Small music festivals are a dime a dozen and tend to be hit or miss as to their success. The Rock for Independence Festival at Texas Ski Ranch in New Braunfels wasn’t a miss, it couldn’t even be bothered to step up to the plate.
First, full disclosure: This Examiner tried to stick around but so much of nothing was going on that he left around 8:00pm, having been at the festival for a few hours. If a large amount of people showed up after 8pm, then he firmly deserves and accepts a thrashing for the report below.
Lame baseball analogy aside, the “festival” was really just a handful of people and a couple of rickety stages. Almost no promotion was done for the event, save a notice on Facebook, and it showed. Unless there was a huge influx of people after 8pm to see Indofin and Grimy Stiles, the total attendance to the day-long event appeared to be somewhere around 30 people. Some of these poor souls paid upwards of $20 a ticket to sit around and watch the tow cables go round and round. From time to time, a wakeboarder would liven things up.
The festival featured two stages, 20 bands, skateboarding, wakeboarding and more. And it had almost all those things, technically. The second stage was a joke, there were no skateboarders, wakeboarders lazily circled the little lake, and the 20 bands made up the bulk of attendees.
To compound the problem of no people, some of the music was just bad. Case in point, The Dick Brown Experience. Their tinny sound was accentuated with poor off-key vocals and lyrics likely written by a drunk fourth grader. Judging music is akin to judging a work of art in a gallery, a piece may appeal to some but not others. However, this band was a fingerpainting.
While it wasn’t nearly as bad as Thunder of the Gods, it was just a bad day to be a music fan in New Braunfels. The second stage (pictured above) was barren and the sound from the main stage was clearly audible, mixing two differing sounds together. It was not an ideal visual or audial experience for listener or performer.
Entertainment was largely provided by a few of the wakeboarders with the courage to jump off the ramps and rails. It is unfortunately that Rock for Independence Fest was poorly executed. The talents of the headliners (Indofin, Grimy Stiles, and The Couch) appear to be largely wasted. It was a completely underwhelming event, even with the great space at Texas Ski Ranch and perfect weather.
Photo credits: Tyler Groover (www.twogroove.com)
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