The Third Annual Atlantic Antic Outdoor Rock'n'Soul Festival launches at noon this Sunday, at Magnetic Field in New York. The free event, as the wordy title implies, will feature acts from across the gamut of soul-sticking sounds. Boss Tweed, the first of the many locally based bands to perform this weekend, step out in a hollow-bodied Rockabilly twang and meander to more of a lounge bass-lead soother that should be perfectly palatable for noon on a Sunday. The Coydogs, another New York get-up, have a country kernel that leans less to the “Alt” variety and more to an unalloyed version that includes slide guitar, without getting to an argument of authenticity (think Pace picante sauce commercial “Get A rope!”). They even resemble some of Johnny Thunders' later work, stylistically.
The Soul Shakers, from Harlem, are a modern and veritable doo-wop outfit that pays homage to the early-fifties bird-named originators like The Swallows, and The Larks ,with vocal harmonies and covers of the genre's classics that are congruously soulful. The Dansettes are a girl fronted trio whose sixties girl-group style should meld well with the rest of the day's acts. The archetypal sixties garage revivalist, The Fleshones headline, but the days standouts, which coincidently are the only act not from New York to perform at the event, are the Reigning Sound. Headman, Greg Cartright has the gruff soul-rung trachea capable of delivering ballads with model sweet-hearted delivery, and then as if he were riding a boomerang, turn around and belt out a gut-wrenching and neck-breaking screamer that is sure to pull the hair from the back of your neck.
Here the Reigning Sound play "You Got Me Hummin" at Bottom Of The Hill last Nov in San Francisco.
