and strive to be the best you can at doing it.”

Coming back with his son

Walker’s relationship with LifeLight stretches back to 2013, when he appeared at the festival as the leader of the Rhett Walker Band during the Come to the River period. That version of LifeLight sprawled across rural land near Worthing, with multiple stages and enough artists to divide Christian music into its many subcultures for an entire weekend.

The festival Walker returned to is smaller and concentrated into a single day at Nelson Park. His own name has changed on the billing, too. “Band” disappeared as he continued as a solo artist.

The personnel change that matters most to him happened within his family.

During a previous LifeLight appearance, Walker looked across the stage and saw his oldest son playing guitar beside him. That son is now 19. A festival once associated with the opening chapter of Walker’s career became a place where he could measure time by the child standing near his amplifier.

“Looking back and seeing my now 19-year-old son play guitar with me—you can’t beat that,” he said.

His daughters have sung with him as well. April began designing Walker’s merchandise, then expanded into work for other musicians—artists Walker jokingly called “cooler than me.” The family became involved without being assigned roles.

Walker is careful about that distinction because he knows what inherited faith can feel like. Growing up in a pastor’s home gave him the vocabulary of Christianity, but he said it did not automatically produce personal conviction.

“I knew enough Jesus to get out of trouble,” he said. “I was kind of on my daddy’s faith coattails.”

At 17, amid the pregnancy and rejection, he had to decide whether that faith belonged to him. He refuses to deny his children the same choice.

“The stage is theirs if they want it,” Walker said. “But I won’t force them to do it.”

His son has developed an interest in stocks and has skipped some performances to pursue that world. Walker does not treat the decision as a retreat from ministry. Finance could be the work his son is meant to do. Music might belong to the other children—or it might not.

The invitation remains open.

There is a selfish part of Walker, he admitted, that will accept every opportunity to play guitar or sing with his children. He enjoys looking across the stage and finding them there. Yet the future he hopes for is not one in which they remain supporting players in their father’s career.

He wants them to outgrow his stage.

“I hope for the day when they come to me and go, ‘I ain’t playing with you no more, Dad. I’ve got my own band,’” Walker said. “I hope that for them—just to find success above anything I can imagine.”

Before his LifeLight set, Walker’s story kept returning to people being given room to choose: a frightened teenager welcomed instead of condemned, an artist retaining the voice executives wanted softened, children allowed near the stage without being pushed onto it.

Obedience, in Walker’s telling, does not look like becoming the person an institution finds easiest to promote. Sometimes it sounds like a Southern accent that survived the second take. Sometimes it is a 19-year-old playing guitar beside his father.

And sometimes it is letting him miss the show.

Please consider Donating to Sponsor an article even $1 helps!

At LifeLight Sioux Falls, the Nashville singer traced a career shaped by family music, catastrophe and the realization that entertaining a crowd was no longer enough.

The most revealing song Jesse LaBelle performed at LifeLight Sioux Falls began with a different name.

Before “Hey Jesus,” there was “Hey Rachel,” a love song written by a younger man searching for validation in another person. LaBelle kept the melody but redirected its attention after converting to Christianity. The change amounted to more than replacing one name with another.

“I’d been writing about the wrong kind of love,” he said. “My love songs had not been complete.”

It is a striking admission from someone who spent years writing and performing conventional pop and country songs. LaBelle has shared stages with Garth Brooks and Elton John, played Nashville’s Bluebird Cafe repeatedly and learned how to hold a room long before his music became explicitly Christian. Now he leads worship at Cross Point Church in Nashville and sings about the same hunger for connection, except the intended recipient has changed.

Horizontal songs became vertical ones, in his description—music no longer directed across a room toward another person, but upward.

That distinction runs through his 2025 six-song release, My Story. The title leaves little room for ambiguity. LaBelle considers those songs an account of where he stands now and, just as importantly, the person he no longer wants to pretend he is.

His history with music reaches back much further. LaBelle’s grandmother, Betty, was a recording artist, and some of his earliest memories involve singing back to her. Asked what remained of her voice after all these years, he did not mention range, technique or a particular song.

Sweetness was what survived.

“She had such a sweet voice, like a songbird,” LaBelle said.

He now uses the same word for his fiancée. Music and affection became associated early in his life, almost inseparable, passed between generations before he understood either one well enough to name it.

“Love and music, to me, have always been hand in hand,” he said. “It started with Betty.”

Please consider Donating to Sponsor an article even $1 helps!

The first Nashville room

LaBelle’s first performance in Nashville happened at one of the city’s most storied listening rooms.

He played an open-mic night at the Bluebird Cafe before moving to the city. The venue has since become a recurring stop rather than a single line on his résumé, but his affection for the room still carries the faint disbelief of someone who began in Nashville exactly where aspiring songwriters are told important careers begin.

“The Bluebird was actually the first place I ever played in Nashville, believe it or not,” he said. “That’s always been a special place.”

Years of larger stages followed. There were recognizable names, professional rooms and the learned mechanics of entertainment: reading an audience, shaping a set, knowing when to pull people closer and when to let the song do the work.

LaBelle no longer talks about those experiences as the highest form of what music can accomplish.

“The difference between that is everything,” he said when asked about entertaining people versus reaching them. “Reaching people is 100 times more important than entertaining people.”

Then he went further.

“I don’t think I reached anybody when I was entertaining them.”

It is probably too unforgiving an assessment of his earlier career. Songs reach people in ways their writers never see, including songs written before the artist has settled on what he believes. Still, LaBelle’s statement exposes how severely he now separates applause from purpose. He does not dismiss the old years as wasted, but he wishes he had understood then what worship later taught him: attention and connection are not automatically the same thing.

Four encounters with survival

The cross hanging from LaBelle’s neck carries more weight than its size suggests.

It contains copper recovered from bullet casings after LaBelle survived a shooting, melted into silver by his friend Mitchell Binder of King Baby Studio. The metal that once represented violence now rests against his chest as the object he values most.

“I couldn’t really believe it at the time,” LaBelle said. “You really melt bullet metal into a cross?”

He lifted the piece while talking, surrounded by other jewelry but leaving no doubt which item mattered. The copper remains visible inside the silver. Nothing about its origin has been concealed.

“It felt like salvation,” he said. “It literally felt like the most redemptive part of my story.”

The shooting was only one event in a compressed and brutal period. LaBelle also survived a fiery crash and the Nashville tornado before receiving a cancer diagnosis. Catastrophe had already arrived from the road, the sky and another person. Cancer was different. This time, the danger was inside him.

That was when he finally asked why.

“Strangely, I didn’t ask the question after the car crash or the tornado,” LaBelle said. “But it was the cancer. It was when it was inside of my own body—there was destruction.”

The answer he believes he received was short: “You are going to be okay.”

There is no attempt in LaBelle’s telling to make the sentence more ornate. He trusted it. Treatment and survival followed, adding another incident to a biography that can sound improbably severe when compressed into a few minutes onstage.

The bullet-cross prevents that history from becoming abstract. It can be touched. It catches the light. The object does not erase what happened; its meaning depends upon the damage remaining recognizable.

Two people in the room

LaBelle’s transition into Christian music did not begin on a festival stage. He spent a summer traveling with Community Worship Nights, visiting roughly 50 churches and learning how radically attendance could fluctuate.

Some nights brought 250 people.

Others brought two.

He performed anyway.

“We were just worshiping in God’s house to God’s people,” LaBelle said. “It didn’t really matter who was there. What mattered was that we were spreading the message.”

That experience offers a useful counterweight to his history on prominent stages. At the Bluebird, a songwriter can feel the pressure of every chair. A festival audience stretches past the immediate conversation. A nearly empty church provides nowhere for performer or listener to disappear. There are no crowd numbers large enough to validate the evening and no roar capable of disguising whether the song means what its singer says it means.

LaBelle’s career now contains all three rooms.

LifeLight gave him another: an open-air Christian festival where people arrive for music, ministry, food and the easy accessibility of a free event. Some listeners come prepared to worship. Others simply come close enough to hear.

“Hey Jesus” makes room for both. Its history remains audible even without knowing the original title. The song still uses the direct language of someone addressing a beloved, but the need underneath it has been reassigned. LaBelle did not destroy the old love song. He admitted it had been aimed at someone who could never carry everything he had placed upon her.

One changed name, and the rest of his catalog began turning with it.

Please consider Donating to Sponsor an article even $1 helps!

Back to CHI Health Center

The last time I was at the CHI Health Center in Omaha, I was front and center for Linkin Park on August 29, 2025. That show set the bar pretty high, to say the least. So, almost exactly a year later, I found myself walking back into the same arena for Benson Boone’s Wanted Man World Tour.

That’s a tough show to follow.

Still, I was excited to see what Benson had in store. I‘d heard his name plenty of times and knew some of his biggest songs, but I wouldn’t consider myself a dedicated Benson Boone fan going into the night. I knew about his rise from American Idol, his impressive vocal range, and, of course, the flips. But knowing about an artist and actually experiencing them live are two very different things.

My media approval for this show came with a review ticket alone rather than a photo pass. At first, I was a little disappointed not to have the opportunity to photograph the show, but it became pretty obvious why that was the case as soon as I walked into the arena.

The stage was absolutely massive.

It stretched almost the entire length of the arena, creating a huge performance space that immediately changed the way the audience experienced the show. I’ve come to appreciate large stages for a reason. Instead of having one narrow strip of barricade where hundreds of fans are fighting for a few feet of space, a larger stage gives more people an opportunity to get close to the artist they came to see.

And Benson Boone took full advantage of every inch of it.

But before we get to that, there was an opener who deserved her own moment in the spotlight.

Please consider Donating to Sponsor an article even $1 helps!

Luna Li Sets the Tone

Opening for a massive arena show has to be intimidating. Walking onto a stage in front of thousands of people who came specifically to see someone else can’t be an easy task.

Luna Li made it look easy.

I’d never heard Luna Li before this show, and honestly, one of my favorite ways to discover new artists is through live performances. There’s something different about hearing an artist for the first time in a room full of people and getting to experience their music exactly as they intended it to be experienced.

Luna and her band took the stage and immediately owned the relatively short amount of time they were given.

Her sound was an interesting combination of earthy and ethereal. There was a dreamlike quality to the music that made it feel both intimate and expansive at the same time. The melodic nature of her songs reminded me at times of one of my favorite artists, Aurora, although Luna certainly has an identity of her own.

And then there was the instrumentation.

Luna Li was essentially a musical jack of all trades throughout the set. She played guitar, including a particularly memorable butterfly shaped guitar, as well as harp, violin, and even a flute. Watching her move between instruments added another layer to an already captivating performance.

It was the kind of set that made me understand why opening acts are important. Sometimes you walk into a concert knowing exactly who you came to see, and you walk away having discovered someone completely new.

The crowd seemed to agree. Luna had the arena warmed up nicely, particularly when she launched into a cover of Harry Styles’ “As It Was.” It was a recognizable moment that gave the audience something familiar while still fitting naturally into her set.

Luna Li made a great first impression.

But nothing could have prepared us for what was about to happen.

The Biggest Arena Wave I’ve Ever Seen

While the crew was changing the stage and the crowd was growing increasingly anxious for Benson to appear, something happened that I’ve genuinely never experienced at a concert before.

It started small.

Someone down in the pit began trying to get the seated sections to do a wave.

Yes. A sporting event style wave.

At first, I laughed. There’s no way I thought it was actually going to work. Getting an entire concert arena to coordinate something like that seemed almost impossible.

Then one section joined.

Then another.

And another.

Before long, the wave had made its way through the entire arena, from the floor to the upper levels. Thousands of people were participating as this massive ripple moved around the building.

I just stood there smiling.

It was one of those spontaneous concert moments that nobody planned and nobody could have really manufactured. It was simply a crowd having fun while waiting for the main event.

And then the arena went dark.

Benson Boone Is a Performer

Going into the show, there were really only a few things I knew about Benson Boone.

I knew he had gotten his start on American Idol at just 18 years old. I knew he could sing. And I knew this man apparently has an obsession with doing flips on stage.

So, naturally, before the show I asked people on Facebook how many flips they thought Benson would do. Some guessed 5 or 6, some got particular about if we were doing total or breaking it down to front or back flips.

The final answer?

Two front flips and four back flips throughout the performance.

And somehow, he made every single one look ridiculously easy.

But the flips were just one small part of what made this performance so impressive.

Benson Boone is a performer in every sense of the word.

This man did not stop moving.

If the entire night were converted into steps on a fitness tracker, I’ve got to believe Benson would have logged somewhere around thirty thousand steps, if not more. He ran across the stage, interacted with fans, climbed around the barricade area, jumped, danced, and generally seemed incapable of standing still for more than a few seconds.

And when he wasn’t moving under his own power, he was being moved around the arena on a massive stage piece.

It was one of the most energetic stage performances I’ve ever seen.

The impressive thing, though, was that the physical performance never overshadowed the music. His vocals were powerful and passionate, and the production surrounding him elevated everything rather than simply existing for spectacle.

The lighting, fireworks, pyro, moving stage pieces, and massive arena setup all worked together to create something that felt much bigger than a standard concert.

As Benson himself would say, it was mystical and magical.

The Crowd Became Part of the Show

One of my favorite moments of the entire night came during “Mystical Magical.”

The song began, but then Benson stopped it.

He turned his attention toward the crowd and asked if they knew the song. The response was immediate.

The entire arena erupted into the chorus.

Thousands of voices singing back at Benson while he simply stood there taking it all in was one of those moments that reminded me why live music is so special. The artist creates the song, but the audience gives it an entirely different life when they sing it back.

Benson appeared genuinely stunned by the response.

And that was a recurring theme throughout the night. The production was huge, but there were still moments where Benson made the massive CHI Health Center feel surprisingly personal.

Three Standout Performances

There were plenty of highlights throughout the night, but a few moments stood above the rest.

During “Drunk in My Mind,” Benson leaped his way into the barricade pit and performed directly alongside the fans on the rail.

This was exactly the kind of moment that a massive stage makes possible.

Instead of being confined to the center of the stage, Benson was able to physically bring the performance to the people who had spent hours waiting to see him. The reaction from the fans made it clear how much that moment meant to them.

“The Mama Song” was another standout, but for a completely different reason.

Benson performed the entire song while standing on top of his piano.

It was an incredibly simple visual compared to the fireworks and massive stage movements happening elsewhere in the show, but somehow that simplicity made it even more memorable.

There was something striking about watching him stand above the stage and deliver such an emotional song while surrounded by thousands of people.

And then there was “Beautiful Things.”

There was really no other song that could have ended the night.

The song has become one of Benson’s defining moments, and hearing it performed live inside an arena filled with people who knew every word was the perfect conclusion to the evening.

After everything that came before it, the spectacle, the flips, the pyro, the moving stage, the screaming fans, and the nonstop energy, “Beautiful Things” brought everything home.

A New Benson Boone Fan

When I walked into CHI Health Center, I was there to review a concert.

When I walked out, I was a new Benson Boone fan.

That honestly surprised me.

I knew some of his music going into the night, but I didn’t fully understand the hype surrounding him. After seeing this performance, I get it.

Benson Boone isn’t simply a vocalist who happens to have a large production behind him. He’s a genuine entertainer. He knows how to use a stage, how to interact with an audience, how to build anticipation, and how to make a massive arena feel like a place where something unique is happening.

And apparently, he knows how to do six flips while doing it.

In fact, I was impressed enough that I immediately bought his two most recent vinyl records to add to my collection.

That’s probably the best endorsement I can give.

Afterglow

Overall, the Wanted Man World Tour absolutely blew my mind.

From the melodic and ethereal introduction provided by Luna Li to the powerful, passionate, and wildly energetic performance from Benson Boone, the entire evening was a spectacle of musicianship, raw talent, production, and charisma.

The fact that I walked into the show with relatively limited knowledge of Benson’s music and walked out wanting to own his records says quite a bit about the effectiveness of his live performance.

If you haven’t seen Benson Boone live, even if you aren’t particularly familiar with his music, I would absolutely recommend giving him a chance. You don’t have to know every song to appreciate what he does on stage.

You might discover a new favorite artist.

You might find yourself singing along to songs you didn’t know before.

And, at the very least, you’re probably going to see some flips.

Please consider Donating to Sponsor an article even $1 helps!

When Igor asked if we could cover G. Love & Special Sauce at Wooly’s, I happily agreed.

Then I had a second thought.

Who is G. Love & Special Sauce?

I knew the name in the vague way you know a band whose logo has probably passed through your peripheral vision a hundred times. I couldn’t have named a song. I didn’t have some formative G. Love memory tucked away from high school or an old CD wallet. Igor wanted the show, the date worked and I was curious. Sometimes that is enough.

The evening started rewarding that curiosity before anyone played a note.

The Aug. 26 show had originally been advertised with Canadian alternative artist DIZZYISDEAD opening. By show day, First Fleet Concerts and local listings had Wayne Baker Brooks in the opening slot instead.

I would eventually become very happy about the change.

But first, there were Brents.

Three Brents walk into Wooly’s

I got absurdly lucky with parking, finding a space about half a block down and around the corner from Wooly’s in Des Moines’ East Village. Igor and I had traveled separately, and I beat him there by enough time that the usual pre-show scramble turned into something rarer: an opportunity to actually talk to people.

Concert photography is filled with five-minute friendships. You meet somebody against a barricade, compare camera settings, complain about red lighting, shoot three songs shoulder-to-shoulder and disappear into separate lives before learning much more than each other’s first names.

This night slowed down a little.

I caught up with Antonio Rodriguez, a really cool cat who is also in the music business, and finally had time to meet First Fleet photographer Josh instead of exchanging the usual pit-side pleasantries while mentally calculating shutter speed.

Then, somehow, we accumulated three Brents.

One Brent was visiting from Chicago. Another was a Des Moines local. A bartender was also named Brent. Once you accidentally assemble a trio of unrelated men named Brent in one venue, documentation becomes mandatory. Pictures were taken with Brent, Brent and Brent.

Chicago Brent deserves special recognition for making sure I had a beverage in hand throughout the night. That becomes particularly appropriate considering one of the songs I was about to discover.

Then the house lights shifted.

Showtime.

Please consider Donating to Sponsor an article even $1 helps!

Wayne Baker Brooks was one hell of a last-minute replacement

Igor and I entered the pit alongside Josh and another photographer without much idea what Wayne Baker Brooks was about to do.

My first note was visual. Brooks walked out with a sparkly, gem-encrusted guitar strap that grabbed whatever light Wooly’s was willing to surrender. It was hard not to notice.

Then he played.

My attention moved from the strap very quickly.

There was no easing into the set. Brooks brought the unmistakable bite of Chicago electric blues, the kind built around guitar phrases that speak in complete sentences rather than simply decorating a song. His bassist and drummer gave him plenty of room without ever letting the songs sag. When Brooks pushed, they followed. When he backed off, the rhythm section left air around the guitar instead of trying to fill every available inch.

I love Chicago blues, so this was less an introduction than somebody unexpectedly ordering one of my favorite meals for me.

There is some history behind that sound. Brooks is the youngest son of Chicago blues great Lonnie Brooks. He started traveling with his father’s band as a roadie in 1988, began playing guitar in the group in 1990 and formed the Wayne Baker Brooks Band in 1997 while continuing to work alongside his father and brother Ronnie Baker Brooks. His own catalog reaches beyond traditional blues into funk, soul and more contemporary production, but the family vocabulary is still audible in the way he handles a guitar.

I spent part of the set scribbling bits of lyrics so I could piece together song titles later. My notes point to “Coming Home,” “Big Boss Man”, “The Crawl,” “Bewitched,” “Two Headed Man,” “Mystery” and other Brooks material, “I Can Read Your Mind,” “Sooner or Later,” “Tricks Up My Sleeve,” “Baby What You Want Me to Do” and “You Make It Easy, Baby,” along with a bass-and-drums jam.

The titles mattered less in the room than how naturally the set moved. Brooks could lean into the familiar grammar of the blues without turning the performance into preservation society theater. There was history in it, certainly, but it was being played by a living musician rather than handled behind glass.

The crowd knew him better than I did.

People sang. Bodies started moving. Reactions came before the recognizable moments had fully arrived, the way they do when an audience already knows where a song is headed. My position changed from “Who is the opener?” to furiously writing things down so I could find him again later.

And then, between sets, we found out the guy could talk just as easily as he could play.

Brooks and his touring musicians were hanging out right in front of Wooly’s. Igor and I ended up chatting with them for quite a while. There was no manufactured meet-and-greet stiffness, no sense that somebody was watching the clock while waiting for an escape route. They talked. We talked. They posed for pictures. They were remarkably friendly and humble for a group that had just walked offstage after commanding the room.

Sometimes the best endorsement of an artist happens nowhere near a microphone.

Wooly’s sounded better than it looked

One complaint followed us through both sets: the lighting.

Photographing Wooly’s can be rough. On this night it was mediocre at best, with stretches where the available stage light simply did not give the performers or photographers much to work with. Wooly’s has hosted a wildly broad range of artists since opening in the East Village in 2012, and if I could magically improve one thing about the room, the lighting rig would win before I finished reading the ballot.

The sound was another matter.

The mix was excellent.

Vocals came through cleanly. Individual instruments retained their character rather than collapsing into one muddy midrange pile. Bass had weight without swallowing everything around it. Guitar stayed articulate. Considering how easily a blues-oriented bill can become a traffic jam of overlapping frequencies, the separation made a difference.

By the time G. Love & Special Sauce took over, the stage itself had changed character too. Hand-drawn-looking posters and artwork surrounded the band, glowing underneath blacklight. They had an almost homemade quality, less polished corporate tour package and more collection of things somebody genuinely wanted hanging behind the band.

It fit.

Because once G. Love started playing, the question I had asked before leaving home began sounding increasingly ridiculous.

So, apparently I like G. Love

G. Love, Garrett Dutton, occupies a strange little intersection of blues, hip-hop, funk, soul and rock that makes far more sense coming out of an amplifier than it does written in a genre description. His official biography calls it “The Hip-Hop Blues,” which is about as efficient a description as anyone is going to manage.

There was looseness to the performance without sloppiness in the playing. G. Love could sing a phrase, bend it toward spoken rhythm, answer himself with harmonica and fall back into the groove before the idea wore out its welcome.

The first real disruption came almost immediately.

Jim “Jimi Jazz” Prescott’s upright bass developed a technical issue, and a tech remained onstage working on the instrument for what felt like an extraordinarily long time. It is always an odd sight when a show has technically started but a member of the crew is still very visibly performing emergency surgery a few feet away.

Once the problem was under control, Prescott quickly became one of my favorite things about the set.

He is an original piece of the Special Sauce chemistry. Prescott was part of the trio that formed with Dutton and drummer Jeffrey Clemens in the early 1990s, and his string bass has been central to the group’s sound for most of its history. He even tours with a folding upright bass designed to survive the realities of life on the road.

Watching him work the instrument live explains why replacing that upright with a standard electric bass would change far more than the silhouette. The notes have physical movement. The instrument adds wood, attack and bounce underneath music that already refuses to stay inside one genre.

Then the songs I supposedly didn’t know started arriving.

“Cold Beverage” came from the band’s 1994 self-titled debut, the same record that gave us “Baby’s Got Sauce”. Both are early examples of why G. Love’s formula worked in the first place. The blues references are real, but there is no reverence requiring everybody to sit quietly and admire them. The grooves are playful. The vocals lean into conversational cadence. “Cold Beverage” is built around the profoundly serious human desire to have something cold to drink.

After Chicago Brent’s work earlier in the evening, I understood the scholarship.

