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Oct 23, 2015 Web Exclusive By Mark Redfern Photography by Wendy Lynch Redfern

My daughter Rose is just a little over two and a half years old, but she’s already the veteran of three SXSWs. Granted, she was only two and a half months old when she first attended the Austin music conference and spent most of the time in a hotel room with her grandmother, but in hersecond and third SXSW adventures she did witness a bit of live music at Under the Radar’s SXSW parties. When the Landmark Music Festival in Washington D.C. was announced and touted as kid-friendly (children under 10 got in free with an adult and there was to be a kids’ area), my wife Wendy and I decided it might be a good opportunity to take Rose to her first ever proper outdoor music festival. Although I didn’t attend my first full-on rock festival until I snuck into Glastonbury as a 19-year-old with my older brother, as a child I did attend a lot of jazz festivals with my father, a music photographer whose first passion was jazz. Would we regret the decision and have to deal with a fussy girl who wanted to be carried everywhere for two days, or would it be a fun family weekend, or some hybrid of the two? We were willing to find out.

The Landmark Music Festival took place on Washington D.C.‘s historic National Mall, with some of the proceeds being used to help with the maintenance of national monuments there. In order to get to the site from the closest Metro station (which was admittedly quite a hike), you passed by the Lincoln Memorial, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, and the Washington Monument, with the latter being clearly visible from the festival grounds. Our initial impression was one of disorganization. The route to the festival entrance wasn’t well-defined for starters, with an absence of signs. Then I was given a press wristband that was already tightened and wouldn’t fit on my wrist. Instead of simply giving me a new one, I was told I had to go to another tent to exchange it, but when I got there I was then told to return to the original tent. Luckily they resolved the confusion and problem quickly and we found the rest of the festival to be very well organized. No bands seemed to go on late, for example, and bands were staggered on the five stages in such a way that there was minimal sound bleed between the stages and very few conflicts. For example, the two biggest stages were at opposite ends of the festival site and set times alternated so that there were never bands on at the same time on the two stages. Attendees were also allowed to bring in two sealed bottles of water, which could be refilled for free at the two Camelbak filling stations, thus minimizing the litter, maximizing your hydration, and not draining your budget.

Saturday’s lineup was the inferior one of the two-day festival, with only two artists I was truly excited to see (Twin Shadow and The War on Drugs), but that gave us time to ease into the event and check out the kids’ area. Twin Shadow’s 2:30 p.m. set on the main stage (dubbed the Jefferson stage) was the first thing we caught. Rose was armed with her special noise protecting headphones designed especially for kids. Wendy, being a photographer, had a photo pass and the deal was that she would shoot the first three songs of a band in the photo-pit while I hung back with Rose.

Twin Shadow’s main creative force, George Lewis Jr., was decked out in a yellow Yamaha racing outfit, complete with one racing glove. The band took a break from touring after a bus accident earlier this year, but seemed fully recovered and opened strong with “Five Seconds,” “Castles in the Snow,” and “To the Top.” “We just barely made it,” Lewis told the audience, explaining that they had driven 666 miles from Nashville to get to the festival. “Is there a meditation circle going on? Because I want to be a part of it.” Rose started to get restless after a few songs and so we moved on to the kids’ area.

Kidsland featured temporary tattoos and the opportunity to dye your kid’s hair with punk rock colors, neither of which we did. But it did include a fun makeshift photo booth where you could play dress up (in Abraham Lincoln’s tall hat, for example) and take photos. There was also an area where kids could play drums, guitar, and keyboards (Rose had fun on the drums the second day). Rose’s favorite was likely the Lego table.

When we weren’t catching bits and pieces of less than inspiring sets by the likes of Daughter, Band of Horses, Ben Howard, and Nate Ruess, Rose and I would hang out in the media area, which was a private place for the press that sat right on the banks of the Potomac River. We’d throw sticks into the river and at one point, two twenty-something guys rowed by in a kayak and contemplated sneaking into the festival before asking if I could get them some free beers. Ronald Regan Washington National Airport was across the river and the steady stream of jet planes taking off and flying over the festival was an endless source of fascination for Rose.

Finally 7:30 p.m. came and it was time to see The War on Drugs on the Miller Lite stage, the second of the main stages. Considering the Philadelphia band’s Lost in the Dream was both my personal #1 album of 2015 and Under the Radar’s, it was my most anticipated set of the day. Of course, after hours of omnipresent clouds threatening to rain, the start of The War on Drugs’ set was when it actually poured. Luckily it only rained this once the whole weekend. Rose lasted about two songs before she made it clear she was unhappy with the wetness and the noise and the flashing lights. After the third song Wendy emerged from the photo pit and took Rose back to the media area as I watched the rest of the set alone. The band was on good form and are definitely very well-suited for the outdoor festival stage, and were even better than when I saw them at SXSW back in March (where they did play an extra long set for a SXSW show). Lost in the Dream opener “Under the Pressure” helped get me through me some tough times last year when my father passed away, so it was particularly emotional hearing that one live again. I did wonder if later, once Rose is old enough to appreciate music, she’ll be mad at her younger self for skipping out on The War on the Drugs after only three songs? Then again, back in the media area she got to eat free ice cream. As Wendy and I care little for headliner Drake and as Rose’s usual bedtime approached, we left the festival a little early and Rose fell asleep on the Metro ride back to where we were staying.

