Old Settler’s Music Festival 2022
Words and text by Steve Levine
A riddle: If you’re watching a Tejano band play Jimi Hendrix’s “Foxy Lady” at an Americana music festival, where are you? It’s got to be the 2022 Old Settler’s Music Festival, the Austin area’s longest running, multiday, live music event.
Planted now at its “forever home” amid the rolling meadows and woodlands southeast of Lockhart, Old Settler’s continues to assemble a strong and diverse lineup for the pleasure of its faithful fans, most of whom camp for three nights (or longer) on the 29-acre site.
One camper and I spent a leisurely half hour under a canopy trying to decide how best to describe the 35th annual installment of Old Settler’s. “It’s got lots of bluegrass acts, but it’s more than a bluegrass festival,” I offered.
“Yup,” he said.
We went on to rule out “roots” and “country” and “folk” and “acoustic” – all much too limiting to define the 30-
plus artists on this year’s bill.
“It’s a hippie festival,” the camper offered, and we both immediately agreed. “Hippie” aptly describes the crowd and the vibe and the culture and the music. Despite the amount of alcohol being consumed, I didn’t see nearly as many stumble-down drunks as I used to encounter at the Austin City Limits Festival. I didn’t smell as much weed as I expected, but I heard plenty of glassy-eyed men and women mumbling about acid and mushrooms. Ponytails, not man buns, flourished.
Like the idealistic early days of hippiedom, the fans and staff and musicians and volunteers (masses of dedicated, longtime volunteers make the festival work) value friendliness, sincerity, and sharing. Campers actually listened to the answers when they asked “how ya’ doin?” Strangers shared “good mornings” with smiles and warmth and maybe a cup of coffee.
And the performers, whether at late-night, three-person jam sessions or on the main stages in front of thousands, brought their genuine human selves to Old Settler’s. The crowd recognized it and appreciated it.
Several times my friends and I commented that shows felt like private concerts set among the vast open space of the main festival arena. When I asked Old Settler’s spokesperson Heidi Labensart for the attendance numbers and whether they met with organizers’ expectations, she replied, “It is best to say it was a great festival, and everyone who came out had a great time.”
So with that background, here are some of the musical highlights from my four days of Old Settler’s 2022:
The most high-energy show of the festival came at the last sets played on the big stages. New Orleans funksters Galactica lit up Saturday night with a powerful performance fueled by trumpeter Eric Gordon and guest vocalist Anjelika “Jelly” Joseph. With tunes like
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Mofro
Melissa Carper
Drew Emmitt (Leftover Salmon) and Ronnie McCoury
“Yes We Can Can” and “Clap Your Hands,” Joseph pushed and cajoled and incited the crowd to clap, wave their arms, or shout their approval. Throughout, guitarist Jeff Raines, bass player Robert Mercurio, and drummer Stanton Moore laid a rock-solid funk foundation for Joseph and Gordon.
To put a magical touch on a gorgeous Texas spring evening, a favorable breeze blew an almost continuous river of glistening soap bubbles from atop a nearby hill, high over the audience, and beyond the stage.
From “99 Shades of Crazy” to “Lochloosa,” Friday night headliner JJ Grey & Mofro delivered what the crowd craved: a giant helping of smoky, southern-fried, blueeyed soul. The band ripped through “House of the Rising Sun” like they owned that classic. Grey launched swampy ballads off the back end of mini-sermons on modern life. The group was unpretentious and obviously happy to be back on the road after the long COVID shutdown.
“We’re all like bears coming out of hibernation and ready to eat, ready to get down,” Grey told a hometown Jacksonville, Florida, TV reporter before starting his current tour.
Jam bands often get a rather raw deal from the tight schedule of a festival format. Unless they have a longer slot at a day’s end, musicians who frequently play a single song for 20 minutes-plus have to squeeze their whole shows into an hour. Jam band fans call it “the festival set.”
Bluegrass jammers Railroad Earth not only had to work with the one-hour limit at Old Settlers, they also were celebrating the long-delayed release that day of their new album All For the Song. Todd Shaeffer, Tim Carbone, John Skehan, and company played four tunes from that album, brought bluegrass godfather Del McCoury on stage for his classic, “High on a Mountain,” and found time to stretch out a bit on old favorite “Mighty River.”
Sierra Hull
BJ Barham (American Aquarium)
Tim Carbone (Railroad Earth)
Alden Hedges (American Aquarium)
Multi-Grammy-winner Flaco Jimenez of San Antonio joined his old friend Max Baca and Los Texmaniacs for a crowd-rousing rendition of the Texas Tornadoes’ “Who Were You Thinkin’ Of?” Mandolin legend Peter Rowan sat in for several numbers with the ensemble and later played a full set with Los Texmaniacs under the name of Peter Rowan’s Free Mexican Airforce. The Airforce earned rousing applause with a sweet and heartfelt version of the Rowan/Jerry Garcia classic “Moonlight Midnight.” (And by the way, it was Los Texmaniacs’ guest guitarist Will Owen Gage who cranked out the “Foxy Lady” of the riddle.)
