According to Hibbert, he encountered Lewis after the incident. “I didn’t hear much of what he said, but I thought I heard ‘because I love your music’,” he said jokingly of the apparent encounter and the teen’s motive.

Throughout the evening, in which Hibbert shared anecdotes with the audience about his catalog and career, the longtime frontman complained of continuing pain in his head, also stating repeatedly that the performance could be the last of his tour, as he needs to go home to Jamaica for additional medical attention to his “brain and head.” Toots and the Maytals’ current acoustic tour is slated for nine more stops on the East Coast.

“Tonight may be my last show because of my head,” Hibberts said, causing a minor uproar among the audience. “I mean of this tour,” he quickly added.

“I will always be touring,” he said with a smile.

With less than three weeks until the event’s June 8 and 9  dates, many fans reacted with outrage, taking to the festival’s Facebook page to express their anger and disappointment. Moonrise’s lineup—heavy on popular DJs and EDM acts—promised to draw fans from both near and far. Organizers had hoped to avoid problems they encountered with Starscape, an annual all-night event which was ultimately moved from Fort Armistead Park and re-billed as Moonrise after experiencing a rash of problems, including overcrowding and numerous drug overdoses.

Moonrise appeared on track to overcome Starscape’s reputation as a hazard-ridden free-for-all and included acts geared towards mainstream audiences, including a headlining set by Snoop Dogg and a lower-billed set by Wu-Tang Clan’s GZA in which he was slated to perform his seminal Liquid Swords album in its entirety.

According to the statement released by promoters, fans can refund ticket purchases from Ticketfly or affiliated outlets. The statement also mentions the possibility of “alternative events” in the area that would feature artists from the original Moonrise lineup.

If you’ve been to New Orleans, you probably know that the city’s basic image as a jazz dominated town–while earned and bolstered by historical importance–is far from its most intriguing musical aspect. For as representative as brass bands, traditional jazz, and accordion-rife zydeco are of the city’s music scene, New Orleans is also fertile ground for experimentation. In this spirit, Johnny Sketch and the Dirty Notes deftly incorporate an array of seemingly incompatible influence; ragged gypsy punk, traditional Americana, swaggering funk, and classic composition follow one another with aplomb in a typical Johnny Sketch set.

Frontman Marc Paradis operates on stage with an affable sense of humor, mixing off-the-cuff jokes involving crowd members and offsetting his pronounced stage personality with otherwise completely unexpected virtuosity on the electric cello. Paradis’ cello playing colors the band’s occasional forays into territory marked by a precarious balance between Eastern European influence and ska-reggae upstrokes.

With the well timed delivery of a veteran entertainer, Paradis’ between songs banter almost always involves audience interaction and good-natured ribbing. When an obviously intoxicated man in a business suit wandered towards the stage halfway through the Dirty Notes’ set and proceeded to jam his iPhone as close to band members’ personal space as possible, Paradis appeared a bull presented with a waving red scarf.

Akin to the moment between a heckler brazenly announcing themselves and the response of a sharp stand-up comedian, a few seconds lagged before the impressively bearded Paradis put the man in his place. After several moments of withstanding indignity, Paradis snatched the man’s still-recording phone and waved it around before adding—in perfect timing and harmony with the song’s original chorus– “I’ve got your motherfucking phone!” to rapturous applause.

Towards the end of their set, Paradis and the rest of the Dirty Notes welcomed Trevor Brooks and Sam Mulé of Honey Island Swamp Band to the stage to sit in on keyboard and lead guitar, respectively. On the strength of the Dirty Notes horn section (Omar Ramirez on trumpet and Brad Walker on saxophone) and the spot-on slide playing of Mulé, the mixed-company lineup did the Rolling Stones’ “Rocks Off” sweet justice.

When it came time for Honey Island Swamp Band’s folksy upbeat rock, the set faltered slightly out of the gate before righting itself with undeniably solid playing. Mulé’s lead guitar, in particular, often serves to take otherwise unremarkable straight-ahead country rock in interesting and dynamic directions.

The evening’s peak would come on a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Gotta Serve Somebody” that featured Paradis and Walker. Honey Island would also welcome local guitarist and vocalist Cris Jacobs to the stage for energetic covers of traditional number “Going Down The Road Feeling Bad,” Robert Johnson’s “I’m a Steady Rollin’ Man,” and 1960’s pop hit “Good Lovin’.” Concluding their set with the title track from their forthcoming release Sugar Cane, Honey Island Swamp Band revealed a move towards a more heartfelt and genuine tone than some of their backyard-party-in-the-Bayou material. Surely, their more lighthearted numbers have an appropriate time and place. In close comparison on Thursday, however, the band’s new material outshone the past as they closed out the evening.

