FREDFEST
By Ken Shimamoto
An annual spring event here in the Fort – like Gallery Night, Main Street Arts Festival, Mayfest, and hailstorms – Fredfest has gone through some changes over the years, as has its venue, Fred’s Texas Café. I remember years gone by when the entertainment included a bunch of dudes sitting around on lawn chairs, pickin’ and grinnin’. Since Lee Allen started booking the talent a couple of years ago, the two-day-long, eclectic music bash on Fred’s patio AKA “The Fort” has become increasingly professional (and no less of a gas).
Fred’s still offers the best burger in the Fort, for my dollars, and Outlaw Chef Terry Chandler’s specials continue to kick much ass. But changes to the Wild West Side haven’t passed the 30-year-old, family-run business by. I remember thinking “There goes the neighborhood” when the credit card machine first appeared, and when the Frednecks painted over their “Coldass Beer” sign. There have been numerous upgrades to the physical plant, some necessitated by not one but two fires within a year: bye-bye, fonky flyers; so long, warped picnic table. Over the past few months, the wrecking balls have been flying all along West 7th Street, and the terrain surrounding Fred’s now looks like a moonscape, the vista dominated by the cranes that have become the signature sight around downtown. Perhaps anticipating complaints from the yups who’ll people this brave new world (kinda like the ones that shut down open-air live music in the area around 6th Street and Red River in Austin), Fred’s will be enclosing their patio this summer, making thisun the very last al fresco Fredfest.
Over two days, a whopping 17 bands will grace the stage at “The Fort.” Saturday’s card starts at 1pm with Lafayette, LA-based acoustic bluesman Marty Christian, followed by Southern rock jamband the Rambin Brothers. The 3pm slot belongs to South Side faves the Panther City Bandits – kind of a cross between the Dropkick Murphys and Springsteen – followed by eclectic axe-slinger Darrin Kobetich’s bluegrass outfit, the Blackland River Devils. If you dig Texas singer songwriters, you’ll wanna be there between 5 and 7pm to catch consecutive sets by idiosyncratic original Scott Copeland and “Raz on the Braz” host Terry Razor. Closing the show Saturday are the first two installments of the “Matt Hembree Weekend.” The versatile bassist plays in a bunch of bands, and three of them will be playing at Fredfest. At 7pm, it’s smart pop-rockers Goodwin (who finally released their sophomore disc 2 this year), while at 8pm, Fort Worth institution Pablo & the Hemphill 7 will take the stage for a two-hour reggae romp.
Sunday, the tunes resume at 1pm with Tarantula Pants, an outfit that includes a couple of Fred’s staff in its lineup. Darrin Kobetich plays a solo set at 2pm, followed by Soulever Lift (imagine a less metallic Living Colour). Next up is Impulse of Will, the former Wednesday night Wreck Room jamcats, now holding it down at Fred’s and Lola’s, followed at 5pm by Haltom City’s pride, the mighty Me-Thinks, whose frontguy Ray Liberio is also doing double duty in Hembree’s other other band, proto-punk obsessives Stoogeaphilia (along with your humble narrator o’ events). In between will be Proud Warrior, an outfit led by Fort Worth Weekly scribe Caroline Collier and featuring another muso who’s playing three Fredfest sets, Scott Vernon. Besides playing bass with Proud Warrior, Scott’s fronting reconstituted ska-rockers Sally Majestic at 8pm, then backing acoustic magician Daniel Katsuk (back home after a sojourn in Colorado) to close the show.
The $5 cover (to be donated to a charity unspecified as I write this) gets you a head spinning mix of tunes, just a taste of the galaxy of talent that is the Fort. Go check it out so that after they’ve finished building North Dallas on West 7th Street, you can tell all the newbs that you were there Way Back When.