Small music festivals are a dime a dozen and tend to be hit or miss as to their success. The Rock for Independence Festival at Texas Ski Ranch in New Braunfels wasn’t a miss, it couldn’t even be bothered to step up to the plate.

Full report below.

Lame baseball analogy aside, the “festival” was really just a handful of people and a couple of rickety stages. Almost no promotion was done for the event, save a notice on Facebook, and it showed. Unless there was a huge influx of people after 8pm to see Indofin and Grimy Stiles, the total attendance to the day-long event appeared to be somewhere around 30 people. Some of these poor souls paid upwards of $20 a ticket to sit around and watch the tow cables go round and round. From time to time, a wakeboarder would liven things up.

The festival featured two stages, 20 bands, skateboarding, wakeboarding and more. And it had all those things, kinda. The second stage was a joke, there were no skateboarding that I saw, wakeboarders lazily circled the little lake, and the 20 bands made up the bulk of attendees.

To compound the problem of no people, some of the music was just bad. Case in point, I present The Dick Brown Experience. Their tinny sound was accentuated with poor off-key vocals and lyrics likely written by a drunk fourth grader. I’m one to give the benefit of the doubt to bands; I respect that they come together and make music. I gave these guys a chance and decided I would rather endure 24 hours of Nickelback than listen to one more song from Dick.

While it wasn’t nearly as bad as Thunder of the Gods, it was just a bad day to be a music fan in New Braunfels. Just look at the second stage above. No one in sight and it wasn’t even very far away from the main stage.

I was kept entertained by a few of the wakeboarders and the goats on the little island so I can’t chalk it up to a complete loss. Actually, yes I can. Rock for Independence Fest was the worst music festival I have attended, and I have a few under my belt. It was completely underwhelming, even with the great space at Texas Ski Ranch and Grimy Stiles, Indofin, and The Couch playing live. Let me learn from this event and be more discerning in the future.

(Cross-posted to Examiner)