Other songs included “I-76”, “Rainbow,” “Thanks and Praise” and “Rodeo Clowns”. I had previously thought of “Rodeo Clowns” as simply part of G. Love’s catalog, but the history is better than that. It was written by a then-little-known Jack Johnson, who recorded an early version of it with G. Love for 1999’s Philadelphonic before Johnson’s own recording appeared later. G. Love didn’t write the song, but his recording helped put Johnson on a much larger radar.

Those details are fun afterward.

In the room, I was mostly busy realizing how many of these songs felt familiar despite my inability to name them a few hours earlier.

Chicago meets Philly

The best moment of the entire night came when Wayne Baker Brooks returned.

G. Love brought him back onstage, and suddenly the night’s two musical dialects were standing next to each other instead of taking turns.

They went after “(I’m Your) Hoochie Coochie Man”, the Willie Dixon-written Muddy Waters standard, with Brooks handling the vocal while G. Love attacked the harmonica.

And attacked is the correct word.

He wailed on that thing.

Harmonica is one of those instruments capable of becoming novelty furniture in the wrong hands. Here it became the sharpest sound in the room. G. Love pushed and pulled against Brooks’ vocal, throwing phrases between the lines while Brooks stood inside one of the foundational songs of electric Chicago blues.

This was the part of the show where my unfamiliarity became an advantage.

I hadn’t arrived waiting for a particular hit. I had no fantasy setlist to compare against reality. No song needed to recreate a memory from 1998. I could simply watch G. Love and Wayne Baker Brooks collide on a blues standard and recognize that something special was happening without having planned to feel anything about it.

Brooks was already the surprise of the night. Bringing him back made the booking change feel less like a substitution and more like an accidental improvement to the architecture of the show.

Then came the encore.

The opening notes of “Baby’s Got Sauce” produced exactly the reaction you would expect from a crowd that had spent the evening waiting for it. Voices rose immediately. The audience pressed into the familiar rhythm. It was one of those reactions where the song title becomes unnecessary because the room has already identified it for you.

Now I knew it too.

Afterglow

There is a strange emotional drop after a good show.

For hours, everything has a purpose. Find the venue. Find parking. Find the photographer. Check settings. Get into the pit. Shoot. Write. Listen. Talk to people. Catch the moment you almost missed. Move before you block somebody. Remember the lyric. Forget the lyric. Write down half of it anyway.

Then someone turns the lights on and suddenly you are carrying gear toward the door.

Igor and I walked out of Wooly’s with that familiar post-show dip starting to creep in, but Des Moines refused to let the night end cleanly.

Around the corner, we ran directly into street karaoke.

Of course we did.

We stopped. We talked with the group. Somewhere in the middle of all of this, Igor ended up with the microphone and started belting out a few songs himself.

So the night that began with me wondering who the hell G. Love & Special Sauce were ended with my photographer performing karaoke on a Des Moines sidewalk after we had spent the evening hanging out with a Chicago blues guitarist, photographing a gem-covered guitar strap, documenting three unrelated Brents and watching G. Love nearly tear the reeds out of a harmonica.

Eventually, we actually went home.

My music rotation got a little bigger first.

Please consider Donating to Sponsor an article even $1 helps!

For Josh Brewer, booking a Christian music festival begins with talent, but talent alone will not get an artist onto the stage.

“We tend to be very selective, very picky at who we book because we want people that are, of course, high on talent, but also high on impact,” Brewer said. “They’re willing to share their story. They’re willing to share their experiences, which could impact someone who’s in the crowd.”

Brewer has served as CEO of LifeLight since 2016, though his connection to the ministry began years earlier. He married into the family behind the organization, started working there a few years later and eventually assumed its leadership. This September, he and his wife will celebrate their 20th wedding anniversary.

During our conversation, his answers repeatedly returned to relationships: with artists, booking agents, volunteers, churches, donors and the people standing in front of the stage. He does not hide the machinery required to produce a free festival, but he also refuses to describe LifeLight as merely a concert promotion company with an altar call attached.

“I’m not interested in just being another concert promoter or another festival promoter,” he said. “We do that. Of course we do that. That’s the vehicle that God’s given us.”

The vehicle has changed considerably. LifeLight grew from a church lawn into a sprawling, multistage festival near Worthing, stepped away from that model, returned to Sioux Falls at 8th & Railroad in 2023 and then moved to Nelson Park. This year’s free festival runs from noon to 9:30 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 6, with Danny Gokey, KB, Cochren & Co., Rhett Walker, Emerson Day, Jesse LaBelle, Movement Worship and Z8 Worship. Willie Robertson and Brewer will speak, while BMX veteran Vic Murphy joins the action-sports programming.

Brewer calls the day “a party mixed with the best family reunion you’ve ever been to.”

That description fits the modern LifeLight. It also leaves a question hanging over the music: Who gets invited to the reunion, and who is the party meant to reach?

If you would like to check out some of our previous years coverage here are the links. We have majorly upgraded our camera equipment and can’t wait to share this years coverage with you after the festival!

Please consider Donating to Sponsor an article even $1 helps!

The songs people carry with them

My own history with LifeLight began before I ever entered its grounds.

During my sophomore year of high school, my mother moved us across the country to the middle of nowhere in Texas. I knew nobody. Switchfoot’s music, especially “Dare You to Move,” stayed with me through that upheaval. I played it throughout the drive and kept returning to it for months afterward whenever I needed some reassurance that the world had not closed in for good.

Hearing Switchfoot at LifeLight in 2015 fulfilled a long-held wish, but it did more than knock a band off my concert list. Standing there brought me back to the teenager in that car, clutching at those songs because they offered a way to imagine life improving.

Brewer understands the responsibility attached to memories like that.

“We always say we don’t want someone coming to any LifeLight event for any amount of time and not be deeply impacted in one way or another, whether it’s through the music or the message,” he said. “John Foreman is an incredibly talented lyricist. Those high entertainers or artists, they look at the world a little differently than some of us, and John’s one of those guys.”

That emphasis on impact helps explain why the same musicians have returned throughout LifeLight’s history. Remedy Drive appeared repeatedly during the Worthing years. Skillet came back for the reborn Sioux Falls festival in 2023, followed by Newsboys in 2024 and Tenth Avenue North in 2025. Each booking supplied a recognizable headliner while reconnecting the smaller, rebuilt event with the festival people remembered.

Brewer has developed a close relationship with Skillet’s John Cooper and recalled a comment Cooper made backstage in 2023.

“He looked right at me backstage,” Brewer said. “He goes, ‘Every time we play at a LifeLight event, it feels a lot more like a mission trip than a festival.’”

Brewer still considers it one of the best compliments the ministry has received. Skillet can deliver the volume, flames and arena-sized rock show expected from its name, but Cooper also understands what LifeLight wants those elements to accomplish.

“We want to put on fantastic events, and we do, and we’re proud of our team,” Brewer said. “But we also want those moments of high energy to coincide with those moments of high impact.”

Repeat bookings depend on more than whether a performer filled the field. Brewer spoke about humility several times, acknowledging how difficult it can be for successful artists to remain grounded when they spend hours each day surrounded by people praising them.

“When they get the mission behind LifeLight, when they’re humble,” he said, “they’re easy to work with.”

A different kind of crossover

This year’s lineup does not contain a rock headliner with Skillet’s mainstream footprint or a band carrying the secular-radio familiarity of Switchfoot. Danny Gokey remains one of contemporary Christian music’s most established performers, and KB has become a major name in Christian hip-hop, but much of the bill is aimed more directly at listeners already tuned into Christian radio.

Brewer does not dispute the difference. LifeLight changed where it placed its crossover appeal.

“We always try to have what we would call a crossover draw,” he said. “We want the church there. We want the people there that are into Danny Gokey and into some of those artists, but we also want to make it feel comfortable with people that aren’t church attendees.”

Instead of spending the festival’s reach on a crossover rock band this year, LifeLight brought in Robertson, whose visibility through Duck Dynasty stretches well beyond Christian radio. Robertson’s appearance also helped attract Scheels as a significant partner because the retailer carries his products. Brewer believes that relationship could push attendance from last year’s estimated 30,000 to 35,000 people toward 40,000 or more.

The other crossover arrives on two wheels. Brewer described Murphy as “the Michael Jordan of the BMX world,” a name capable of attracting young riders who may not recognize every musician listed on the poster.

“It’s one message, many expressions,” Brewer said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re a BMX athlete or an artist or a guy in the back doing balloon animals for kids. It’s all the same message.”

Still, LifeLight’s musical center has plainly shifted. Its old lineups could place Michael W. Smith, Lecrae, Family Force 5, Relient K, NF, Blindside, FM Static, Kutless, NEEDTOBREATHE and metal or punk acts on the same grounds. It was less a single Christian-music audience than several subcultures arriving with different clothes, different volumes and occasionally suspicious parents.

The contemporary version has one day and one main stage. It cannot reproduce a weekend in which worship, pop-punk, metalcore, hip-hop and radio-friendly rock operated simultaneously without competing for the same limited hours.

Brewer believes current youth tastes are best represented by worship and hip-hop. His evidence for KB comes from watching young listeners respond in real time. At a recent Rapid City event, KB launched into “Church Clap,” and Brewer saw roughly 5,000 young people perform its accompanying dance together.

“KB is, if not one of the biggest Christian acts, one that the students know his music,” Brewer said. “He’s incredibly humble. He loves the Lord. He’s easy to work with, and so he’s one of our favorites to have around.”

LifeLight’s Z8 team also has a direct role in those conversations. Younger staff members recommend artists to the festival team, sometimes sending Brewer to research names he has never encountered.

“That’s happened quicker than I would have wanted,” he said, laughing at the reversal. Years earlier, his father-in-law did not always recognize the artists Brewer followed. Now teenagers are doing the same thing to him.

Brewer also acknowledged the practical limit of representing a rapidly splintering musical culture in a single afternoon.

“There are artists that you look at and you have trouble even putting them in a genre, putting them in a box because they’re so creative,” he said. “The challenge behind it all is, when you’re planning an event, how do you get every genre represented?”

His answer included a small but significant disclosure: LifeLight hopes Sioux Falls will not remain a one-day festival forever. Discussions about expansion have begun, though Brewer offered no firm timeline.

“We’re never short on vision here at LifeLight,” he said. “It’s just a matter of respect and collaboration and, in due time, working with people in the community.”

Ice cream bars and expensive artists

LifeLight’s admission policy creates one of the strangest financial propositions in live entertainment. The organization books national touring acts, constructs a stage, supplies professional production, secures the grounds and serves tens of thousands of attendees without collecting a dollar at the gate.

“Free is a terrible business model,” Brewer said.

It was delivered with a laugh, but the pressures behind it are real. Artist guarantees and touring costs have risen. Grants do not arrive on the same schedule every year. Some funders skip a year, reduce their contribution or move to alternating-year support. Brewer said an individual donor or corporate sponsor has often emerged when an expected grant did not.

“Sometimes He waits till the very last minute, which I wish He wouldn’t do,” Brewer said of God’s provision. “But He always takes care of us.”

Relationships affect the price of artists too. LifeLight Festival Director Jill works closely with managers and booking agents, while Brewer tries to establish a direct connection with performers. Those artists remember whether the festival treated them well, and years of trust can influence future negotiations.

“We always say a saying around here with the team,” Brewer said. “Relationships either matter or they don’t.”

They matter backstage in surprisingly small ways. When LifeLight took over Hills Alive in Rapid City, Brewer learned that the long-running festival had developed a reputation among touring artists for filling backstage coolers with ice cream bars. It sounds almost comically minor beside contracts, production riders and transportation costs. It also tells an exhausted road crew somebody thought about them before the bus arrived.

Hills Alive began in 1985 and was only supposed to happen once—the year inspired its rhyming name. It kept returning. After LifeLight’s 2023 Sioux Falls comeback, Brewer received a call from Hills Alive’s festival director, who told him the event had reached its end.

