The festival season has definitely started, summer is here. In social media you could read and see the last days everywhere how the diligent helpers were at the final preparations for their events. So also in Steffisburg: From 1st to 3rd June,at the 2nd Music Days Steffisburg in the middle of the village everyone was rocking, dancing and enjoyingthe sun. The small, fine music festival brought us not only many great bands to discover virtually on your doorstep, it also attracted in the first two days, more visitors than expected.
Lots of love for the programme
Also this year many great bands performed in Steffisburg. As last year 13 in number, but the programme really went straight to the heart and the anticipation of the programme was huge.
Read all about the first edition of the Music Days Steffisburg in 2017 here: day 1 | day 2 | day 3
The programme was great last year as well, but unlike the first edition, this time – so I’m talking about myself, of course – there were more bands to discover.
The whole programme looked like this:
| Friday, 01 June 2018 | Saturday, 02 June 2018 | Sunday, 03 June 2018 |
|---|---|---|
| Friskit Hot Like Sushi The Souls |
Frost & Fog Nacnecc Modern Day Heroes Delilahs Dada Ante Portas |
Nils Burri The Cavers Wintershome The Gardener & The Tree James Gruntz |
Of course I was happy to see known bands like The Souls, Nils Burri and James Gruntz again. But with Hot Like Sushi, Delilahs, Wintershome, The Gardener & The Tree, Nacnecc, Modern Day Heroes and The Cavers bands performed that I did not know yet, but wanted to see some of them live for a while already. And at Music Days Steffisburg, they were virtually playing at my doorstep.
Optimized festival area
A few things have changed at the festival site this year. Actually not much, but the small changes make difference and especially bring more space. The food stalls and the bar have been moved from their original corner to the opposite and put into a food tent or into a great, covered bar. It looks really nice. So, there is more space under the roof, if it should rain. For that we were really lucky though.
Relaxed festival start with Friskit
Despite the fact that the frontman whirled quite energetically across the stage on this warm summer evening, the festival start with the six-member Thun band Friskit was rather quiet and unhurried. That was just from their sound, which was in the genre reggae/ska and came along a little more relaxed. Definitely impressive was the voice of front man Bryan, who for example performed “Let’s keep walking” or the latest single “Hope”. At first glance, you wouldn’t have expected such a voice from him.
Even sushi is getting hot
Where the name came from, they didn’t tell us, but with a band with such sound, even sushi is getting hot 😉 After a break the trio around frontman Elias Arx proved: “Not everything from the 80s / 90s was bad”. Something like that was said by the event presenter. 😉
Hot like sushi are not just retro and super mulit-colored. Their sound is very catchy and invites to dance. With cheeky, but witty sayings they meanwhile ensured best entertainment. They even played a complete self-promotion from the tape and kept letting us smile again and again. So the audience loved to sing along to “Yeah Yeah” and tried to get them the 10 points, which, according to the band, you’d get for audience participation at contests.
more photos of Hot Like Suhsi can be found here
In between, the band also promoted their self-proclaimed super fancy videos, such as “Purpose” (you can have a look HERE) or the single “Do You Wanna” released in March (can be found HERE). The desired mosh-pit or dimished kiddies-moshpit unfortunately didn’t happen. So, that’s maybe why they did like the previous aperitif a little bit more than the audience?
I thought it was a pity when Elias’ former band Rag Dolls broke up. Just when I finally saw them live and liked them. But now he is in this new, funky trio. A pretty crazy trio, you really like to watch and listen. So of course, an encore was not missing.
Surprise of The Souls
If The Souls are on stage, my fan heart beats a bit higher each time. Especially if they play live again after 6 weeks of abstinence from the stage (last seen at Zermatt Unplugged, read HERE).
more photos of The Souls you can see here
Even they didn’t need anything from there, they made a stop at Landi on the way to Steffisburg for safety’s sake. Not that, as happened before, the concert will not be good, just because they didn’t. That didn’t happen. For their concert at home on the Music Days stage, The Souls brought with them a lot of energy and fun.
While Rally ran his fingers gallantly over the keys, Mitch and Luk grabbed the strings and made their guitars howl. With songs like “Move on”, “Something Good” and “Fighting In The Moonlight” they spread good mood and summery feelings. When frontman Jay once again hit the very high notes on “Silverrain” or “Stay”, you got goose bumps even in these summer temperatures.
To use the short time, this time there was only a short band introduction. But the band surprised with a new song. Due to the fact that I somehow only heard half of the previous explanation, I first didn’t get it. I wondered all the time if I knew the song or not ;). By the way, the band wants to go to the studio for the next few weeks. Maybe there’ll be a new album soon. However, they do not just want to complete the “Close My Eyes” tour this autumn, but this whole era.
And who pays the penalty ? 😉
The by the township approved time already 15 minutes overrun (at 11 pm it should actually have been finished), there was no more encore after the last song “Run Baby Run”. Who’s selling most merch, got to pay the penalty for it, the organizers joked. Kinda mean, since some do not own any merchandise 😉
The audience was sent home or into city for the after-show party soon after. Yes, somehow not so great. But since it started to rain, the least probably found it really bad and wanted quickly to get into the dry. And besides, there were two more festival days ahead.
Highlight of the day:
Even though The Souls are my favorites, to finally see Hot Like Sushi live – especially because I liked them so much – was my highlight of the day.
Info about Music Days Steffisburg can be found here: music-days.ch
Information about the bands can be found here:
