Cayuga Sound Fest returns

By Jamie Swinnerton
Tompkins Weekly

 

After a successful first year, rock group the X Ambassadors are returning home once again to host the Cayuga Sound Festival for the second year. The local band has found national fame and want to use their platform to give back to the community that helped create them and to showcase local talent that they love too. This year’s festival will take place from Friday, Sept. 21 through Saturday, Sept. 22 at Stewart Park and will feature such musical acts as Young The Giant, Matt and Kim, Sofi Tukker, Talib Kweli, Towkio, and Hannah Wicklund and The Steppin Stones. From the local scene, you will also find taking the stage KNEW, No Comply, and Lady D and the Shadow Spirits.

“We’ve got a whole different lineup now,” said X Ambassador’s keyboardist Casey Harris. “Hopefully more people and even bigger than last time. We’re working with a lot of the same companies and organizations that we did last time but we’re just sort of trying to expand each time that we do it. This is the second time and, hopefully, it will be the second of many times. We’re just always trying to expand and take it to the next level.”

The lineup, Harris said, is generally made up of bands that the X Ambassadors are fans of.

“It’s really amazing to me that now we’re in a position in our career where we can just reach out to these artists and they’ll actually take us seriously,” Harris said. “I feel very, very lucky.”
Being a relatively new festival, last year’s inaugural Cayuga Sound Fest was packed with nearly 5,000 people, and this year looks to be the same, if not more. Getting bands to play at a new event can be tricky. Without a proven track record, artists might be hesitant to join a new event, but Harris said the reaction from many of the artists they reached out to was enthusiasm. Unfortunately, they were not able to book as many local acts this year as last year, possibly in part due to the number of other events happening around the same time.

The idea behind the festival, Harris said, was to bring music that the band liked to their hometown of Ithaca, showcasing artists they would have liked to see as kids growing up here.
“If we can just keep that going and keep on bringing really cool artists to our hometown each year, that would be amazing,” Harris said. “That’s really, to me, the end all and be all.”

 

Among the local performers who are new to the festival stage this year is the eclectic group Lady D and the Shadow Spirits, fronted by Alyssa Duerksen. As a local artist, Duerksen has been working with local promotion company Dan Smalls Presents (DSP) for a while and reached out to Smalls to talk about growing locally and playing bigger shows. DSP was an integral player last year to creating the first festival and has been heavily involved this year with booking local acts. After sitting down to talk about working in the local music scene from two different angles, Smalls invited Duerksen to play the Cayuga Sound Festival.

“I think it’s going to be really fun,” Duerksen said. “As a musician I take on many different incarnations of projects and so I might go play solo somewhere or leave town and play as a duo, so to be able to actually have a large stage for my band is really cool, because it means that we actually get to take up a lot more space.”

 

Playing in a small venue or to a sparse crowd can feel a little awkward to be big in a small space, she said. That’s not a concern when playing to a few thousand people on a big stage in Stewart Park.

“I’m excited for the band because we get to just be big,” she continued. “On a big stage with really good production value, and really good sound, and for a musician that is pretty exciting actually.”

Lady D and the Shadow Spirits have a new album coming out in October, but festival-goers will get to hear a lot of the new stuff at the show.

But it’s not just playing the festival that Duerksen is excited about. There are several acts that she can’t wait to catch including local artists KNEW and No Comply, as well as several of the vendors that she is looking forward to seeing. At last year’s Cayuga Sound Festival Duerksen was working the Solaz burrito truck, which will be returning this year, before committing herself full-time to her musical projects. Even back then, she knew she wanted to commit herself to her real passion, music.

 

“In my brain, I was looking at that stage and thinking ‘Okay, well that’s a possibility. Why not try?’” she said. “So, it is actually really ironic that I got to go from being at the burrito stand and then looking at the stage and thinking ‘Cool, I really like what’s going on here.’”

For those looking forward to seeing the trio No Comply, you’re two-thirds in luck. Member Matt Valdez will be stuck in New York City the weekend of Cayuga Sound Festival due to prior commitments, but David Cabuenas and Charles Chapman will be taking the stage on Saturday playing new music that they’ve been working on for several months.

“This is the loudest, and the largest scale, that I think we’ll ever be played at, so to me that’s exciting, just to be at that physical level,” said Cabuenas.

This will be the largest venue that the group has played at so far, and since it’s outdoors there are aspects of the performance that No Comply might need to alter as their performances sometimes include projections along with the music.

Along with Lady D and the Shadow Spirits and No Comply, this year’s local lineup includes Ava Knew, also known as KNEW, an Ithaca College student from Brooklyn. Find more information about this year’s lineup and ticket options at cayugasoundfestival.com.