“Beyond being a great musician, [Cris] is really fun to hang out with, so it’s awesome to have him up to play with us in his hometown,” said Anders Beck, Greensky’s dobro player. “That hometown hero status–it’s cool,” he added with a sly grin.

After Jacobs’ solo opening set–a bare bones affair featuring Patrick McAvinue on fiddle–Greensky Bluegrass got off to an energetic start. Early on, the band melded their vocals tastefully, performing with a laidback flourish on the irresistibly catchy “Handguns”.

When it came time to invite Jacobs to the stage, the crowd was unsurprisingly enthusiastic in their support of the former The Bridge front man. “I guess this makes us a sextet,” one member mused as Jacobs plugged in and tested his guitar levels. “Well, this side of the stage certainly did just get a lot sexier,” Beck deadpanned, eliciting a friendly smile from Jacobs.

Working his trademark licks into Greensky’s polished sounds, Jacobs appeared to be enjoying his mini-tour with the band as much as they have.

“They have a very unpretentious and wholesome quality to them that is very likable,” Jacobs later said of the band. “Just a great group all around that is taking the true elements of bluegrass and American roots music and really expanding on it and helping it evolve,” he said.

The evening’s highest moment came when the collaboration culminated in a cover of The Band’s “The Shape I’m In”—a perfect song for a show taking place on the one-year anniversary of the death of Levon Helm.

“I think the smaller the club, the better we sound,” League said Tuesday evening, minutes before taking the stage. “I think the thing that makes the musicians and the band special are the subtleties. In a very large room that’s noisy, you lose a lot of that,” he said.

Indeed, the minutiae League referred to was undoubtedly the crowning feature of Tuesday night’s performance. With the evening’s hushed crowd visibly attentive in contrast to the 8x10’s often boozy party-time hoards, audience members could be seen shaking their heads in bemused amazement at the band’s finely detailed layering.

Pulling together a handful of his most talented friends during his senior year at University of North Texas in 2004, League says the band’s formation came out of a desire to apply his academic studies in jazz to more adventurous material.

“We were all playing more straight ahead stuff because we were all young college students trying to get our stuff together,” he said,  “But I was writing a lot of stuff that was more pop and world influenced, groove influenced kind of stuff.”

An endlessly fascinating aspect of Snarky Puppy’s live show is its alternate cohesion and individual creativity. Keyboardist Cory Henry was particularly impressive Wednesday, equally animated pounding out lines of dizzying jazz, up-tempo synth-funk and cool, hip-hop influenced riffing.

A spectacle all his own, League’s facial expressions, hand-signals to the band, and guileless, boyish enthusiasm serve to further enhance the group’s stage presence. Unsurprisingly, one of the band’s greatest successes has been in recording in-studio DVDs, with a small, attentive crowd present. The DVDs, League says, are an innovative way to circumvent internet piracy while capturing the essence of their in-performance mojo.

“I was trying to create a product that couldn’t be easily burned or stolen, unlike CDs,” he said. “It was a combination of that and also hearing from a lot of people that they enjoyed seeing us more than they enjoyed hearing us. They enjoyed watching us live more than they enjoyed listening to our records. So I figured we should combine the visual element with a high sound quality.”

In addition to their DVD projects, the band has produced a songbook with their technically complicated compositions available to fans as sheet music, including individual parts, scores, and personal notes from League on each song.

Snarky Puppy’s current American tour moves on, stopping at Philadelphia’s World Café Live tonight– another intimately sized venue. With dates snaking along the east coast, winding through the south and heading west, the group will play a one-off date in Australia for the before returning to the DMV for a slot opening for The Roots at the Washington Kastles stadium on June 15th. From there, the band will continue on to Europe, where a stop in Amsterdam will be recorded for official release. The band plans to release three new albums this year; two of which, League shared with the crowd last night, are already being mastered.

Tickets for Thursday night’s show sold out Wednesday, and it showed early on in the evening. Attendance seemingly peaked sometime around the end of Cara Kelly and the Tell Tale’s set and the beginning of Cris Jacobs Band. Cris Jacobs’ current namesake project features an inventive combo that works well in support of his heartfelt songwriting style and penchant for stealing the show with occasionally ferocious lead guitar. The one time front man for The Bridge now performs with Jake Leckie on standup bass, Ed Hough on auxilliary percussion and vocals, former The Bridge bandmate Mike Gambone on drums and most notably, Dave Hadley on pedal steel. While a member of The Bridge, Jacobs’ talents were spread over several genres; his folk sensible songwriting often took a backseat for the band’s upbeat funk tendencies. On Thursday, amongst his own backing band, Jacobs’ songwriting and strong, colorful vocals were allowed to shine.