“My heart’s just broken for them because I know everything that means to the community, the team,” he recalled.

Then she offered another possibility: LifeLight could assume responsibility and allow the existing crew to continue.

“I’m like, ‘Okay, I have only about 19 questions.’”

LifeLight now operates Hills Alive under its organizational umbrella while attempting to preserve the event’s local identity and longtime volunteer culture. One man has worked in its finance trailer since 1985. Brewer’s reaction to meeting volunteers with that kind of tenure was simple: “What can I do for you? I’m here to serve you.”

He does not pretend LifeLight rescued a poorly operated festival. Hills Alive’s production and community care required no repair, he said. LifeLight could contribute its ministry emphasis, but the event itself already worked.

The festival that was not coming back

When LifeLight ended its massive Worthing-era festival, leadership did not quietly maintain a five-year plan to resurrect it downtown. Brewer said the organization was committed to moving elsewhere—building outreach in other communities and expanding its work in Africa and Cuba.

Without the Sioux Falls festival consuming so much staff time and money, those efforts could grow.

“We were not planning on coming back,” he said.

Mayor Paul TenHaken changed the conversation. Brewer recalled receiving a call around 2022 asking what it would take to hold another LifeLight Festival in Sioux Falls. Brewer initially told him it was not in the organization’s plans.

“He goes, ‘Well, let’s have a discussion. What would it take for you guys?’” Brewer said. “So he really wanted it to happen.”

The resulting 2023 festival filled the 8th & Railroad area, a compact setting Brewer still describes warmly. It also became clear almost immediately that LifeLight had outgrown it.

That afternoon was among the hottest LifeLight events I have attended. A donation-based drink station appeared to be enforcing a minimum contribution until attendees began collapsing in the heat. After paramedics became involved, water was distributed more freely. Asked whether LifeLight addressed the situation afterward, Brewer placed attendee care above any fundraising objective while acknowledging how difficult it can be to make policies consistent across hundreds of temporary workers.

“The most important thing to us outside of our mission and why we exist—which is also very much a part of our mission—is to care for the needs of people,” he said. “That comes before making money, obviously.”

LifeLight has a permanent staff of 17, Brewer said, but a festival weekend can add approximately 500 volunteers. Instructions must pass through each layer without being misunderstood or improvised. Current festival guidance allows attendees to bring coolers and plastic water bottles, identifies professional first-aid services on site and warns guests to watch for signs of heat exhaustion.

Brewer did not dodge the broader point.

“There are many times where I’m like, ‘Oh, this was a ball drop,’” he said.

Nelson Park gives LifeLight more room, along with a configuration better suited to the crowd it now draws. The reconstructed event no longer resembles the temporary city that formed near Worthing, yet LifeLight is expanding again. Rapid City is established, two additional cities may be announced for next year and Brewer wants the effects of each festival to continue after the final road case leaves the grounds.

He would like to see more attendees connected with churches, ministries, counseling and support services throughout the year, even if LifeLight receives no recognition for those connections.

“How do we take this weekend event and put more efforts into ensuring that this isn’t just a weekend event?” he asked. “I’d love to have more collaboration and more partnerships with more ministries and nonprofits in town to ensure that the impact goes year-round.”

LifeLight could also use its relationships to address Sioux Falls’ shortage of Christian touring concerts outside festival weekend, though Brewer offered a blunt assessment of the obstacle: artists are becoming more expensive, fewer acts remained on the road after the pandemic years and promoters cannot repeatedly absorb losses.

He believes the industry is beginning to recover. Whether LifeLight becomes more active in local venues remains uncertain.

Afterglow

Brewer ended our conversation where he began it: not with attendance projections or expansion maps, but with the people who might otherwise be priced out.

He and his wife have three children. Even at $75 or $100 per ticket—a routine price for national touring shows—a family night can quickly become a $500 decision.

“That’s half a mortgage payment sometimes,” he said. “Families, they can’t do that too many times throughout the year. Some can’t do it at all.”

My wife and I have four children. We know the arithmetic. Free admission determines whether a family can attend together, whether parents must choose which child gets to go and whether a teenager who needs a particular song can be standing near the stage when it arrives.

Brewer cannot predict which performance will become somebody else’s Switchfoot in 2015. He cannot know which kid will carry a chorus through a lonely move, a damaged home or the long months when life refuses to explain itself.

He can keep the gate open.

For LifeLight, the invitation remains the one promise its changing stages have not altered: all may come, and all may freely hear.

Please consider Donating to Sponsor an article even $1 helps!

A new cultural experience

August 29th brought the fourth annual Mitakuye Owas’in Festival to The Levitt, turning the venue into a full day celebration of Native American culture, art, fashion, music, and community.

The festival’s name, Mitakuye Owas’in, means “All My Relatives,” and that idea of connection seemed to weave its way through nearly every part of the day. From traditional drumming and dancing to contemporary hip hop and R&B, from fashion shows to conversations about education and representation, the festival offered far more than I initially expected.

I’ll be the first to admit that I walked into the festival with very little personal understanding of what I was about to experience. I have no association with Native American culture, and I didn’t want to pretend otherwise. Instead, I looked at the opportunity for what it was: a chance to listen, learn, and experience another culture through the people who live it.

What followed was one of the most unique festival experiences I’ve had the opportunity to photograph.

One drum and a powerful beginning

The first act to grace the stage was Wakiyan Sapa, a group made up primarily of high school students from our local Roosevelt High School, along with one of their teachers.

There’s something incredibly fitting about having the festival begin with the next generation.

One drum. Ten men. And yet, the sound carried across The Levitt and immediately commanded attention. It was a reminder that cultural traditions don’t survive simply because they’re remembered. They survive because they’re taught, practiced, and passed from one generation to the next.

The performance concluded with a prayer in their native language, something that would become a recurring thread throughout the day.

There’s something uniquely powerful about hearing another language, particularly one so deeply connected to the place where you’re standing. Even without understanding every word, there’s still something to appreciate in hearing a language spoken with such familiarity, reverence, and meaning.

Please consider Donating to Sponsor an article even $1 helps!

Jackie Bird brings music and laughter

After Wakiyan Sapa, the legendary Jackie Bird took the stage.

With decades of experience blending music, Native American dance, and family friendly entertainment, Jackie’s built a career around bringing people together. Her resume even includes participation in the opening ceremony of the 1988 Winter Olympics, making her appearance at The Levitt an opportunity to see a true veteran of entertainment.

And she was an absolute blast.

Jackie was joined by two of her sons, and the family connection was immediately obvious. Their musical talent was evident not only through their instrumental performances but also through their voices.

But the performance wasn’t just about music.

There was plenty of laughter along the way, including when Jackie announced that she was going to bring her grandparents onto the stage. After creating some anticipation, she opened a suitcase and pulled out two puppets.

The crowd erupted.

It was silly, unexpected, and completely charming.

To close the performance, Jackie performed her traditional hoop dance, using the hoops to tell a story involving the elements and ultimately bringing everything together in a representation of the world coming together.

Even after her performance ended, Jackie wasn’t finished giving back. She remained near the festival grounds, handing out coloring books to children.

It was a fitting extension of what her performance had already demonstrated. Culture doesn’t have to be presented as something distant or inaccessible. It can be educational, entertaining, joyful, and something children can participate in.

Connecting education and community

After the first performances, there was a brief intermission as Barry Dunn, president of South Dakota State University, took the stage to speak about the university’s partnership with the community, specifically highlighting the Wokini Initiative.

For someone familiar with the area, it was another reminder of how much is happening within our own backyard.

South Dakota State University is about 45 minutes north on the interstate, yet its relationship with the Native American community represents something much larger than geographical proximity. Partnerships like this demonstrate how education can become another avenue for connection, opportunity, and cultural understanding.

It was a brief portion of the day’s festivities, but an important one.

Three generations and a circle of community

Following the speech, Toka Nuwan took the stage.

Like Wakiyan Sapa, Toka Nuwan brought a drum core to the festival, but this time the performance expanded into something even more visual. Fully dressed dancers joined the musicians, transforming the songs into something that felt much larger than a musical performance.

These weren’t simply songs being performed for an audience.

They carried history.

They carried stories.

They carried meaning.

Each song had a reason for being there, and watching the dancers move alongside the drummers provided another layer of understanding that simply listening to the music could not provide.

Perhaps one of the most striking aspects was the range of ages represented on stage. A 12-year-old dancer stood alongside older generations, including an elderly grandmother. Three generations were represented together, participating in something that connected them to one another and to the people who came before them.

The performance eventually moved beyond the stage.

The dancers came out onto the lawn and began a dance of community, inviting those watching to join the growing circle.

That moment perfectly captured the meaning behind the festival’s name. The audience wasn’t simply being asked to watch. They were being invited into the experience.

A sobering reminder

Then came something I wasn’t expecting.

Thirteen year old Amiyah Weston took the stage for an interpretive dance.

The accompanying piece wasn’t really a conventional song. Instead, spoken word played over instrumental music, addressing the devastating reality of Indigenous women going missing at disproportionately high rates.

It was a stark tonal shift.

Up until that point, the festival had been filled with celebration, laughter, music, dancing, and colorful clothing. Suddenly, the atmosphere became much heavier.

And perhaps that was the point.

Celebrating a culture doesn’t mean ignoring the pain that exists within its communities. There are still atrocities and injustices that deserve attention, and the festival provided space to acknowledge those realities rather than pretending the celebration existed in a vacuum.

The performance was difficult to watch, but it was also important.

Fashion takes the stage

Music wasn’t the only form of artistic expression getting its moment at The Levitt.

Throughout the day, two fashion shows brought crowds toward the stage as attendees gathered to see the various designs walk the makeshift catwalk.

I’ll be honest: these were the first fashion shows I’d ever attended in person.

Seeing the different styles was genuinely fascinating. Each outfit incorporated different elements and details, demonstrating how clothing can become another avenue for cultural expression.

It was also a welcome change of pace from the music and dancing. The festival wasn’t presenting Native American culture through just one artistic medium. Fashion provided another opportunity to showcase creativity, individuality, history, and identity.

The designers represented included S’aic’iya Design, Jackie Bird, JS Wear, Shinin’ Star Style, Inspired By LCR, and Breezy Designs.

Kobe Jordan changes the musical direction

Once the clothing left the stage, the music returned with Kobe Jordan.

Jordan’s no stranger to The Levitt, having been invited to perform on the stage in some capacity for six consecutive years.

His performance marked an obvious shift in the musical direction of the day.

Where the morning had focused heavily on traditional sounds, Jordan moved toward something much more familiar to a mainstream music audience. His fast paced wordplay over pop inspired instrumentals immediately gave me Jason Mraz vibes.

It was an effective transition into the more contemporary sounds that would close out the festival.

The highlight of his set was undoubtedly his mashup of Post Malone and Fleetwood Mac, appropriately titled “Dreams of Circles.”

It was the kind of performance that demonstrated how traditional culture and modern musical influences could coexist within the same festival without either one feeling out of place.

A break before the main event

After another fashion show, the festival took a much needed break before the final two performances of the night.

The Levitt needed some time to reset, and frankly, after spending much of the day on my feet, so did I.

The festival itself didn’t completely stop, though.

Across the street, an art show was taking place, providing another opportunity to experience the artistic side of the culture being celebrated.

Unfortunately, I had to prioritize some food and a chance to rest my legs, so I didn’t make it over to the art show myself. From everything I heard afterward, however, the artwork was beautiful.

Before the evening’s main performances began, another surprise arrived.

Representatives from the Smithsonian came all the way from Washington, D.C., to speak about the Festival of Festivals and the organization’s sponsorship of the Mitakuye Owas’in Festival.

Yes, that Smithsonian.

Seeing an organization with that level of national recognition involved was another reminder that what was happening at The Levitt wasn’t simply a small local gathering.

This festival had reached far beyond Sioux Falls.

