Music festivals have been on a tear lately in Tacoma. You've got the 253Heart Festival, Squeak and Squawk, NXNW Metal Fest and the Urban Art Festival - among others. The more these events start happening, the more necessary it becomes for each to have its own compelling voice and vision. It's no longer enough to assemble a big lineup of bands that we see year-round anyway. There needs to be some kind of larger idea at work to make the festival worthwhile.
Coming into its second year, Grit City Fest seems closer to refining that idea.
"This is the year of growth, the year of the learning curve, as I'm calling it," says Quincy "Q Dot" Henry, the music director and co-founder of the festival. "Last year was the first time we'd ever done this kind of event ... (We thought) Tacoma doesn't have an event like this. There's a ton of festivals that go on, but nothing that feels like South By Southwest or Bumbershoot. Let's bring it to Tacoma. We tried it, and we figured out it was a big headache to do it that way, for the first year."
For the first annual Grit City Fest, over half a dozen venues all over town hosted shows. It was a huge undertaking, and the result was attendance that was more scattershot than Henry desires. In preparation for this year's event, the scope of the festival has been reduced and focused.
"Instead of having a bunch of different venues, we wanted it to be one general area," says Henry. "Instead of doing three days, we knocked it down to two."
As for what differentiates Grit City Fest from other events in town, the most obvious difference is the inclusion of hip-hop - which too rarely gets highlighted in Tacoma. But there's a broader idea behind the event, as well.
"All of the other festivals in Tacoma do a really good job of embodying what it is that they're about, be it Tacoma Hempfest or Urban Arts Festival or 253Heart Festival," says Henry. "The whole goal and vision for Grit City Fest is (to be) Tacoma's festival, as a whole, and really represent the city well. I want it to be a vision of Tacoma as a whole, and not just the creative community - the arts community - but just Tacoma.
"It's no secret to anyone in the area that Tacoma is Seattle's red-headed stepbrother," Henry continues. "Nothing like this has come to Tacoma, where we can bring the big local bands from Tacoma and the surrounding areas of the South Puget Sound, but also to bring in other bands, other acts that are nationally known."
Local favorites like Legend of Bigfoot, Sweetkiss Momma and CityHall will take the stage for this year's Grit City Fest, as well as Stalley, and Grieves and Budo - who are gaining traction on a national level. Grieves and Budo met in the underground of Seattle hip-hop and began collaborating in 2008.
"I grew up with a wide taste in music," says Grieves. "When we were kids, it was all about punk rock bands, and shit like that. In high school, I started really getting into hip-hop and started writing. And then I started learning about multi-track recording, and it made so much sense, because I could do anything by myself, and I didn't need anybody else."
As Grieves became more involved in the hip-hop community, he began collaborating and touring with acts like Atmosphere and Aesop Rock. Eventually he hooked up with Budo, a lifelong musician who had begun producing beats.
"I had this amazing opportunity to take an electronic music course when I was in seventh-grade," says Budo. "Looking back on it, that was really a very formative experience for me. It was something that allowed me to start looking at the arrangement of songwriting - layering and textures - in a way that has become the foundation of a lot of the production work that we do now."
Grieves and Budo's latest release, Together/Apart, continues their streak of sensitive, perceptive rhymes sharing space with wiseass asides and crisp production.
Grieves and Budo are just one of many acts taking the stage at Hell's Kitchen for Grit City Fest. Saturday's lineup is described as "rock with a little hip hop," and Sunday is "hip-hop with a little rock." Go both days to really get an earful of what Grit City has to offer.
Grit City Fest
with Stalley, CityHall, SweetKiss Momma, Art Vs. Science, Grieves and Budo, The Breaklites, Spac3man, the Fun Police, Perry Acker, Ben Union, Big Wheel Stunt Show, Deborah Page, James Coates, Royce the Choice, Gerald Walker, Luck One
Aug. 27-28, 4 p.m. to 1 a.m., $8-$20
Hell's Kitchen, 928 Pacific Ave., Tacoma
253.759.6003