I have a bunch of words written up and ready to go into print in The Triangle Downtowner next issue, and I’ll edit this post with that in the future. For now, just a few short things.

Slim’s can be the best venue on the planet when you are right up front and Spider Bags or Gross Ghost are in your face. If you’ve never seen T0W3RS, you need to. 6 String Drag is back, and I could not be happier. St. Vincent’s Annie Clark gets a lot of criticism for her choreographed show, but it was still the highlight of the main stage. She can shred, y’all. What Cheer? Brigade made this year’s festival go out in the most joyous way I’ve experienced in my years covering it.

No fucking hillbillies were injured in the making of these photographs.

 

(I may add some more photos to this over the next week or so, so you might want to check back)

 

Oh, and this was my first year shooting the festival since I switched over from my full-frame Nikon D700 to a mirrorless Fuji X-T1. A few things were trickier (shooting Valient Thorr is like trying to shoot pro sports), but overall the weight savings more than made up for the handful of shots I was too slow to get. While I don’t expect the full-time concert shooters to trade in their big, heavy, expensive kits for mirrorless right now, we are quickly approaching the day where that is an option.