Stella Standingbear Steps Up

You wouldn’t have known it from the crowd reaction, but Stella Standingbear was actually a last minute addition to the festival lineup after Tia Wood was unable to appear as previously announced.

Stella came out swinging.

Her R&B and hip hop blend immediately connected with the crowd, and she proved to be a natural performer. She spent much of the set interacting with the audience, at one point climbing onto a speaker to get closer to the crowd.

She also took fans’ phones and used them to give people an onstage perspective of the performance.

One particularly thoughtful moment came when she recorded a video for Tia acknowledging her absence.

Stella understood how to work a crowd, and the audience clearly responded.

My one critique, and judging by the reaction of everyone around me, I was clearly in the minority, was that the performance leaned a little too heavily on backing tracks and autotune. Personally, I would have liked to hear more of Stella’s natural vocals.

But that didn’t seem to matter much to the crowd.

When the performance ended, people immediately lined up for the impromptu meet and greet. The line remained active well into the headliner’s set.

Considering Stella wasn’t even originally scheduled to perform, the response was honestly impressive. Sometimes the unexpected additions end up being exactly what a festival needs.

Mato Wayuhi closes the festival

And then there was one more act.

South Dakota native Mato Wayuhi, now an accomplished film and television composer, brought the festival home with a high energy combination of hip hop and alternative pop.

This was exactly the kind of performance I was hoping for.

The songs flowed naturally into one another, creating a set that rarely lost momentum. Even when a microphone died in the middle of a song, the energy never disappeared.

From a photography standpoint, Wayuhi was also a dream subject.

I absolutely love photographing artists who put some thought into their visual presentation and don’t simply stand in one spot for an entire performance. Mato checked both boxes.

His outfit immediately caught my attention, especially the flashy hat that popped under the stage lights. More importantly, he was constantly moving.

That combination of visual style and physical energy makes for an incredibly engaging live performance, both for the audience and for someone standing in a photo pit trying to capture the moment.

It was an ideal way to close out the day.

Afterglow

When I arrived at The Levitt that morning, I knew very little about what I was about to experience.

By the time I left, I had spent an entire day watching generations of performers share their culture through music, dance, fashion, art, storytelling, and community.

And that’s ultimately what made the Mitakuye Owas’in Festival stand out.

It wasn’t simply a collection of musical performances.

It was a celebration of culture.

It was an opportunity for education.

It was a place for difficult conversations.

It was a showcase of artistic expression.

And perhaps most importantly, it was an invitation for people who may not share the same cultural background to come together and experience something they might otherwise never encounter.

I’m honored that The Levitt trusted me to cover this event, especially given how unfamiliar I was with the culture going into it.

Sometimes the best experiences are the ones where you show up knowing very little and leave having learned something.

I’m already looking forward to seeing what the fifth annual Mitakuye Owas’in Festival brings to Sioux Falls in 2027.

Please consider Donating to Sponsor an article even $1 helps!

On a Tuesday?

Wanna guess where I was?

On the afternoon Dolly Parton died at 80, I found myself back at arguably the best and most famous beach dive in the country: the Flora-Bama.

The Main Room, in my opinion, is the heart of the Bama. It is nostalgic without being precious about it, intimate without ever feeling delicate. The stage sits close enough that the performers can see who is listening, who is talking and whether a joke has landed or fallen straight through the floorboards. With only two or three feet separating musicians from the audience, there is nowhere to retreat. You stay on top of your game, keep the crowd entertained and hope the people in front of you come along.

They came along.

It was 3:30 on a Tuesday afternoon, but the Main Room had the pulse of a Friday night. Bartenders slung drinks across the bar. Strangers mingled with regulars as if they had arrived together. Conversations bumped against the music, laughter broke loose between songs and the sound of the South kept pouring from the stage. Flora-Bama runs live music every day across five stages, but the Main Room still makes a set feel less like another name on a schedule and more like something that happened specifically to the people crowded around it.

Brian “Biggin” Noble, T-Bone Montgomery and Mac Walter were already making quite a bit happen.

Mac. That is all.

Ooooooeeeee! Lemme tell ya.

There is nothing better than walking in and hearing guitar virtuoso Mac Walter at work. His tone was warm and vocal, less concerned with showing how many notes he could fit into a measure than with making the right one hang in the air. When he reached for the slide, the pitch did not simply rise. It bent, tightened and cried.

Walter could push the sound outward with a few sustained notes, then pull it back into a stillness that felt almost private. One passage carried the openness of country music; another settled into the worn grain of old Delta blues. Then he would soften his touch and suddenly it was Sunday morning porch music—unhurried, human and close enough to hear the fingers behind the sound. Those changes did not arrive with announcements. He handled them through pressure, space and the length of a note.

It was such a vibe that I had to remind myself I was there to take pictures.

RATS! There these musicians go again, making me forget I have to hit the shutter button.

The lapse says more about Walter’s playing than another paragraph of praise could. A photographer watches for hands, expressions and the fraction of a second when a musician’s body tells the truth about the sound. Walter kept redirecting that attention toward the sound itself. The camera stayed ready. My finger did not always cooperate.

Please consider Donating to Sponsor an article even $1 helps!

“Sassafrass Angel”

T-Bone Montgomery brought his beachgrass, outlaw-country and honky-tonk instincts to the front of the trio. The music had grit, but Montgomery did not treat grit as an excuse to become humorless. He worked the space between songs with the same ease he brought to the material, tossing out jokes and waiting just long enough for the Main Room to answer. They were landing.

His wife, JoJo, was in the audience. At the Flora-Bama, that is less a fixed fact than the beginning of a possibility. You never know who is sitting a few feet from the stage or who might be singing before the next round of drinks reaches the bar.

JoJo stepped up to join the fellers for “Sassafrass Angel,” an original the couple wrote together about their own love story. No manufactured duet chemistry was needed. T-Bone was singing with the woman who helped write the song, about the life they had built together, while she stood beside him and sang it back. Faces around the stage softened before anyone had time to decide whether the song belonged to their preferred genre.

That is what a well-written love song can do. It removes the argument. The details belong to two people, but the feeling does not stay theirs for long. “Sassafrass Angel” carried enough tenderness to make a listener grin and enough lived history to put a little water in the eyes. On an afternoon shadowed by the loss of one of country music’s finest songwriters, the moment also felt like a small demonstration of what Dolly Parton understood so well: specificity does not limit a song’s reach. It gives people something real enough to recognize.

Biggin’

Brian “Biggin” Noble does not need much space to seem larger than the stage beneath him. A 2017 inductee into the Southeastern Indiana Music Association Hall of Fame and the longtime frontman of The Renegades, he commanded the Main Room without sanding down the warmth that makes people lean toward him. Music, witty quips and no-holds-barred storytelling all came from the same place. Nothing felt separated into the formal categories of song, joke and speech. He talked to the crowd until talking became singing, then pulled them back out with another line.

His version of Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” showed how well he understands a familiar song. He did not handle it like a museum piece, and he did not strain to reinvent something that already works. He found the physical details inside it. This was the second time our publication has heard that song in a short period of time thanks to Red Clay Strays

“Y’all ready for the horn?” Biggin’ asked.

Then he made the sound himself—a low, breathy train whistle that rolled out of his mouth and sent the song’s lonesome machinery through the bar. The bit was funny, but it was not only a bit. That whistle opened the door for the performance that followed: Southern twang in the vowels, grit in the low end of his voice and enough rock ’n’ roll force to keep Cash’s rhythm from becoming an impression of the past. The audience knew the song. Biggin’ gave them a reason to listen again.

He also gave his originals the same confidence, including “Pop’s Flag” and his latest release, “Missin’ You.” Those songs changed the temperature. The jokes stopped. The mains were still booming and glasses were still being moved somewhere behind us, but the crowd quieted until every small sound seemed to have edges.

What we carry

“Pop’s Flag” is dedicated to Biggin’s late father, a veteran who died from cancer. Noble did not perform it as a vague patriotic gesture. He tied it to the values his father lived by—honor, respect and the proper treatment of the American flag—then widened the dedication to those who have served and those still serving.

His delivery was unapologetically American. Biggin’ acknowledged that some people tell artists to keep politics off the stage, especially when an audience may not like what they have to say. He rejected the premise. To him, this was not about party politics. It was about respect for the flag and the country it represents. Whether every listener would have phrased it exactly as he did seemed beside the point. Nobody had to wonder whether he meant it.

That conviction carried the song, but grief sat underneath it. “Pop’s Flag” was not merely about how a piece of fabric should be handled. It was about how a son continues to handle what his father handed down after his father is gone. Biggin’s voice did not ask the audience to observe that loss from a safe distance. He brought his father into the Main Room through the values, memories and symbols that remained.

Then came “Missin’ You.”

“Got the news today that you were gone.”

The opening lyric lands without decoration because bad news rarely arrives with any. Biggin’ said the song took him five years to finish, and for much of that time he was not sure it would ever come fully to life. It began amid the deaths of people close to him, then accumulated more meaning as the losses continued. The musicians he knew down South mattered to its completion. Seeing that they were carrying versions of the same hurt helped him recognize that the song was not his alone.

You can hear that realization in its movement from loss toward hope. “Missin’ You” does not hurry grief, fix it or pretend reassurance cancels the empty chair. The song lets absence remain an absence. Its comfort comes later, in the belief that the people we love are not lost forever and that separation is not the final word.

Biggin’ built the performance around that idea and did not let go. The response was not loud in the way a bar crowd usually proves it is engaged. People listened. The quiet mattered. Nearly everyone has a name they could place inside that song, and on August 25 the country had just been given another one.

Afterglow

At a place where the party does not end and the stage never sleeps, the afternoon felt right precisely because it allowed more than a party. Biggin’ left us wanting more, but he also turned the set into a heartfelt tribute to country music’s brightest light, Dolly Parton. Her death had made the day heavier. The songs did not remove that weight. They gave us somewhere to put it.

Sometimes, for some of us, the music is all we have.

Mac Walter bent a guitar note until it sounded closer to a voice than a piece of metal against strings. T-Bone and JoJo stood together and sang their love story. Biggin’ kept his father present through “Pop’s Flag,” stood up for the country he loves and used “Missin’ You” to tell the crowd that grief is not the end of the story. One set held desire, memory, conviction, sorrow and hope without requiring everyone in the Main Room to agree on anything before feeling it.

That is the universal language—not the claim that music makes us identical, but the proof that it lets us recognize one another anyway.

For a while, the usual divisions and judgments lost their grip. A guitar could say what a person could not. A couple’s private history could make strangers smile. A son’s remembrance of his father could quiet a booming bar. A new song could return us to the people we miss, hurt all over again and still leave us with hope.

We live through the artists who keep playing these songs after their original creators are gone. That may be why we reach for our phones so quickly and hit record. We know the moment is leaving even while it happens. We want some piece of the voice, the laugh, the whistle or the note that bent just right. We want proof that, for three minutes, the person who wrote the song was right there with us.

To Dolly, and to all the remarkable musical beings who keep giving us language when our own words fail: thank you for the music, the connection, the love and the memories.

We will always love you.

Please consider Donating to Sponsor an article even $1 helps!

At 3 p.m., downtown Sioux Falls had not yet caught up with the schedule. Saturday’s doors opened three hours earlier than Friday’s, and the first pockets of people inside the Four Winds Music & Art Festival grounds looked less like a festival crowd than advance scouts. A few committed to a stage. Others studied the set times, calculating how quickly they could move among five venues without missing the artist everyone might be talking about later.

Four Winds seemed a little dead at first. There is no prettier way to put it. It was also early, and the same thing had happened Friday before the crowd thickened and the festival got properly rowdy within the first couple of hours. Saturday simply had a longer runway. The day began while some people were still deciding what to do with it.

