It’s been a minute since I’ve written last, but for good reason! This past weekend my sister and I went to the inaugural Sonic Temple Art & Music Festival (FKA Rock on the Range) down in Columbus! It was a blast!
We started off the festivities on Friday, and the weather was perfect for this outdoor event. There were a ton of acts that festival goers had the opportunity to catch, but we managed to see SHVPES, Wage War, Badflower, Pussy Riot, Avatar, Parkway Drive, Halestorm, Ghost, and the most anticipated performer of the weekend, System of a Down. Standouts for me included Badflower (seriously, their lead vocalist is pure talent) and Avatar (they really stick to their theme!). I am not the world’s biggest SOAD fan, but I very much appreciated what they performed. You could tell the band was just as happy to be there as the crowd! Even when the sound system literally had to be brought down, that didn’t stop the band from killing it.
Saturday, the weather continued with its good fortune and even gave us sunshine! It was another packed day of music, so we managed to listen to While She Sleeps, Fever 333 (MVPs of live performance), Architects, Killswitch Engage, Gojira, In This Moment, and Papa Roach. Highlights from the day included Jason from Fever 333 having the longest microphone cord ever and narrowly avoiding cloth-lining hundreds of people, Gojira’s guitarist getting burnt by stage flames, and Papa Roach and Maria Brink from In This Moment collaborating on their song, “Gravity.” Killswitch Engage also got a huge kick out of all the randomly dressed crowd-surfers, specifically someone dressed as a squirrel, a lizard, and Jesus. I loved every second of this day!
Sunday was a bit of a bummer, as two stages had to get shut down due to high winds, and we also had to evacuate the venue for a little over an hour. This meant that a few bands had to get cut, and unfortunately those bands were Chevelle and Bring Me the Horizon. My sister was very disappointed since she’d never seen them live before…hopefully someday. Either way, it was still a great day of music with Palaye Royale, The Glorious Sons, Yungblud (and Halsey in the crowd!), The Interrupters, The Struts, The Hives, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, and a two-hour closing set from the Foo Fighters! They absolutely killed it with a surprise appearance from Pauly Shore (“My Hero” dedicated to the passing of his father the day before), and Luke from the Struts came out to sing “Under Pressure” with Taylor while Dave played the drums. It was certainly a dream set for anyone who’d never seen them before!
Art played a large part of this weekend, too, and there were a ton of live art displays and vendors around the venue, along with a massive radio/DJ booth! This was a nice addition to the festival that I think a lot of the patrons appreciated. And talk about getting your work out there! Kudos to all the artists on display this weekend.
Stray happenings from the festival this weekend:
1. Having seen The Struts three times before, I was lucky enough to get their latest album signed by all the members! So cool! They were all very sweet and seemed genuinely excited to see all their fans.
2. For those of you who are fans of Octane or Liquid Metal on Sirius XM, my sister and I did get a peek at Jose Mangin at one of the vendor tents!
3. Lzzy Hale from Halestorm sure can shred, and she even gave one of her guitars to a young super-fan!
4. Papa Roach were not on the initial line-up for the festival this year, but were asked to fill in when lead singer of The Prodigy, Keith Flint, passed away earlier this year. In honor of him, Papa Roach rocked out to a fantastic cover of “Firestarter” and the crowd absolutely loved it!
5. Other notable crowd-surfers included Spider-man, a chicken, and Santa Claus! Also, big ups to everyone who helped the kid in the wheelchair surf to the front!!
Since this weekend was so awesome, I’ve decided to throw in a bonus story in honor of the Foo Fighters. To lead, my dad is obsessed with Foo Fighters. A few years back the band was in the area to play a really intimate set on Record Store Day. We knew we weren’t getting in since people were camping out two days prior, but we decided to swing by and listen from the outside. At the plaza, we start to pull in the back when two guys zip past us on motorcycles so fast we had to slam on our breaks. After the initial shock we realized we had just about ran over Rami Jaffee and Dave Grohl! We parked so fast and booked it to where they were headed. I managed to get the picture below before they headed inside. That was truly a day we’ll never forget!
