Musicians from all over the Northeast gathered in downtown Keene to entertain crowds of music fans at the 2023 Keene Music Festival on Saturday, Sept. 2. The festival featured over 60 performances from bands and artists of a wide range of musical genres. Bluegrass, metal, hip-hop, and electronica were a few of the styles that were represented across six main stages at City Tire, the Colonial Theatre, Railroad Square, the Monadnock Co-op, Lamson Street, and Central Square. Additionally, singer-songwriter performances could be found at their dedicated stage by Toadstool Bookstore.
Jason Kuntz, a member of the event’s organizing board, said bands were able to sign up via a web link provided on social media. He speculated that the new online method made the process more streamlined for the musicians, reporting that organizers received around twice as many artist submissions as last year.
According to Kuntz, one of the goals of the festival was to diversity the range of genres that can be heard, but even more than that, to find bands who are “as professional as possible.”
At the same time, the festival did not hesitate to welcome newer projects. As Erik Dube, drummer for psychedelic jam band Splash Nebula, said, “[The festival features] a lot of smaller bands. This is our second gig, and they just said, ‘Yeah, come on, play.’ And just for us to come here and get the exposure to people that have never seen us before… it’s a big help, they help all these bands out.”
Splash Nebula was featured at the Colonial stage in Dube’s first-ever performance at the Keene Music Festival. Hailing from Fitchburg, MA, the band themselves aim to defy genre. “We don’t try to copy [anybody else],” Dube said. “We have our influences, but we try to make it our own.” Dube says those influences include Pink Floyd, the Grateful Dead, and the Disco Biscuits.
Dube expressed excitement at the spread of genres the festival featured. “I think it’s pretty cool, I was looking at the line-up just for this and it goes from folk to psychedelic rock to alt-rock to hip-hop, so you get a little bit of everything,” Dube said.
Splash Nebula’s own set prevented them from visiting any other bands until the afternoon, but once they wrapped up, the band members had every intention of doing just that.
“Definitely going to hang out and go see the other bands,” said Dube, shortly after the band’s set. “[We want to] support those local artists.” They were joined by many others, as crowds only continued to build later into the day, and eventually the night. Each stage could easily accumulate a few dozen festival-goers, often more. Such a turnout facilitates one of the organizers’ other goals: to expose people to more original music that they would be unlikely to hear otherwise.
“Keene doesn’t have very much original live music,” Kuntz said. “There’s not really a venue around here that allows it.”
The festival aims to change that by creating a space for local original music. With the event now in its 21st year running, Kuntz believes in its power to do so.
“It’s come a long way,” he said. “[and] it’s bigger than just the Keene and Monadnock region.”
Charlotte King can be contacted at
Charlotte.King@keene.edu