Playing first is the ugly little bargain of an all-day festival. The grounds are quiet, the audience is thin and there are hours of music ahead, but the opening act still has to walk onto the stage and perform as if the room is already full. Saturday made the assignment even stranger by scattering radically different sounds across downtown. Friday had leaned heavily into metalcore and rock. This second day placed instrumental surf rock, indie pop, folk, hip-hop, metal, reggae and EDM within a few blocks of each other. The crowd had not arrived yet. The festival’s range had.

The Times’ Four finds the secret-agent frequency

Outside Vishnu Bunny, The Times’ Four played without a singer because they did not need one. Bass, guitar, saxophone and drums gave the Sioux Falls quartet every necessary piece. The sax occupied the space where a vocal melody usually sits, stepping forward to state a phrase before dropping back into the arrangement. Guitar and bass kept the songs clipped and mobile. The result landed somewhere among instrumental jazz rock, vintage surf music and psychedelic pop—the kind of combination capable of taking you on a trip, if you know what I mean.

Formerly known as Habeas Porpoise, the band has described 1960s surf rock and vintage film and television scores as part of its foundation. You could hear both without reading the biography. The rhythms carried that old beach-party snap, but the sax added a slyer mood, less bonfire and more suspicious character entering a hotel lobby.

Closing with the James Bond theme made the connection explicit. Of course this band would end there. The famous guitar line, the brass-shaped melody and the built-in sense of danger fit their entire set so naturally that it felt less like a cover than a reveal.

Visually, the guitarist’s long, scraggly gray hair may have stolen the set. It appeared to move even when there was no wind. Maybe Vishnu Bunny had a fan hidden somewhere. Maybe the band had invested in an extremely specific stage effect. Maybe I was still tired from Friday. At that hour, all three explanations felt reasonable.

Please consider Donating to Sponsor an article even $1 helps!

Sad Planet makes one person sound like a band

Outside at ICON, Sad Planet faced the hardest assignment of the day: opening the outdoor stage while the festival was still filling in around him. Performing largely as a one-man band, he moved between keys and guitar while a backing track supplied the instrumentation he could not physically play at the same time. That setup can expose a solo performer. There is no bandmate to redirect the eye, no drummer to manufacture motion and nowhere to hide when a transition loses its footing.

Sad Planet used the limitations instead of apologizing for them. The set moved from melodic passages into rap and then straight spoken word, keeping the vocal approach in motion while the stage picture stayed spare. The switches did not feel like a performer rifling through genres to show range. They kept the material from settling into one predictable cadence. When he sang, the melodies softened the backing track. When he rapped, the percussion came forward. Spoken passages reduced the distance between the stage and the small group listening.

Near the end, a friend joined him on trombone. One additional person changed the scale of the entire arrangement. The horn was brassy, physical and a little unruly, a live breath moving against the clean edges of the track. What had sounded carefully constructed suddenly had friction. It capped a performance that felt larger than the number of people onstage suggested it should.

Sad Planet never treated the opening slot like a rehearsal for a better crowd later. He played for the people who were actually standing there. The grounds were still waking up, but he had already set a standard for how seriously the day should be taken.

TJ FIGH pushes against an empty room

I decided to stay at Club David for two early rap sets, beginning with TJ FIGH. The festival flier and setlist had his name spelled incorrectly as, “TJ FIGHT”. A friend of his was able to clear that up for us. The Sioux City rapper walked into the same problem every early performer had faced: not enough people and too much visible floor. At one point he asked the small crowd to say “fuck the police,” explaining that the police make him hide his weed. Those present gave the words back to him, but a response from a few people cannot hit with the physical force of a packed room shouting the same thing.

In a larger setting, I could see TJ FIGH doing quite well. His directness would have more bodies to bounce against, and the audience-participation moments would create their own momentum. Saturday demanded that he generate more of that pressure by himself. Regardless of crowd size, rap needs projection, movement and a sense that the performer is pushing through the front edge of the stage. His performance remained slightly too settled for the amount of empty space in the room. The songs hinted at a show with more force than this particular set delivered.

None of this criticism erases the person standing behind it. TJ FIGH’s mother told me he became mostly blind shortly after his 18th birthday following surgery for scoliosis. “The doctors really screwed up,” she said. She described his remaining vision as being able to make out shadows. A public artist biography also places the loss of his sight at 18 and explains that he returned his focus to a childhood love of rap afterward. Before that, he had played piano and saxophone, experience that later helped him build instrumentals of his own.

His first project, “The Balance”, arrived in 2017 with songs centered on self-examination, fear, addiction and the pull between better and worse instincts. Knowing that history sharpened what I wanted from the live set.

TJ FIGH has already pushed through circumstances far more difficult than a sparse afternoon crowd. The next step is bringing that same refusal to retreat into every physical part of the performance, even when Club David has not filled yet.

4Worn N4tion loosens up Club David

4Worn N4tion followed and brought Angel BP onstage for the first song. The difference between a solo figure and a functioning duo registered immediately. They had a natural rapport, trading attention without crowding each other and giving the audience two points of movement. Their engagement felt conversational rather than rehearsed—one voice opening space, the other stepping into it.

For his second song, 4Worn N4tion performed “Gold Chains,” which he said is available across streaming platforms. He also joked that he needed to get back into the gym, a small bit of self-deprecation that helped relax the room. Humor matters when attendance is light. It tells the people who did show up that the artist sees the situation and intends to have fun with them anyway.

Vocally, 4Worn N4tion carried a familiar grain. His tone was relaxed, slightly weathered and conversational, with phrases leaning behind the beat in a way that recalled Mac Miller. If I had to guess, Miller is a major influence. I would still want to ask before printing that as fact. What I heard Saturday was not a copy of Miller’s delivery, but a similar instinct: making a rap verse sound like a private thought that happened to find a microphone.

Between TJ FIGH’s directness and 4Worn N4tion’s looser partnership with Angel BP, the early Club David sets showed two different ways of working against the same room. Neither had the crowd later performers would inherit. Both had to make something out of whoever was already present.

Kevin McClure makes presence the point

At Full Circle Book Co-op, Omaha’s Kevin McClure offered the most complete surprise of my Saturday. McClure said the project began in fall 2022, and this was the first time the full band had performed live in Sioux Falls. The songs leaned toward rock without surrendering their indie-pop shape. Folk phrasing, pop hooks and a heavier guitar attack could surface within the same set, which made the band a particularly good fit for a festival otherwise comfortable changing genres every time you changed buildings.

McClure’s debut full-length album, “Flawlessly Flawed”, also comes with an idea about listening that runs against current industry habits. Part of the album is streamable. The complete collection is available through a physical purchase on vinyl or CD, along with a digital download sold through his site. Rather than feeding an entire record into the same platforms where listeners may abandon it after one single, he reserved part of the work for people willing to choose the album.

Going physical contradicts the standard release manual. Singles generate most of the attention now. Full albums struggle to compete even when every track is one tap away. McClure’s perspective is that his audience is not made up entirely of passive listeners. If someone wants the whole first album, that person has to seek it out and own it in some form.

There is a risk in that decision. Inconvenience can become invisibility, especially for an independent artist trying to reach people who have never heard the name. Inside Full Circle, the choice made more sense. The band played one of the songs unavailable on the major streaming platforms, creating a small pocket of access for the people in the room. You could not necessarily recreate that experience by opening Spotify on the drive home. Either buy the full record or remember how it sounded live.

Faces gave the songs another dimension—several of them, actually. During choruses and breakdowns, the musicians smiled or tightened into those involuntary expressions players make when a passage hits exactly the way they hoped it would. Their features contorted with the changes. They looked at one another. Nobody seemed to be merely completing an arrangement. The visible pleasure in playing together became part of why the set worked.

Then McClure broke a guitar string during the second song.

He had another guitar ready, which prevented the break from turning into a full stop, but the smoothest part was how he handled the seconds between instruments. McClure pulled the crowd into singing “so far gone,” keeping their attention on the lyric while he reached for the backup guitar and completed the swap. The room stayed inside the song. Equipment failed; the performance did not.

Following that recovery, the band played Britney Spears’ “…Baby One More Time”. It was fun, full stop. A bookstore festival set had just moved from earnest rock into a broken-string singalong and then one of the most recognizable pop songs of the late 1990s. The cover did not feel like a desperate bid for familiarity. It exposed how easily this group could change the temperature of a room without losing its own sound.

McClure said they had chosen a slightly harder set for Four Winds, and the selection showed how much flexibility sits inside these songs. The heavier passages had weight, but they did not flatten the hooks. The indie-pop side kept the music open while the guitar tone pushed harder than the softer singer-songwriter label might imply.

Because the set was running well on time, McClure offered a bonus song. He pulled out a harmonica for “Cheating Death”, a moody rock track that gave the closing stretch another texture. The harmonica did not arrive as a roots-music costume. Its thin, cutting tone sat above the darker arrangement and made the song feel more unsettled.

This was a full band playing Sioux Falls for the first time, dealing with a broken string in the second song, folding Britney Spears into a harder festival set and introducing listeners to music they could not simply stream later. They looked thrilled to be doing it. Highly recommended is a phrase I try not to hand out casually. Kevin McClure earned it.

Following the festival, Lyrical Limelight was informed that when McClure jumped off the kick drum at the end of his set, as seen in the image above, he had herniated a disc in his spine, requiring him to undergo surgery just days later. Surgery went well, and he his home safely recovering.

H.E.A.T. under the high sun

Around the same stretch of afternoon, H.E.A.T. took the outdoor stage looking like something straight out of Halloween Express. The visual presentation grabbed me before a note did, but the sound quickly justified the costumes. These guys were a trip: fast, aggressive “scream-talk” that brought Rage Against the Machine to mind, only with less melodic release and even more raw abrasion.

There was little room to catch a breath. Phrases came out as rhythmic commands, and the band pressed forward without giving the crowd much time to reset. The approach could become monotonous in weaker hands, but H.E.A.T. used repetition as pressure. Every new passage felt designed to keep the body braced.

H.E.A.T.’s timing could not have been more literal. With the sun sitting high above the outdoor stage and the afternoon turning sweltering, the band brought the heat while performing in the heat. Yes, the joke is sitting right there. No, I am not going to pretend I am above using it. Rather than allowing the conditions to slow them down, they seemed to lean into the discomfort, matching the weather with a set that refused to relax.

People went with them. Bodies moved closer, reactions came faster and the strange visual presentation stopped being the main story. H.E.A.T. was loud, unconventional and impossible to leave in the background. For a midday slot, they knew how to wake up a festival that had started three hours earlier than most of its audience.

Rival Within arrives later—and louder

According to the original festival poster, Rival Within was supposed to play at 2:30 p.m. and kick off the indoor ICON schedule. Somewhere along the way, the lineup shifted and the band appeared later in the afternoon, apparently filling a vacancy around the 5:30 slot. It looked as if another act had canceled, though the exact cause still needs confirmation. Whatever moved them, the later time worked. More people had arrived, and Rival Within had an audience large enough to appreciate just how committed the band was to its presentation.

Visually, the group carried an ’80s hair-metal aesthetic that immediately brought Mark Wahlberg’s 2001 film “Rock Star” to mind. Big hair, broad gestures and a larger-than-life attitude recalled a period when a rock band was expected to look as loud as it sounded. Nothing about Rival Within suggested embarrassment over that lineage. Flash was part of the job.

Most striking was the contrast between two members. The singer worked the stage with neon lights flashing from his shoes. A few feet away, the guitarist performed barefoot. One appeared prepared to be visible from the other end of the block; the other had abandoned footwear entirely. Those choices gave the band personality before any biography could.

Their straight-ahead rock set landed as a needed pickup in a schedule full of stranger edges. Rival Within did not have to be the most experimental act of the day. The band needed to keep the festival moving, give the growing crowd something immediate and make classic rock-and-roll showmanship feel intentional rather than dated. The glowing soles, bare feet and refusal to stand still accomplished exactly that.

