Photo by Madeline Harvey.
At the Trans-Pecos Festival of Music + Love, music starts at seven and goes till midnight (1am on Saturday night), giving the guests plenty opportunity to rest up during the day and focus on the single stage of music each night. It’s kind of like attending a regular concert with openers and a headliner, but with the same people, over the course of a long weekend, and you’re in the middle of the desert. The desert is essential to the atmosphere here. Wide skies throw loose clouds over pure blue and divulge constellations hitherto unknown to many city dwellers. The stars pour down all the way to the horizon in the dark, moonless night, creating a seamless gap into the twinkling lights that illuminate the festival grounds, further lit with soft diffused yellows and blues from inside tents, shadows of folks moving in abstract patterns.
Photo by Madeline Harvey.
Friday’s music begins with Ross Cashiola, a local Marfan who gives us down to mid-tempo, sad alt-country songs. With a smooth twang, Cashiola waxes poetic on themes of humanity and our short time alive. Dedicating a song to a friend who left earlier that morning, he begins singing about the spirit’s need to be free, a West Texas attitude that is captured with the sun setting behind the audience. Cashiola sings to the sun as it too leaves us for the evening to come and replace it.
Photo by Madeline Harvey.
Elizabeth Cook follows Cashiola, offering her own Nashville outlaw country tunes, singing about too much drugs and too much sex, bad decisions and dealing with the consequences, shrugging it off and cracking another beer, running her fingers through the mullet of an El Camino driver. Though her lyrics and her voice carry grit and character, she tells us she’ll be leaving for rehab the next day, that she’ll be going away for a little bit to get better. Backed by two fellows, one on bass and one guitar, they mix in a few gospel tunes saying, “This is my last Jesus song. But I’m gonna fucking drive it home,” as if she’s looking for redemption for her sins in the homage she pays by singing to her savior. Appropriately, Cook dedicates a song to Nanci Griffith (an Austin original and longtime Nashville resident), who helped Cook get her feet wet in Nashville. Though Cook did her damnedest, she didn’t cut it in the country music capital. But look at her now, doing her thing in Marfa, TX, saying thank you and goodbye as she trots out to rehab. Her joy and gratitude for being in Marfa represent the El Cosmican values: “…living a life of self-determination. We believe in tuning in, dropping out and being here now.”
Photo by Madeline Harvey.
Cook packs up her guitar and leaves the stage as Ben Kweller and his band get ready to increase the volume and let the reverb bounce of the mountainsides. In his introduction, we find out this is his 3rd or 4th time here at the festival, and his enthusiasm to “be here now” is palpable. He immediately rips into “Commerce, TX,” a song on his wonderful debut album Sha Sha about a North Texas town. The energy doesn’t cease after that. Mixing in more songs from his debut, he peppers in songs from the rest of catalogue: “Sundress,” “Penny on the Train Track,”and “Falling.” Kweller is my highlight of the weekend. I have seen him once before and listened to Sha Sha religiously through my high school years. It has been a soundtrack for me, and I’ve even written about it before. Maybe it’s his voice and the eternal fountain of youth that flows from it. Maybe it’s the power chords or the lead guitar lines that are more about muscle than technicality. Maybe it’s the simplicity. Whatever it may be, it was nice to see Kweller on the grounds before and after his performance, hanging out with his kids and hearing them say, “Dad! Look at me.” That shrinks the festival to a community-level size where friends come together, or people come together to become friends and rejoice in the presence of new family.
Photo by Madeline Harvey.
The night is capped with a first-time-in-Marfa-performance by the Old 97’s, a Texas band led by Rhett Miller who proudly proclaims himself a seventh-generation Texan to the audience as founding member of legendary LA-punk band X, John Doe, joins the stage. He played earlier in the evening and Miller is beside himself as they roll into another tune. The band plays a massive set, full of hits from their 21-year career. Miller begins to tell us a story about a couple who is attending the festival and were married earlier that day. “They invited me, but I, couldn’t, make it,” says Miller. He asks if they are there, to which two hands shoot up towards the sky. “Well here’s the song you should’ve requested,” and the band plays “Question,” their biggest mainstream success. A magical end to the evening as we celebrate the second night at the Festival of Music + Love, newlyweds in our presence. The band practically tears down the stage, ending their encore with “Timebomb,” off their third studio album, Too Far To Care.
Photo by Madeline Harvey
Again, we shake our heads in disbelief at our good fortune to find ourselves in Marfa this weekend and laying witness to a diverse cast of highly talented musicians. I zip open my tent, crawl into my sleeping bag for the second time and drift off, awaiting our third and final day in El Cosmico. We’ll bring you our third and final installment tomorrow.
Select any of the photos below to open in slideshow viewer. All photos © Madeline Harvey & Pop Press International.
