Now/It's: Live On the Green 2017 - Week Four

And just like that, Live On the Green 2017 is over. In no less than a month's span, Nashville's most popular free festival reached yet another exuent, but unlike years passed, 2017's iteration actually featured an curious sliver of drama.

Now, let it be known that it should never be one's wish for anything lurid or malicious to happen with regard to the festival - and nothing did - but there were some interesting wrinkles that served as more than sizable obstacles in the free festival's annual blowout bash. 

Unless you live totally off the grid and somehow managed not to go outside this past weekend, then you are aware of the utter and total devastation of Hurricane Harvey. Tempestuous winds and torrential downpour would seemingly subside by the time the category three storm-turned-tropical-depression's path reached Nashville, but such a thought was swiftly disproven.

Sheets upon sheets of pelting precipitation and cacophonous thunder forced Lightning 100 and the Live On the Green crew to cancel the Thursday night performances of John Butler Trio, Iron & Wine, Dispatch, and more.

In the end, Live On the Green's cancellation was absolutely the right call, and wasn't a total loss, as Iron & Wine moved their set to Third Man Records' Blue Room, and Dispatch performed an impromptu (and incredibly intimate) set in the bowels of the courthouse parking garage.

But even despite the sagacious move by Lightning 100, Live On the Green, and those who help put on the festival, there was still an amusingly large number of people who were so perturbed by the move, they felt keen to cry fraud.

In talking to friends that work for the Lightning 100 and Live On the Green, an unruly faction that felt so (ironically) entitled to their VIP packages (need I remind them, the festival is free) that they felt the need to uphold the spirit of circus ringleaders everywhere, or in other words demand that "the show must go on."

Said unruly faction of entitled buffoons took to their keyboards to message Lightning 100 so as to make their pseudo perspicacious musings of "Surely War Memorial or TPAC could have accommodated the festival." I'm sorry sir or madame, but that simply is not how business partnerships and the logistics of music festivals work. 

Anyway, back to recapping the festival itself - sure, it was a bummer not to see Iron & Wine on the courthouse lawn (his new record is fantastic), but Day Two more than managed to make up for the missed moments of Thursday on a day as saturated with talent as the courthouse lawn on Thursday night. From the humorous musings of Bahamas, the road dawg kings of Nashville - Cordovas - to the harmonious moments of The Lone Bellow's set, to the over/under of Future Islands' Sam Herring dropping an f-bomb at the festival - "Fuck yeah. I asked if I could curse, and they said no, because it's a family show. My bad." 

The final day was more of the same - rescheduled, but solid from top to bottom. Sheryl Crow reminds everyone why she's still a household name, and Drew Holcomb quietly asserts his standing as Nashville's most beloved band leader. So with all the drama that coincided with the beginning of the final weekend of LOTG, things turned out aces, exactly the way it should have. While it's going to be a little while until Live On the Green returns, but at least there's a good taste for us to ruminate on for the next 335 days.