Rock the Garden 2022 (Garden Stage)

One of the best music festival around, Rock the Garden returned after a two year absent due to the pandemic.

The festival is broken up on two stages, the main stage and the Garden Stage… which, this year was curated by Low’s Alan Sparhawk.

It made sense that Sparhawk asked Divide and Dissolve to play RTG this year… having supported Low on their tour earlier this year. The Australia duo of T//R and S//N (Takiaya Reed –guitar/sax; Sylvie Nehill- drums) drove 18 hours to play Minneapolis. As we wrote in 2018, the duo often talk between their songs about abusive police power, worldwide white supremacy, seeking to empower black and indigenous people. They reminded us that the land we are on belongs to the Dakota people and that we should give it back.

Next up as Dâm-Funk (stylized as DāM-FunK), American producer from Pasadena, California. He is mostly by himself with his laptop, playing some funky tunes and live-mixing.

DāM-FunK is currently signed with Stones Throw Records.

After an introduction for “Blow” by Diane Miller from The Current’s Local Show, Duluth’s Low (Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker) took the stage… with new bassist Liz Draper. Former bassist, Zak Sally was also spotted in the audience.

Low has been around for a long time, well before I first saw them in May 2001: “…Low came on stage with a chair. Singer Alan Sparhawk sat down and played some acoustic numbers, which inspired about twenty or so people in front to also sit down in the center. The whole thing had, if you’ll excuse the pun, low energy.”

Luckily, they weren’t as slowcore as I remembered, they were actually a little upbeat at this year’s RTG performance.

In fact, their latest album Hey What, which came out last year on Sub Pop, was produced by BJ Burton (who previously did wonders for Bon Iver, Charli XCX and Lizzo). Hey What was nominated for Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical category at the 64th Annual Grammy Awards.