Sound Summit, a musical gathering like no other, announces the return of the daylong festival set on the slopes of Mt. Tam on Saturday, October 22. Featuring a day of great music amidst the Bay Area’s favorite season, Sound Summit’s lineup includes The New Yorker-named “best American rock band of this decade,” The War On Drugs; critically acclaimed singer-songwriter Faye Webster; beloved indie folk-rockers Fruit Bats; and soulful local ensemble Wreckless Strangers. High-spirited KNBR radio personalities Murph & Mac (aka Brian Murphy and Paul McCaffrey) return as the day’s dynamic Masters of Ceremonies along with KPFA’s “Dead to the World” radio host Tim Lynch. DJ Andy Cabic of Vetiver fame will keep the groove going and spin tunes between sets.
Sound Summit is as much a community spirit as it is a community event. The San Francisco Chronicle has called the festival “a day of restorative celebration.” Produced as an annual celebration of and fundraiser for Mount Tamalpais State Park by Roots & Branches Conservancy, Sound Summit is staged at the historic Mountain Theater, a 4,000-seat natural stone amphitheater with stunning views of San Francisco Bay and beyond. Add a touch of Autumn glow, a resonant cause, and a stirring soundtrack, and you have a recipe for a memorable day in the late October light. Fueled by past musical acts such as Wilco, Bob Weir & Phil Lesh, Herbie Hancock, Tedeschi Trucks Band, Grace Potter, Lukas Nelson and the Promise of the Real, Father John Misty, Jim James, Los Lobos, Dr. John & The Night Trippers, and many more, Sound Summit has provided $250,000 to Mount Tam to date. This year, Marin County’s JAMBAR lends a helping hand to the good deed-doing as Sound Summit’s Peak Sponsor.
Tickets for the daylong festival go on sale Friday, August 19 at 10 am and are $120 for adults and $65 for youth 12 and under; children 2 and under are admitted free. To purchase tickets and for more information on the event, parking and shuttles, visit SoundSummit.net. Gates open at 10:00 am; music from 11:30 am – 6:30 pm.
About Roots & Branches Conservancy
Roots & Branches Conservancy is a San Francisco Bay Area-based non-profit organization dedicated to the conservation of natural resources, both physical and cultural. The broad arc of our mission ranges from regional environmental and educational work to the preservation and evolution of artistic and cultural traditions – musical, visual, narrative, and beyond. Wherever possible, we aim to create intersections between the environment, education, and the arts to their mutual benefit.
Towards those ends, our interests lie in producing resonant community experiences in our events, providing educational components in our programming, and making meaningful contributions to worthy beneficiaries.
Roots & Branches Conservancy was born in the context of drastic cuts in the California State Parks budget and our belief in the power of art and community to gather force for a good cause.
WHAT:
Sound Summit
WHEN:
Saturday, October 22, 2022
Gates open at 10:00 am; music from 11:30 am – 6:30 pm
WHERE:
The historic Mountain Theater, Ridgecrest Blvd in Mount Tamalpais State Park
Tickets go on sale Friday, August 19 at 10:00 am
$120 for adults, $65 for youth 12 and under; children 2 and under are admitted free. To purchase tickets and for more information, visit SoundSummit.net.
WHO:
Sound Summit’s stellar lineup features musical performances by the following artists:
The War On Drugs
The War On Drugs have steadily emerged as one of this century’s great rock and roll synthesists, removing the gaps between the underground and the mainstream, between the obtuse and the anthemic, making records that wrestle a fractured past into a unified and engrossing present. Led by Adam Granduciel, The New Yorker called them “the best American ‘rock’ band of this decade” in support of their album, A Deeper Understanding, for which they won the 2018 Grammy for Best Rock Album and were nominated for a BRIT Award for International Group of the Year. 2020 saw the release of LIVE DRUGS featuring live interpretations of songs throughout their career, including off their 2014 breakthrough, Lost In The Dream. Co- produced by Granduciel and Shawn Everett, their fifth studio album, I Don’t Live Here Anymore, “chips away some of their hazier edges in favor of sharper melodies, broadening the borders of the meticulous yet joyously simple sound [Granduciel] has perfected” (Pitchfork, Best New Music). It landed on numerous 2021 best albums of the year lists and garnered a second BRIT Award nomination. The band headlined Madison Square Garden in support of its release
Faye Webster
Faye Webster loves the feeling of a first take: writing a song, then heading to the studio with her band to track it live the very next day. When you listen to the 23-year-old Atlanta songwriter’s poised and plainspoken albums, you can hear why: she channels emotions that are so aching, they seem to be coming into existence at that very moment. Webster captures the spark before it has a chance to fade; she inks lyrics before they have a chance to seem fleeting. Her signature sound pairs close, whisper-quiet, home-recorded vocals with the unmistakable sound of musicians together in a room.
