Sweetwater 420 Fest has more than a two-decade history in Atlanta starting out as a local festival at Candler Park before growing to a national festival at Centennial Park with four stages. In 2023, the super popular brewery retrenched the festival onto the brewery grounds and this year has built it back up to a multi-stage, two-day event at Pullman Yards, a newer performing arts venue in town. The headliners are Slightly Stoopid and Gov’t Mule on Saturday and Beck and Big Gigantic on Sunday. Of course, Gov’t Mule now features Atlanta’s adopted son, bassist Kevin Scott, so that’ll be a must see set.
There’s also a solid undercard both days starting early so come on out and I’ll see ya for a bunch of great funk and jam sets. Here’s the rundown of what I’m looking forward to each day.
Starting off early, Couch is another band that I’ve earmarked to see based on a killier set I saw at Hulaween last October. Their infectious pop-funk with funky horn licks catchy lyrics and great vocals was a great intro and I’m ready for more.
Larkin Poe is fronted by the sisters Rebecca Lovell and Megan Lovell. The roots-rock band started in Atlanta so it’s a bit of a homecoming.
lespecial is a power prog-rock trio that has a fantastic new album Odd Times. They’re sets are high-octane and they’ll have the whole crowd head-banging for the entire set. As far as I can tell, they’ll be one the hardest-core of the whole fest.
St. Paul & The Broken Bones could be a headliner in my book. Their soul and blues review is an amazing throwback to bygone days of great songs with fine lyrics, vocals, horns and overall instrumentation.
Andy Frasco & The UN equals bedlam and a fantastically-fun set at the same time. Frontman Andy is a force to be reckoned with and the whole band has as much of a good time as the audience. Basically, they throw a party — and play at it with and among the fans. Every show of their’s that I’ve seen, Andy crowdsurfed so I suspect we’ll see that as well!
Sunday has another packed schedule starting off with Atlanta’s own five-piece soul/pop/rock band Hedonistas. The band released their latest and greatest album Just Right last September and it’s packed with toe tapping sing along songs to get the blood flowing.
Ripe is a funky young band out of Boston and they’ve had some major streaming and festival success including at Atlanta’s Candler Park Festival and Hulaween FL. The have some very catchy vocals and slick horn licks so get out early at 230 for them.
Papadosio is the main jamtronica band on the program and they’ll set the right tone for a heady day as the brewery likes to say.
Cory Wong is probably the most prolific, most prodigious guitarists out there ring now. In addition to headlining his own band, he also tours regularly with Vulfpeck and the supergroup The Fearless Flyers. He’s headlined Variety Playhouse, played many festivals including Sweetwater 420 and he’s a personal fave and a super nice guy on top of all that.
The first time I saw Trombone Shorty was at the Atlanta Jazz Festival back in 2010! I remember being amazed and thinking that I would be seeing that kid for many years to come. Nowadays, he’s a featured finale act at the renowned New Orleans Jazz Festival so it’s quite a feat and a treat to have him back at 420.
Moe. bring their jam heavy sound to the second day. For me, the vibes and the added keys get me excited for the guitar dominated jam sound. The band is a prototypical jam roots band that I first saw at Bear Creek Music Festival in 2010.
A highlight is gonna be the instrumental electronic hip hop and jazz musical duo Big Gigantic comprised of Dominic Lalli on sax and Jeremy Salken on drums. Haven’t had a chance to see them in a while but I did catch Dominic with Lotus last year in Coloroado and he’s an amazing player. This set will be epic.