Great crowds. Great weather. Stellar music. Not a bad day one for Savannah Stopover.
It’s impossible to be everywhere at once, and I definitely missed a few bands that I really wanted to see, but I still managed to catch a staggering amount of talent on Thursday night.
Breakers kicked things off about 6:30 at the North Garden of the Ships of the Sea Museum — they sounded great and Samford danced with his MeeMaw, hard to top that. Sun Club played a fun, raucous set, and headliner Ra Ra Riot had much of the big crowd enthralled.
After that, I made my way to Quiet Hollers at Trinity, All Dogs at Wild Wing, Faux Ferocious at The Jinx, Ballroom Thieves at Trinity, Mothers at Wild Wing, The Gotobeds at Ampersand, T. Hardy Morris at Congress Street Social, PWR BTTM at Ampersand, and, finally, White Reaper at The Jinx. I didn’t catch full sets of all of those acts, obviously.
The sound was tremendous at all the venues, with the exception of thumping bass from downstairs at Ampersand, and crowds seemed way up to me from opening night in 2015, when the latenight shows had to battle with the rain. I was struck again and again by the wonderful diversity of the venues all in such close proximity to each other, and I didn’t even make it to any of the Club One shows.
We’ll have a lot more posts and hundreds more photos on the way in the next few days, so here’s just a roundup of a few of mine. As you photographers will be able to tell, there are some tough, tough shooting conditions at Savannah venues.
Favorite line of night 1: Liv from PWR BTTM reflecting on their day wandering Savannah: “I’ve seen so many pedicab drivers I want to sleep with.”
Please click back to the hissing lawns homepage for various posts with recommendations from Petee, Larry Jack, and Jason for Day 2. (A few of my must-sees: Honduras, Capsula’s Bowie tribute, Family and Friends, and Hiss Golden Messenger.)
