Cincinnati’s biggest music festival pulls in the biggest bands
CINCINNATI -- Growing up in Cincinnati has never been considered a cool thing.
For a while, there was nothing interesting downtown.
The best night time entertainment was across the river in Newport, Kentucky.
Recently that’s changed.
Now the “Queen City” has a casino. It has a great nightlife scene down at The Banks, set up along the Ohio River. It even has a music festival.
Bunbury Music Festival, set up in a downtown park, has had some success, but never anything to rumble headlines outside the I-275 loop.
Perhaps the festival’s best bragging point is that Imagine Dragons played in the first year for only 300 people. I was lucky enough to be there.
I was also there Friday, day one of its fourth year, and a day that will be the biggest in this festival’s history.
Arguably, the greatest band in Ohio history, The Black Keys, was the headliner.
The Keys, set to embark on a European summer tour, chose to play three American dates. The other two were in New York.
It was a set fitting for one of rock’s best touring acts — 70 minutes of pop-meets-fuzzy rock with the blues that made the Akron-based duo famous.
But it wasn’t the headliner that made the night.
It was Walk The Moon. It was Cincinnati’s band.
The band that was born playing in small city clubs, sometimes to only a dozen people, has gone on to sing the song of the summer, “Shut Up and Dance,” which already has almost 118 million plays on Spotify.
Nicholas Petricca, the band’s lead singer, had the 20,000 fans join in for every song, leading him to constantly shout, “Queen City!”
At one point in the 75-minute set, Petricca looked to be on the edge of tears, saying thank you to everyone who stuck around for the band, as if this was just a dream.
Yet for Bunbury, it was a dream. Four years in, it had its largest crowd for the local band. And for one day, Cincinnati was the rock ‘n’ roll capital of the state.
For once, Walk The Moon and The Black Keys made it feel like a cool thing to be from Cincinnati.
@charliehatch_
Gh181212@ohio.edu