The Forecastle Music Festival, now entering its 14th year, will take place this weekend in Waterfront Park up in Louisville, and frankly, Lexington officials have had enough of it. For the past fourteen years dirty hippies from all around Southern Indiana make the annual trek south for the Louisville music festival, and they bring their parents’ money with them – and now it’s Lexington’s turn to get a piece of that action.
Former Vice Mayor and avid clarinetist, Jim Gray, has helped form a task force for Lexington to get in on the tourism cash cow that is outdoor music festivals. The group has hit the ground running and plans to have their own startup festival, “Fivecastle”, begin later this weekend.
“Fivecastle – not only is it better than Forecastle, but it’s a full one better,” says Festival organizer Chris Cross. “The festival will take place all over our fair city, on 5 different stages, that big castle out there on Versailles road, both White Castles, and a couple of the Castle Jewelry store locations. If you like music, just come on over here.”
Cross loves the festival format, but feels that the Louisville based Forecastle has grown a little stagnant with booking acts over the last 7 years. He opined, “Look, what Forecastle did a million years ago was great, but we think Kentucky is missing out on a whole new group of millennial hippies with their most recent lineup. I mean, who booked this one anyway, someone that was into music back in 2009?” Forecastle being headlined by the likes of the Avett Brothers, Dr. Dog, and Death Cab For Cutie has many asking, “What, was Jason Mraz busy?”
Fivecastle would certainly be breaking new ground here in central Kentucky given Lexington’s limited experience with hosting outdoor music festivals. Lexington’s only previous attempts at hosting an outdoor music event would be that time Billy Gillispie parked his SUV right next to you at Keeneland with his windows down blasting “Wagon Wheel” on repeat for 3 hours or when Twitch and the Z-Rock morning crew did a live broadcast outside of Platinum Plus.
No one is expecting Fivecastle to be an overnight, runaway success. Forecastle has a huge head start and can hang their hat on media clippings like when Rolling Stone called Forecastle “one of the coolest festivals in America”. However, Fivecastle is already starting to see some buzz since Tops In Lex is hailing it as “another place for us to take photographs of rich white people”.