Cult, Rise Against whip up early frenzy at Music Fest

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Rise Against lead singer Tim McIlrath sings to the crowd as the 33rd annual Beale Street Music Festival kicked off Friday.

The gods of rock and weather smiled down on the 33rd annual Beale Street Music festival with one of the driest opening nights in recent memory.

In fact, the only fleeting drops of rain that came down helped create a fittingly atmospheric mist as British goth-rockers The Cult emerged onto the Sam’s Town stage for Friday’s first big-name set.

Photo by Mark Weber

Rise Against lead singer Tim McIlrath sings to the crowd as the 33rd annual Beale Street Music Festival kicked off Friday.

Photo by Nikki Boertman

Ian Astbury, lead singer of The Cult, controlled the stage despite a bad leg.

The five-piece band, led by founding members singer Ian Astbury and guitarist Billy Duffy, delivered a succession of surefire crowd pleasers from their three-decade-deep catalog.

Clearly, it was Astbury — dressed in his requisite black headband and shades, and carrying a cane to aid a bad leg — and his powerful shamanic persona who controlled the stage.

Still, much of the band’s musical appeal rested in the guitar interplay between lead six-string man Duffy and rhythm ace Mike Dimkich, as the two traded razor-wire riffs back and forth, indulging in what Keith Richards once described as “the ancient form of weaving.”

While The Cult provided one of the festival’s highlights, the music kicked off several hours earlier while the sun was still beaming, with a set from singer-songwriter Matt Nathanson and his four-piece backing band on the Cellular South Stage.

A purveyor of lightweight pop with a strong physical resemblance to frat-rock favorite John Mayer, Nathanson has achieved a modicum of success through a series of song placements on prime-time TV programs. The smallish crowd that gathered — made up mostly of young women, likely camping out early for late night headliner Katy Perry — lapped up the material, despite its fairly generic nature.

What Nathanson’s show lacked musically, he made up for with his self-effacing, comic banter. At one point, he announced he’d just written a new song about the Memphis Tigers. As the crowd roared its approval, Nathanson came clean: “I don’t know anything about the Tigers — someone told me to say that backstage ’cause you’d lap it up,” he said. “See how badly I want to be loved by you?”

While Nathanson seemed content to charm and chide his audience — and serenade them with playful, kitschy covers of Kim Wilde’s “Kids in America” and Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” — further down the park on the Sam’s Town stage, Chicago punks Rise Against were whipping the early arriving crowd into a much more serious frenzy.

The band — a throwback to the old-school political punk outfits of the early ’80s — had a throng of genuine fans pressed against the stage (their last local appearance apparently came coming nearly a decade ago at a warehouse show across from Sun Studio).

The group’s hour-plus Music Fest performance proved to be a non-stop barrage of shout-along choruses, choreographed scissor kicks, flying guitar picks, sweat and spittle. In fact, the set had barely begun before lead singer Tim McIllrath leapt into the heart of the crowd and began serenading them.

Later, McIllrath noted that it was International Labor Day, and the band pulled out its worker’s rights anthem “Re-Education (Through Labor)” to celebrate the occasion.

At various points McIllrath exhorted the crowd, talking about the higher purpose of music and the sense of community that festivals can foster. If those in the audience — perhaps more concerned with their funnel cakes and tallboys — missed the message, they at least responded to the band’s stirring sonic assault.

— By Bob Mehr: 529-2517

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