Shurr Jr. keeps it in the family

When Shurr Jr. took the outdoor stage, my first thought was that all three members looked remarkably similar. There was a reason. Nick Maxwell sings and plays guitar, Kelly Maxwell plays bass and Frankie Maxwell plays drums. They are siblings from Sioux Falls, and a large hometown following had arrived with them. Shurr Jr. shirts appeared throughout the crowd. Fans knew the songs, sang along and treated the set like a chance to claim one of their own in front of the wider festival.

Matching faces were only the beginning of the family connection. Their late father, Frank Maxwell, played in Omaha’s 1990s rock scene and passed his love of music to the siblings. He called Frankie “Jr.” and was known for saying “sure” when opportunity arrived, which helped supply the band name. “Red Shelter,” the title of Shurr Jr.’s 2025 debut EP, was also a name he had once saved for a future project. The record allowed his children to carry it forward through indie rock shaped by emo, punk, grunge and loss.

None of that history hung over Saturday’s set like assigned reading. You could see it in how the siblings watched one another and how naturally their bodies answered the same changes. Each member got fully into the instrument instead of settling onto an assigned patch of stage.

One of my biggest complaints with any band—whether it is playing for a few hundred people or several thousand—is when the musicians simply stand in one place for the entire set. Movement is not a substitute for musicianship, but a live performance has a visual dimension. If the players look unmoved by their own songs, the audience has to work harder to believe in them.

Shurr Jr. did not have that problem. They leaned into changes, turned toward each other and played with the loose physical confidence of people who were enjoying themselves. The crowd returned it. Their built-in fan base may have guaranteed attention, but it did not manufacture the interaction happening onstage. Watching three siblings visibly feel the same music made the set more enjoyable for everyone in front of them.

Reviver opens the floor

By the time Reviver took over inside ICON, the festival no longer had an attendance problem. You know a band is going to be heavy when you cannot read its name on the merchandise, and Reviver honored the stereotype. Their artwork offered the usual knot of hostile lettering. Their set translated it into sound.

Two lead vocalists traded brutal low screams and high squeals, immediately separating Reviver from everything else I had caught Saturday. The pairing invited a Whitechapel comparison, not simply because both acts are heavy, but because of the vocal layering—the way one register could make the next sound even more inhuman. One voice descended, the other cut across it and the room tightened around both.

Here, the scheduling revealed a bit of practical festival logic. The heavier rock and metal acts were largely playing inside while the “tamer” music went outdoors. In a downtown community setting, that appeared to be a smart way to keep the harshest frequencies from carrying into the surrounding neighborhood. Outside, there were limits. Inside, Reviver had none.

They used the freedom. Crabcore crouches snapped into headbanging, and the crowd’s movement expanded until the floor held what I believe was the largest pit I have ever seen in a venue like ICON. Fans threw themselves into the opening, releasing what looked like hours—possibly much longer—of pent-up aggression. The room stopped functioning like an event hall and became one rotating physical response to the band.

This was the heavy set I had been waiting for. Reviver did not flirt with aggression, polish it for broader appeal or interrupt it with an apology. The dual vocals, unreadable logo and widening pit all pointed in the same direction. I was vibing with it to the core.

The Fall of Troy finally makes it back

Then came the outdoor headliner, The Fall of Troy. People had been hyping this band to me throughout the entire day, and by the time the trio finally walked onstage, expectations had become almost unfair. Hype is a rotten opening act. It raises the ceiling, makes a few promises on somebody else’s behalf and disappears before the headliner has to fulfill them.

The Washington trio—Thomas Erak on guitar and vocals, Tim Ward on bass and Andrew Forsman on drums—has earned that devotion through progressive post-hardcore built from abrupt rhythmic turns, tapped guitar lines and melodies capable of breaking into abrasion without warning. Their music is right up my alley. The technical restlessness, the refusal to sit inside one tempo and the friction between hook and chaos all make sense to my ears.

I will be honest, though: the performance did not quite reach the lofty version that had been built in my head. That does not mean I had a bad time. I had an absolute blast. The band gave me plenty of the tightly controlled disorder I wanted, and live, the appeal became obvious in the way three musicians could make complicated passages feel like something a festival crowd could grab. My expectations had simply been inflated beyond what any real set was likely to satisfy.

Part of me wishes I had gone in without hearing the day-long sales pitch. Then the performance could have arrived on its own terms instead of competing with a show that had already happened in other people’s memories. By the end, I understood why The Fall of Troy receives that kind of love. I just did not experience the personal revelation I had been promised.

Between songs, the band shared some Sioux Falls history. It had been a long time since their last appearance in the area. They recalled another scheduled visit that never happened because a snowstorm left them stuck on the side of the road and unable to reach town. The story gave Saturday’s set the weight of a delayed return. Some fans had been waiting years for a performance that weather had once taken away.

From a photographer’s perspective, the return came with a problem: red light. The late-night outdoor set was bathed almost entirely in red with an occasional dash of yellow, a combination that can erase natural skin tone, swallow detail and make every frame look flatter than the music feels. It was rough. It was also part of the job. You adjust, search for whatever usable contrast the lighting gives you and keep shooting.

For all my resistance to the hype, The Fall of Troy earned the outdoor headlining position. The playing was busy without becoming careless, the history made the appearance matter and the crowd’s affection was easy to understand. My only real enemy was the impossible set I had been told to expect—and perhaps the lighting designer.

When Flagrant’s schedule stopped matching

We moved inside for what I thought would be the final act of the night. Instead, Flagrant and the sound crew became caught in the festival’s ugliest moment.

I do not enjoy writing a section like this. I typically try not to be overly negative in reviews, and even a poor performance usually contains something worth examining before the knives come out. What happened during Flagrant’s set was not a matter of taste. It was an issue of time, respect and how a disagreement was allowed to consume the stage.

According to the printed schedule, Flagrant had already exceeded its allotted slot. When the band was asked to wrap up, it remained onstage for more than 30 additional minutes, delaying Enlightened Ones from beginning the indoor headlining set. Security and the sound engineer eventually came onto the stage. An argument followed. After all of that, Flagrant was granted one final song.

We learned afterward that the printed schedule did not tell the entire story. Flagrant had reportedly been promised more performance time than the schedule showed, and the sound engineer had not been informed of that agreement. From the band’s perspective, they were being cut off before the time they had been given. From the sound engineer’s perspective, a set had run long and the final act was being delayed. Both sides entered the confrontation believing the other was refusing to follow the plan.

That missing context makes the disagreement understandable. It does not make the way it unfolded acceptable.

Flagrant should not have responded by refusing to clear the stage, carrying the argument in front of the audience and turning the final song into an opportunity to criticize Four Winds as “unorganized.” The sound engineer should not have handled the confrontation the way he did, either. Once it became clear that the band believed it had been promised additional time, the dispute needed to move off-mic and away from the crowd. Neither side de-escalated. The audience and Enlightened Ones paid for that failure.

Having attended the event across the day, I still cannot accept “unorganized” as a fair description of the festival as a whole. This was one of the most well-oiled independent festivals I have attended. Dozens of artists moved through multiple venues. Stages changed over, crowds shifted among buildings and most of the schedule held together despite the sheer number of opportunities for something to go wrong.

This particular incident, however, was a real organizational failure. Someone apparently promised the band more time without making sure the sound engineer received the same information. One schedule existed on paper and another existed in the band’s understanding. That communication gap lit the fuse. The people onstage and at the soundboard still chose how to respond once it was lit, and neither response helped.

Then the microphones hit the stage.

At the time, that was the final straw for me. I immediately deleted my photos of the group, something I had never done after covering a performance. Learning about the conflicting promises afterward changed my understanding of why the argument began. It did not change my opinion of the band throwing microphones or using the audience as part of the dispute. A legitimate grievance does not justify every reaction to it.

I left the set hoping I would never have to see Flagrant perform live again. With the fuller story, the blame no longer belongs entirely to them. The disappointment in how they acted remains.

Enlightened Ones takes the night back

Once the confrontation finally cleared the stage, it was time for the indoor headliner and final live act of the festival, Enlightened Ones. It had been a minute since I had seen the Sioux Falls group—2023, when they opened for King Iso—and the refinement was obvious as soon as they began.

Several rap artists throughout the day had relied heavily on vocal backing tracks, using recorded voices to fill the lines they could not complete when breath ran short. Enlightened Ones used backing tracks for the instrumentals. The rappers carried the vocals themselves.

Considering how ridiculously fast these guys can spit, you would assume they need the extra help. They do not. I am not talking about the ordinary live-show version of a “fast rapper,” where a few bursts of speed are surrounded by enough space to recover. Enlightened Ones sustained passages at a pace that became mesmerizing to watch. Consonants stayed intact. Entries landed together. Neither breath nor tempo forced them to hand the verse back to a prerecorded version of themselves.

Precision marked the difference between performing a song and mastering it. Speed alone can become a gimmick. Their control kept it musical. The words remained shaped, the delivery stayed synchronized with the instrumentals and the physical act of producing those verses became part of the show. There was no safety net pretending to be a second vocalist.

At one point, the group announced that a music video would be filmed during one of the songs. The crowd surged closer and got louder as people realized their faces, raised hands and reactions might become part of the finished video. After a day that had begun with performers trying to coax responses from thin rooms, the final audience did not need coaxing.

Because of that timing, Enlightened Ones became more than a strong closing act. After the frustration of Flagrant’s overrun, I needed a reminder of why I love live music in the first place: artists taking the opportunity seriously, doing something difficult without cheating it and giving the crowd a reason to stay engaged after midnight. Enlightened Ones provided it.

I cannot thank them enough for helping wash away the rage that was still running through my veins. They inherited a delayed stage and a room with every reason to be irritated, then replaced the sourness with speed, precision and a crowd suddenly thrilled to be on camera. They did not ask anyone to forget what had just happened. They gave us something better to remember.

Afterglow

At 3 p.m., Four Winds had scattered musicians across rooms still waiting for people. The first performers had to act on faith: play the full set, make the joke, take the solo, ask for the response and trust that the day would eventually meet them at their level. The Times’ Four ended with a spy theme for a half-awake afternoon. Sad Planet expanded a one-man arrangement with one trombone. TJ FIGH and 4Worn N4tion worked against visible floor space. Kevin McClure made a broken string part of the show.

By the final indoor set, empty space was no longer the problem. Reviver had already opened the largest pit I could remember seeing in ICON. The Fall of Troy had finally made it through the weather and back to Sioux Falls. A schedule conflict had spilled into public view because neither the band nor the sound engineer de-escalated it. Then Enlightened Ones took the last available minutes and treated them like they mattered.

Not every set deserved equal praise, and one confrontation deserved criticism on both sides. The performers who defined Saturday understood the same basic responsibility, whether the room held 20 people or a heaving pit: respect whoever showed up and give them something that could only happen there.

Enlightened Ones did exactly that. After a long day—and an even longer 30 minutes—they closed Four Winds with the crowd pressed forward, every word performed live and a camera rolling.

Please consider Donating to Sponsor an article even $1 helps!

At 5:45 Friday afternoon, Four Winds had technically started. Sioux Falls had not completely caught up yet.

Inside ICON/DADA, CH6R6Z6RD was working through the festival’s opening set in front of the kind of early crowd that still leaves plenty of visible floor between bodies. The important part was what those people were doing. They were watching. No restless milling around waiting for the “real” bands to begin, no room full of people treating the opener as soundtrack. Whoever had arrived early enough to catch CH6R6Z6RD was catching CH6R6Z6RD.

That distinction matters at Four Winds Music & Art Festival, where Friday’s schedule spread 31 sets across Full Circle Book Co-op, Vishnu Bunny, Club David, ICON indoors and the outdoor ICON stage. It is physically impossible to see everything. The festival makes you choose, then punishes the choice by putting something interesting somewhere else at the same time.

Four Winds Music and Art Festival was made possible with support from Common Sense, Herb and Legend, Sunny Radio 93.3 and . Their sponsorship helped bring the sprawling two-day celebration to downtown Sioux Falls, filling multiple venues with live music while supporting the local artists, vendors, venues and organizers who keep the city’s creative community moving.