Following Cris Jacobs Band and immediately announcing themselves as “the best band in the world”, Bobby E. Lee and The Sympathizers were a welcome outlier amongst acts of a more deliberate tone. Unleashing a hyper, satire laced set of blues, speed punk and tongue-in-cheek Americana, the band spuriously bantered in thick, fake Southern accents between tunes about the dangers of Communism and implored the audience of what they hoped to be “good, God-fearin’ Americans” to shout “Amen!” and take off their shirts. With all members eventually shirtless and namesake deviant Bobby E. Lee appearing from behind the drum set to take over vocals and onstage (occasionally off, as well) thrash dancing, the band’s caustic banjo-laced punk momentarily overshadow the spectacle they worked to create.
“We’re kind of polarizing,” one of the band’s drunken members told me after their set, in what might have been the understatement of the evening.

Letitia VanSant’s coincidental misfortune of following an act with as much raw energy as Bobby E. Lee and his gang of loveable make-believe miscreants was quickly reversed when she was awarded the evening’s prize of $3,000 to Guitar Center and a set at one of WTMD’s well attended First Thursday in the Park shows. Regardless, VanSant suffered from her set placement. Though her songs seemed apt enough and her talent obvious, the natural letdown after the previous set made her performance difficult to dial into. Her awarded First Thursday performance, I told myself, would probably make for a more appropriate setting to appreciate her songwriting.

With the crowd noticeably thinning out as the night went on, the energy in the building started to vanish– an almost living representation of the Recher’s no longer sustainable format. Following VanSant, The Herd of Main Street were able to rally the remaining attendees somewhat, as their pop-concious country rock found its well-layered hooks ringing well in the old theater. Particularly, guitarist Gena McKibbens dazzled with spectacular slide riffs and a short-lived jaunt on the pedal steel. As the crowd diminished further, The Bellevederes used the evening’s penultimate set to explore obscure funk covers. With a robust horn section and an uncanny knack for selecting lesser known, groovy funk B-sides, The Bellevederes strengthened the already solid and otherwise seemingly impossible distinction they have as a creative all-covers band.
For the remaining stragglers that caught Sick Sick Birds as the evening wound down, the eerily empty venue appeared vast in its bareness. Still, earlier in the evening, Sick Sick Birds vocalist and songwriter Mike Hall had gushed about the opportunity to play in an event supportive of WTMD. “It’s the only station you can listen to and not know every song,” he said. “We couldn’t be happier that they asked us to play. They’ve supported us so much over the years.”
While Hall and the rest of the evening’s performers seemed focused on WTMD’s supportive role and the opportunity presented by the evening’s competitive aspect, it was impossible as an attendee not to reminisce on the venue’s past in light of its doomed future. As the last attendees funneled out of its doors onto a freezing, silent York Road, the still-lingering smell in the hall remained, encapsulating a foregone era of live music.

“We’ll see, we’re actually still in limbo”, Osborne said in a phone interview on Tuesday. “But if we get in there, it’s gonna be great. It’s super exciting to have people come out and kind of shake [the storm] off for a minute.”  With dates in Baltimore, D.C., Philadelphia and culminating in the Official Participation Party at New York’s Highline Ballroom on November 5^th, the eve of the election, the tour is slated for some of the areas most affected by Sandy.   The tour is a partnership between Magic Hat Brewery and Headcount, a non partisan voter registration group. According to a press release, the tour “seeks to bring together lovers of music, beer and the democratic process to motivate, inspire and unite in this election season.”

This year, the combined efforts of Magic Hat and Headcount have resulted in over 110,000 citizens registering to vote.   Osborne, who left his homeland of Sweden at 16 and traveled the world before settling in New Orleans in 1985, has made regular stops in Baltimore on recent tours. Known for his trademark slide guitar leads, he was joined on stage in his last Baltimore appearance on June 20^th for a nearly hour long sit-in by Baltimore native and former Bridge guitarist/vocalist Cris Jacobs. Reflecting on that night via phone interview, Osborne had high praise for Jacobs.   “He’s just wonderful; I mean his whole personality, his soul. Nice, humble and very, very sophisticated kind of artist. I think he’s spectacular. Great voice. He sings his ass off”, he said.

Recently appearing on David Simon’s HBO series Treme, Osborne has been pleased with the show’s authenticity in portraying post-Katrina New Orleans.   “I think the overall consensus down here is we’re really happy to have it. The filming, the work that we get and parts of it are really spot-on. They do a great job”, he said.   Should the dates go on as scheduled; Osborne and Neville will undoubtedly channel the spirit of post-Katrina New Orleans in entertaining the waterlogged east coast.