Move to the sounds of the band from Atlantis…

January 31, 2020







Citizen Cope



Mike

Move to the sounds of the band from Atlantis…

This week marks one of the biggest weeks of live music of the year in Key West with the return for the third year of the wonderful annual music festival that calls Key West home, the Mile 0 Festival. This is the third year for the festival which brings some of the top name bands in the genre of Red Dirt/ Americana to the island for a week of amazing concerts and performances in front of a large crowd composed mostly of visitors from Oklahoma and Texas.



Suzyjo, Kathy, Carter and Kerry



Stacey and Lindsey

Mayor Johnson

In addition to the kick-off of the festival, this week also brought a return to Key West of one of the island’s favorite musical performers, Citizen Cope, who played a show at the Key West Theater once again. I had friends in town to attend Mile 0, including one of my best and dearest friends, Kerry from Estes Park, so Kathy and I invited her and our friend Andy to attend the Citizen Cope show at the Theater that coincided with the opening night festivities for the festival.







Before that, during the afternoon. Kathy and I headed downtown to pick up our Mile 0 passes and stopped by the Duval Street stage to watch the soundcheck for Shinyribs, the Austin-based Americana, country-soul band who was going to play the free opening night show that starts the festival. It was cool to get a preview, especially since we were going to miss the show to see Citizen Cope, but it is so nice to have musical options now in Key West. For years I lived here basically starving for any sort of decent live music experience and now we have multiple choices on the same night.



The Steel Woods







Shinyribs



Shinyribs

In fact, I had multiple things to do the same night, starting with a quick visit to the San Carlos where they were celebrating Jose Marti’s birthday once again and had a great little event featuring the Key West Comparsa dancers as well as dignitaries reading selections of Marti’s poetry and capping it off with delicious birthday cake. It got the evening off to a fun and festive start.













Nnext it was down Duval Street to catch the opening bands of the Mile 0 fest street concert, Charley Crockett and The Steel Woods. I was bummed that we had to duck out before Shinyribs took the stage as the headliner but was happy to run into some of my friends who were back once again from Oklahoma for the festival. It seems every music-lover from Oklahoma is on hand each year either playing the festival or attending. This year marked the return of our friends Carter Sampson and Jason Scott to play for the third straight year.

Citizen Cope

The Citizen Cope show was a bit of a letdown. The fact that he had brought his full band rather than just doing a solo acoustic show as he had the past few visits to Key West offered me hope that it might be a bit more upbeat than usual, then he went and opened the show with a nine-song solo acoustic set anyway before he even brought out the band. Add to that the fact that the sound was muddled and his vocals were especially mumbled and it made for a less than stellar show.





The fact that a heckler yelled out an obscenity during a quiet moment when he was telling a poignant story was even more dismaying and upsetting. I was embarrassed for the Key West audience and it certainly marred the experience for everyone. In spite of it all, it was great hanging with friends and we had a great evening to get the festival week going.









The next day, Kathy and I officially got our Mile 0 fest started by attending the Gold VIP party on sunset pier. The Festival utilizes stages all over town in addition to the main stage which is at the Key West amphitheater and they do a great job spreading out the music and trying to make most performers play at least two sets so that the crowds have the opportunity to see them. They also go well into the wee hours of the morning with many shows starting well after midnight.







https://mile0fest.com/