CH6R6Z6RD was a good example of why wandering into the first room can pay off.

The first rooms wake up

The CH6R6Z6RD catalog still sitting online points back toward a different version of the project. A collaborative album appeared in 2015, followed by singles and the T R V R EP in 2016, material streaming services have filed around electronic and alternative music. Friday’s incarnation was far more physical.

Three members of Long Rest and two from The Squirez made up much of the group onstage, turning the set into something close to a local-scene collision. Drums, bass and guitar were joined by two keyboards, giving the songs extra width without sanding off their rough edges. The vocals were grungy but not especially melodic, delivered closer to speaking or yelling than traditional singing, without crossing into full-on screaming.

For roughly 20 minutes they pushed forward hard and fast. Then the temperature dropped.

The slower material gave the band more room, and strangely enough, made the whole thing sound more refined. The early songs were about impact. Once CH6R6Z6RD backed off the throttle, the interplay between the instruments became easier to hear. It was the first small surprise of Four Winds: a band that initially seemed built to hit hard became more interesting when it stopped trying to hit quite so hard.

Outside, Useless Eyes had no interest in easing anyone into anything.

They came out with a scream.

Mike Iverson and company opened the outdoor ICON stage by immediately attacking it, anchored by relentless double-kick drums that made the transition from the comparatively spacious CH6R6Z6RD set feel almost violent. There is hardcore in the band’s recorded DNA, but Friday’s performance pushed its ugliest edges toward death metal. The drumming did much of the damage. Feet hammered underneath riffs that were already carrying plenty of weight.

That aggression makes more sense after spending time with Useless Eyes’ recorded material. The Sioux Falls band released the six-song Smothering Light EP in February, following 2025 singles including “Ego Mouth,” “Wormtongue” and “Arrogance in Ignorance.” The songs are short and confrontational. Friday, the group performed them with even less patience.

And the crowd followed.

The early emptiness inside ICON was already disappearing outside. Useless Eyes did not merely inaugurate the main stage. They gave people a reason to walk toward it.

Then Four Winds did what Four Winds does: another band was already starting somewhere else.

Fueled By Spite was tucked into the narrow Vishnu area near Sweet Grass Soapery, a location that could easily feel secondary compared with an outdoor stage. Instead, it became one of Friday’s most naturally fun sets.

The Rapid City band describes itself as Black Hills pop-punk, complete with the wonderfully unserious sales pitch that it makes the “okay-est Pop-Punk money can buy.” That self-awareness carries onto the stage. At one point the band encouraged everyone to boo guitarist Scotty to knock his ego down a little.

They did.

He survived.

The lime-green guitar helped make him difficult to miss afterward.

Musically, Fueled By Spite knows exactly where its center is. Blink-182 hangs over the band without becoming its entire personality, although the bassist wearing a Blink-182 shirt certainly removed any mystery about the influence. “Never Know Best” had the clean immediacy the genre needs, while “No Reason Why,” introduced as the group’s latest single, opened with a drum roll that snapped the room into attention before the guitars followed.

It is punk without pretending fun is beneath it.

The joke about Scotty was not a distraction from the set. It told you something about the band. Fueled By Spite understands that pop-punk works best when the people playing it seem like people you might actually want to spend an hour with.

Please consider Donating to Sponsor an article even $1 helps!

Dead men, breakup songs and crowded rooms

Club David changed the mood again.

Denver’s Graveyard Choir is technically an Americana band, which is true in roughly the same way that calling black coffee a beverage is true. It leaves out most of the interesting stuff.

Their own tags include gothic Americana, alternative rock, alt-folk and folk rock. Colorado music organization FoCoMA cuts closer with three words: “Americana - Mud - Rock.”

Mud is the useful word.

Graveyard Choir is a five-piece led by Colorado songwriter Nate Valdez, with Eric Riley on drums, Thom Whitney on bass, Nicholas Waters on guitar and Jen Riley contributing vocals. The group formed in 2024 and quickly found a subject matter few bands could counterfeit convincingly. Valdez previously worked in a mortuary. His songs grew out of what he encountered there.

So when death appears in Graveyard Choir songs, it does not feel decorative.

Slide guitar and electric guitar drag against a rhythm section that can move from solemn to muscular without much warning. Jen Riley’s voice adds another texture, particularly effective when the songs turn toward loss, religion, regret or redemption. Their second album, The Wake, arrived in November 2025 with titles including “Dirt Floor,” “Hard Rain,” “The Ballad of Marty Bergen” and “16oz Hammer.”

At Club David, that dirty-blues underside kept the set from becoming costume-shop Southern Gothic. This was not sepia-filter Americana. The band could push.

A few blocks and schedule decisions later, Leading Last offered a completely different version of South Dakota history.

This was their second consecutive Four Winds appearance after the band returned for a reunion set at the 2025 festival. Their roots run considerably deeper. Leading Last’s early recordings identify the group as an experimental rock band that came out of northwestern Iowa before becoming connected closely with Sioux Falls, with Together & Apart originally dating to 2011. The record later resurfaced on streaming platforms, and the band released “Your Mirage, My Reverie” in 2025.

“Messy rock” was the phrase that came to mind watching them Friday, and it fits better than trying to wedge the band into a cleaner category. The guitars do not always behave politely around one another. The arrangements feel more interested in motion than symmetry.

The best introduction came at the end.

Leading Last closed with a breakup song. Before playing it, the singer explained that his wife hated the song because it was about somebody else.

There are several possible ways to introduce a breakup song.

That is certainly one of them.

It also punctured any temptation to treat the reunited veterans with too much reverence. Four Winds is good at those moments. A band can have history without turning its set into a museum exhibit.

Lilac Jam fills the room

By the time Lilac Jam started at Club David, the attendance story had reversed completely.

People showed up for Lilac Jam.

Not gradually. Not in the vague festival sense where a room looks slightly healthier than it did 40 minutes earlier. The room filled because people wanted to see this band.

That response has been earned over years rather than manufactured overnight. Lilac Jam began in Watertown in 2018 with members who openly admit they started the band partly to learn how to play music. Their early shows were graduation parties. Members moved. The band slowed down. Then drummer Sam Smith and vocalist/guitarist Tré Smith relocated to Sioux Falls and rebuilt the lineup with bassist Spencer Harris and guitarist Justin Meyer. Their stated influences include Title Fight, Basement, Alkaline Trio and Rise Against.

That history explains some of Friday’s reaction. Lilac Jam has grown up in public.

The band’s alternative rock and punk foundation is familiar enough to pull people in quickly, but the local attachment goes beyond genre. This is a group Sioux Falls audiences have watched keep returning, recording and improving. When a crowd materializes for a regional band at a festival with national acts running simultaneously, that says more than a streaming number ever could.

Temple of Soil brings the violence and melody of metalcore to ICON

Temple of Soil were the final band to play ICON’s outdoor stage on the first day of Four Winds before the evening’s headliner. There was plenty of hype surrounding the performance, and for the first half of the set, they did not disappoint.

Bathed in deep red and burning-orange light, the band tore into its early-2000s-inspired metalcore with ripping bass, hammering drums and heavy guitar riffs that seemed to grow teeth whenever a breakdown arrived. The low end rolled through the outdoor space with enough force to be felt in the chest, while the drums kept the entire thing charging forward. Screamed vocals added another layer of violence before cleaner melodies briefly opened the songs up and gave everyone room to breathe.

It was a high-energy set that kicked you in the kidney, punched you in the face and tackled you to the ground—only to pick you back up and do it all over again.

About halfway through the performance, however, the physical demands of the material began catching up with vocalist Jrail Schoeberl. His voice started struggling to keep pace, and the energy from the rest of the band dipped along with it. The difference between the two halves was noticeable, but it did not erase how badass the set was overall.

At their strongest—and especially throughout that bruising first half—Temple of Soil delivered the speed, groove, melody and blunt-force heaviness that had made their live debut one of the festival’s most anticipated performances.

The night gets stranger, then quieter

By 9:30, the schedule had become a game of impossible choices.

Spirits and Sirens had the indoor ICON slot while the outdoor stage kept moving toward its headliner. The band entered Four Winds during a particularly active recording year. The sprawling 12-song Resolutions arrived in April, followed weeks later by The Lost and Found EP. Songs such as “Sympathy,” “In Mourning,” “Broken City,” “Doves” and “Turner County Fair” give the catalog a much broader emotional and stylistic range than the band name alone might suggest.

And then, at 10 p.m., As Cities Burn walked onto the outdoor stage.

There were gaps in the crowd.

There is no reason to rewrite that into something prettier. By this point Four Winds had been running for hours across five rooms. Psychostick was still coming at Vishnu Bunny. Go For Gold was about to start at Club David. Freya Jane & The Nightshades were due at Full Circle. People had scattered.

As Cities Burn played anyway, and their set carried a peculiar significance that was easy to miss if you only looked at the amount of open ground.

The Louisiana-born band has spent more than two decades becoming one of post-hardcore’s least reliable dead bands. They released Son, I Loved You at Your Darkest in 2005, followed it with Come Now Sleep and Hell or High Water, broke up, reunited, disappeared again, returned again and released Scream Through the Walls in 2019. Their own version of the history is even less dignified. In July, the band published a chronology of its repeated breakups and reconciliations that reads less like a press release and more like somebody admitting they have absolutely no idea how they keep ending up in the same relationship.

Apparently they still cannot quit each other.

In May, As Cities Burn confirmed they were in Seattle recording their fifth LP with producer Aaron Sprinkle. By July, the finished record was being offered to paid subscribers through the band’s newsletter. Friday night in Sioux Falls, they said the next two songs were from that record.

Neither had ever been played live.

For a festival built partly around nostalgia, reunions and bands with deep regional histories, that was a quietly important moment. Sioux Falls did not just get the old songs from As Cities Burn. It got first contact with whatever the band is becoming next.

The performances themselves did not chase the brutality of Useless Eyes or the constant forward shove heard earlier on the outdoor stage. As Cities Burn finished the night with more space in their sound. After hours of double kick, screamed entrances, punk tempos and amplified abrasion, the comparative restraint felt almost strange.

It worked.

Six boxes of merchandise had apparently been shipped ahead while the band itself flew in. They had finished a new record. More touring is coming, including dates with Underoath later this year. Yet there they were in Sioux Falls, testing brand-new songs in a festival crowd with visible holes in it.

There is something refreshingly unceremonious about that.

No giant unveiling. No inflated speech about history being made. Two songs had never been played before.

Then they played them.

Afterglow

At 5:45, the floor inside ICON/DADA had looked sparse while CH6R6Z6RD played to the people who bothered to arrive early.

Hours later, there was open ground again in front of As Cities Burn.

Those two images could make Friday sound poorly attended if they were stripped away from everything between them. They would also be misleading.

Four Winds does not behave like a conventional festival because its audience rarely exists in one place. It spills into Club David for Lilac Jam, packs itself into a narrow room for Fueled By Spite, walks outside when Useless Eyes starts screaming, disappears toward another stage because Green Jellÿ or Psychostick is starting somewhere else. Empty space at one stage can mean a crowd formed three doors away.

Friday worked because the schedule kept forcing collisions.

A decade-old electronic project returned as a live alt-rock configuration stuffed with familiar local musicians. A Sioux Falls hardcore band opened the outdoor stage like it had something to prove. Rapid City pop-punk made its own guitarist the punchline. A Denver songwriter who once worked in a mortuary brought death songs into Club David. Leading Last turned another Four Winds appearance into something both historical and ridiculous. Lilac Jam proved people will still choose a local band when given 30 other options. Then As Cities Burn ended the outdoor stage by playing music nobody in the crowd had ever heard performed before.

The first night never settled into one identity long enough to become predictable.

By the time the last notes were fading, that seemed less like a flaw in Four Winds than the whole point.