Maker Park Radio's 8 Year Anniversary Music & Art Fest with Dan Deacon, A Place To Bury Strangers & BALACLAVA
On Friday, July 11th and Saturday, July 12th, Staten Island’s Maker Park Radio celebrated their eighth anniversary with two shows at Maker Park, directly across the street from their studios. The first day featured performances by Baltimore’s Dan Deacon plus New York City acts A Place To Bury Strangers and Ridgewood’s BALACLAVA. The following evening featured Jon Spencer (performing with Kendall Wind and Spider Bowman of The Bobby Lees), Montreal’s Nobro and NYC bands The Thing, Skorts, The Parallel Lines, and sideshow performer Sage Sovereign.
For the first night, Maker Park Radio DJs Nazz Raidience & D3signer Dr3ams spun music before and in between band sets. The live music portion began with BALACLAVA at 6PM throwing BALA bucks into the crowd performing in balaclava masks. The synth punk band set a high bar for the performances to come.
Originally, Nashville’s Snõõper were scheduled to play but dropped off the lineup to finish recording their new album in their hometown. They were replaced by Horsegirl, who unfortunately were unable to perform due to illness. Despite headlining the previous year show, A Place to Bury Strangers eagerly filled in the second slot, and put on an outrageously loud and fun performance. The band finished in the audience with people circling around them, and drummer, Sandra Fedowitz, selecting an audience member to join her on drums.
Up next was the headliner, Baltimore’s Dan Deacon, who recently performed “The Star Spangled Banner” at Camden Yards before the Orioles vs. Mets double header, where the Orioles won both consecutive games. Dan was backed by Jeremy Hyman on drums, who was in Ponytail, and my first time in many years seeing Deacon performing alongside someone else. Jeremy’s drumming was a fantastic addition to a set that Dan called “casual” and “loosey-goosey” but it was apparent he was having a great time performing and directing the audience. Before being introduced to the stage, Maker Park Radio’s co-founder, Tom Ferrie shared that they tried to book Dan three years ago, and Deacon remarked that he would have played this back then too. He appreciated that the show was in Staten Island and he didn’t have to drive “over there” (gesturing to Manhattan) from Maryland and did a small rant about the indie card game Dominion, specifically mentioning their festival and throne room cards. Although this was my first Dan Deacon show in many years, I was glad to see that the interactive elements of his shows remained the same (fans formed a tunnel during the performance of a longer song, cleaving the audience in two and choosing people to make grand movements to their side, with their half of the audience following them), plus some new twists (rather than performing the ‘wall of death’ that occurs at metal shows (generally in countries where people have universal healthcare paid with their tax dollars), we Americans got to do a ‘wall of life’ where audience members separated into two sides of the park and ran towards each other to high five (no one gets hurt, it feels good, and no high healthcare bills afterwards).
The 8th anniversary Music and Art Festival continues tonight at the same location (Maker Park at 450 Front Street in Staten Island, NY). Tickets ($25) can be purchased at the door, and doors are at 5PM.