I Know I’m Funny haha is Webster’s most realized manifestation yet of this emotional and musical alchemy. Continuing to bloom from her 2019 breakthrough and Secretly Canadian debut Atlanta Millionaires Club, Webster’s sound draws as much from the lap-steel singer-songwriter pop of the 1970s and teardrop country tunes as it does from the audacious personalities of her city’s rap and R&B community, where she first found a home on Awful Records.
This year Webster will release Car Therapy Sessions, an EP of new and re-imagined songs backed by a full orchestra. Webster’s work takes on this orchestral treatment beautifully, her delicate and emotional delivery packing a gut punch when dramatized by the EP’s robust arrangements.
Fruit Bats
Formed in the late 1990s, indie folk-rock act Fruit Bats grew from the four-track recording project of songwriter Eric D. Johnson into a touring band with an ever-shifting lineup. Constant are Johnson's warm vocals and melodic sensibility, both of which often seem to split the difference between Lennon and McCartney.
As the creative force behind Fruit Bats, Johnson doesn’t spend a lot of time looking in the rearview mirror. “Maybe it speaks to some Midwest thing,” he says. “Don’t be overly reflective or navel-gazing. And as a songwriter, you always want to be looking forward, not backward.” But with the 20th anniversary of his first Fruit Bats release (2001’s Echolocation) on his mind, it seemed as good a time as any to take stock of his work—and he’s doing he did so in the form of Sometimes a Cloud Is Just a Cloud: Slow Growers, Sleeper Hits and Lost Songs (2001–2021), a two-disc collection that tracks the history of Fruit Bats from its earliest days to right now.
“I love how the best-laid plans are never what you think they’re going to be. I love the unpredictability of it. Recording and writing songs is often like, ‘Wow, that is not where I was expecting that to go.’ My whole career has been like that. This was not where I expected to go. But I mean that in a really good way.”
Wreckless Strangers
Wreckless Strangers is a collective of six seasoned Bay Area musicians known for their collaborative songwriting and high-energy live shows, performing an infectious blend of music they call "California Americana Soul." The band features Amber Morris (premier Bay Area vocalist and voice coach – members of Journey, Eric Martin Band) on vocals; David Noble (Poor Man's Whiskey, Pardon The Interruption) on lead guitar, vocals; Joshua Zucker (The Jones Gang, Rowan Brothers) on bass; Austin de Lone (Nick Lowe, Elvis Costello, The Fabulous Thunderbirds) on keys, vocals; Mick Hellman (The Go To Hell Man Band) on drums and vocals; and Rob Anderson (repeat world champion cyclist) on guitar. Over the course of their six years together, the Wreckless Strangers have released two records and become fan favorites at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival. Their current album, When the Sun and a Blue Star Collide, was produced by GRAMMY-winning artist/producer/guitarist Colin Linden (Bob Dylan, Emmy Lou Harris, Keb' Mo’, Alison Krauss & Robert Plant).
DJ Andy Cabic is a long-time resident of the Bay Area who has filled rooms big and small with sound, both as a DJ and as the singer-songwriter of his group, Vetiver.
KNBR morning show hosts Murph & Mac (aka Brian Murphy and Paul McCaffrey) will return as the day’s dynamic masters of ceremonies along with KPFA’s “Dead to the World” radio host Tim Lynch.
INFO:
For more information and transportation tips, including shuttle, hiking biking and driving, and an updated concert schedule, please visit SoundSummit.net.