Rolling Stone calls American Aquarium leader B.J. Barham a “Southern Springsteen.” The songs he performed at Old Settler’s didn’t live up to that billing. His vocals do recall his idol Tom Petty, and the band has some Heartbreakers must be happy that Barham stopped drinking, as that’s a major driver of his songwriting. It seemed at least half the songs in the set dealt with the travails and triumphs of sobriety, and lyrics like these (from 2020’s “The Long Haul”) are decidedly un hardest part of getting sober is learning a drinking buddy ain’t the same thing as a friend.”
Recommended, and not:
Two artists I knew little or nothing about beforehand but enjoyed enough to look forward to seeing again: Maggie Belle, a wonderful singer from New Orleans whose voice has a lot of Amy Winehouse touches; and Sierra Hull, once a tiny mandolin wunderkind, now a thoughtful 25-year-old singer backing band and still
I knew the California Honeydrops were a good first saw them at the High Sierra Music Festival back in 2016. They’ve matured songwriting, better performances. They put out a highly danceable funky, bluesy, hornsey mixture.
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Flaco Jimenez
Mofro
From the western side of country/western, upright bass player Melissa Carper kept an early afternoon crowd entertained as she shared the stage with the betterknown Brennen Leigh on guitar. Carper writes some decidedly wicked lyrics, sets them to fun melodies, and sings her lines with a self-assured, deadpan delivery.
Del McCoury is a bluegrass legend, and his family band is tight and top-notch. But McCoury’s high, nasal vocals grate my brain like a whiff of strong ammonia.
Austin blues guitarist Zach Person is obviously talented, but the bass and rhythm guitar backing track he and his live drummer used detracted decidedly from Person’s show.
Keeping with Old Settler’s tradition, Austin’s own Shinyribs played the final set on Sunday afternoon. Mic in hand, front man Kevin Russell sashayed through the crowd, dancing with the ladies, singing Freddy Fender’s “Wasted Days and Wasted Nights” to close the festival.
That’s a great song, and Shinyribs rocked it, but it certainly didn’t describe the exciting days and enchanted nights I spent at Old Settler’s 2022. I'm hearing something more like Robert Earl Keen’s “Feelin’ Good Again.”
John Skehan (Railroad Earth)
Anjelika “Jelly” Joseph (Galactic)
At Old Settler’s, When the Music Stops It Doesn’t
New Orleans-based chanteuse Maggie Belle crooned her last note close to midnight on the opening day of the 2022 Old Settler’s Music Festival. The lights went down, her five-piece band packed their gear, and the audience began to drift away.
Many in the crowd didn’t have far to drift. The stage is tucked among the cedar and mesquite in a corner Camp Banjo, the festival’s liveliest campground. And one of the event’s chief attraction was just about to begin.”
“It’s what I come for,” said one smiling, toe-tapping middle-aged lady.
Across the crowded venue, jam sessions popped up and blossomed like the desert after a downpour. Guitars, banjos, dobros, mandolins, fiddles – just about every kind of wooden instrument whose strings can be plucked, picked, strummed, or bowed – emerged from cases and tents.
The honor of choosing the next song proceeded in an unwritten but genial code, round robin among the players. Traditional folk songs and blues numbers dominated the playlists under the stars. But this writer heard more than a few acoustic Grateful Dead covers and even a rendition of the Rolling Stones’ “Dead Flowers.”
Each gathering seemed to coalesce into similar, concentric configurations. The busiest artists, those who led the way through every tune, sat or stood in the center. Next came a sprinkling of background vocalists and musicians who contribute quietly or offered up the occasional flourish. Tapping, nodding, and swaying spectators made up the outer ring. Wandering strangers received warm welcomes.
Every available open space in Camp Banjo was occupied. Setups ranged from immense RVs to classic, silver Airstreams to simple tents.
Sierra Hull
Camp Banjo at night
Many campers had made meticulous preparations for their spaces. They strung up tie-dye and mandala tapestries to create billowing walls. They decorated their sites with banners and streamers, rugs, couches, tables, blinkie lights, and even a pair of hanging geranium pots. Grills and camp stoves produced late-night snacks or waited to sizzle bacon, potatoes, and eggs for tomorrow’s breakfast.
Lee Thompson, a guitar player formerly from Austin now living in Oregon, is a long-time Old Settler. The afterhours camaraderie is an important part of making the festival what it is, he says.
“Some people need music. They don’t want to make money, at it, but they need it in a deep way,” Thompson told me the next morning. “They just want to be around people who also need that. And you find ‘em here. It kind of boils the fat away. If you really want to play music, come do it here.”
The quality of the campground talent varies tremendously, from earnest novice to true virtuoso. The family friendly festival has always attracted young players with obviously bright futures.
Thompson recounts a memory from the second Old Settler’s Festival in 1988. “A family came out of their tent, they had some coffee with me, and then two little kids came out, 12 and 14,” he said. “One had a fiddle; one had a banjo. They tuned up and then just started ripping.”
Not many years later, Emily and Martie Slayer became the founding members of the Dixie Chicks.
“You can’t bottle it,” Lee’s brother Jay Thompson says of the campground mystique. “It’s got its own flavor.”
Tim Carbone (Railroad Earth)
Lorenzo Loera (California Honeydrops
JJ Grey & Mofro