The first sound we heard on day two was Maryland rapper Ace Cosgrove’s decidedly non-kid friendly profanity laced hello to the audience at the start of his set (we were just walking by). New Orleans jazz and rock legend Dr. John was over at the Miller Lite stage and was much more kid friendly. His set wasn’t particularly loud, no kid protecting headphones required, and was funky enough that Rose danced around and made friends with a little three-year-old boy while Dr. John played his 1973 hit “Right Place Wrong Time.” The 74-year-old Grammy-winning Rock and Roll Hall of Famer seemed a little out of place among a lineup populated by many musicians who likely weren’t even born when he scored his biggest hits, but Rose enjoyed it.

Wendy took Rose to Kidsland while I went to the Roosevelt stage and watched Hiss Golden Messenger, a band whose name I’d heard often but whose music I hadn’t really heard much. Their set was probably the biggest surprise of the festival. For some reason I was expecting some sort of stripped-down folk, but the band really rocked out and got into a groove.

Lord Huron drew a sizable crowd back at the Miller Lite stage, but the wind really blew their sound around. I was a fan of their first EP, but wasn’t as impressed by their subsequent two albums. Their set was very earnest but generic, but got the job done well enough, despite battling a lot of audience chatter (at least where I was standing).

The Suffers are a Houston neo-soul band who likely garner frequent comparisons to Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings. And while they weren’t as tight as Ms. Jones and her band, frontwoman Kam Franklin has a strong voice and stage presence to spare. I only caught the last song by Rhiannon Giddens and immediately regretted not seeing more of their gospel-inspired music.

I caught up with Rose again in time to watch her play drums and keyboards in Kidsland. Then I took her to see TV on the Radio at the Jefferson stage. She did not like it (she put her hands over her ears). I’m generally a fan of the band, but admittedly they didn’t sound that great at the Landmark and so we left their set early (I was happy to hear early single “Young Liars,” though).

Baltimore’s Dan Deacon put on a typically fun and high-energy show, but a lot of what he was doing went over Rose’s head. Also, he was very loud and I discovered that Wendy accidentally had taken Rose’s headphones with her up in the photo pit, which put a damper on things and meant we had to stand far away from the stage.

Seeing Deacon live is as much about audience interaction as it is the music. Deacon had the audience leave an open space in the center of the crowd for a dance contest (rule #1 was to be “sassy as fuck at all times”). At one point he jokingly commanded, “This side of the field dances as if all the money that went into making Jurassic World went to public schools.” Deacon at first performed as a duo, with him on electronics and with a live drummer, but then he brought out a horn section. “If you’re unfamiliar with how high you can jump, now would be a good time to test that out,” Deacon suggested towards the end of the most pure fun set of the festival (although a lot of it was lost on Rose, who was probably a bit overwhelmed by the chaos of it all). Later Rose got to meet the very nice and down-to-earth Deacon in the press area (I’d met him a few years earlier when we did an Under the Radar cover photo shoot with him at his studio in Baltimore) and he was impressed that she was attending a festival at such a young age.

Rose seemed into British art-rockers alt-J and made it known she liked their single “Left Hand Free.” They played the same stage TV on the Radio just had, but their sound mix was much better.

And then it was the moment I was waiting the whole festival for. If you were to ask Rose who her favorite band is right now, she’d answer with no hesitation “CHVRCHES.” The British electro-pop trio is the only act she’s ever called her “favorite band” in her short life thus far, and their recent single “Never Ending Circles” is her “favorite song” (granted, she has other favorite songs by other artists too). If the song comes on the iPod her one-word response at the end of it is always “again,” and she’d happily listen to it many times over. I even emailed their publicist to relay a message to the band that it would be great if they’d play “Never Ending Circles” at Landmark and she assured me they would.

In the run up to festival, we had built it up that she was going to get to see CHVRCHES. And there we finally were. CHVRCHES took the stage and the first song they played was “Never Ending Circles”! Rose was excited and sung along. This was her first experience seeing a favorite band playing a favorite song live and I was there to experience it with her. Alas, Rose started to lose interest after the second song and began to get fussy. She was also fighting me about putting her headphones on, to the point that a twenty-something woman standing near us stepped in to encourage her. I was taken aback at first until she explained that she was a professional nanny (and her approach worked too).

I first saw CHVRCHES back when they first played SXSW and hadn’t even released their debut album yet. Back then, frontwoman Lauren Mayberry was a little timid and lacked much in the way of stage presence. The band’s live show has improved exponentially since then, and Mayberry was in full command of the stage and the audience as she made funny self-deprecating jokes. As Wendy had to go over to the main stage to prepare to shoot headliner The Strokes, I took fussy Rose back to the media area. We could still kind of hear CHVRCHES in the distance and Rose had calmed down and realized what she was missing, saying, “Let’s go see CHVRCHES again.” So I picked her up and we ran back to the stage where they were playing, Rose encouraging me with “Faster, Daddy, faster, Daddy.” We made it just to time to catch the last song.

I’ve never been a huge fan of The Strokes, so once Wendy had shot the first three songs of their set we left the festival. We could still hear them play “Last Night” as we were walking past the moonlit Lincoln Memorial back to the Metro station. And with that, my daughter’s first festival experience was over. If there were any question as to whether or not Rose had a good time, it was answered the next morning when she asked if we could go to the festival again, and answered once more the following weekend when she asked with hope in her voice about our weekend plans. “Are we going to the festival again?”

Check out a full gallery of photos from The Landmark Music Festival here.