Northlands Festival returns

As John Shields begins a phone interview, he’s also readying a jagged week of travel, a mini-tour that includes a quick show in Wisconsin, followed by his band’s first Bonnaroo, and concluding with the fifth annual Northlands Festival in Swanzey.

“It’s wonky,” he allowed with a laugh, “but the money’s good.”

A decade ago he co-founded the Charleston-based duo Little Stranger with Kevin Shields. Kevin and John aren’t related, but their shared last name has confused fans and strangers alike for years. They’re used to it, though. “Some people say, ‘I was just talking to your brother,’” John said. “At this point I’m like, ‘hell yeah, we’re brothers.’ We’re all brothers, man.”

The two did go to high school together outside of Philadelphia but ran in different circles and played with different bands. They reconnected years later, after John had attended the College of Charleston, played in a local band there, then moved back to Philly. After that, John returned to South Carolina and uncertainty.

Facing a music career playing in a wedding band or cobbling together restaurant gigs, he reached out to Kevin. A carefully composed email — John called it “romantic” — was enough to convince his friend to follow him south.

“I basically courted him to come down and join me in Charleston,” he said. “He did it, and he’s been here since.”

In short order they threw their gear in a Hyundai Sonata and embarked on a years-long grind through bars and clubs. Greg Knight saw them play for 15 fans at Brooklyn’s Knitting Factory in 2021 and came away impressed. Now he’s pleased to have them near the top of the bill at the festival he and Seth McNally launched a year later.

For McNally, Little Stranger’s brand of road-tested hustle is exactly what Northlands was created to celebrate.

“Independent festivals are crucial, beating hearts for the live music ecosystem,” he said in an email. “Northlands offers artists a relaxed environment to actually hang out, cross-pollinate, and collaborate with one another in an intimate setting.”

For first-timers at Northlands, McNally promises an experience that feels less like a concert than a community.

“We’ve designed the weekend to feel like a massive family reunion,” he said, “a boutique-style gathering where community, art installations, live muralists, and eclectic local food and craft vendors share the spotlight with the big bands.”

Little Stranger resists easy genre classification. Listeners and critics have variously called them hip-hop, indie, and reggae-adjacent. Shields has come to countenance this ambiguity. “Early on, I worried it would be a liability, but I’ve come to like that, and I think our fan base really enjoys it too.”

Live, Kevin acts as emcee with John live looping on guitar and employing drum and bass pads. A sax and trumpet player joined not long ago. “To beef up the live sound,” Shields explained, adding that shows are varied. “Something funny could happen in the crowd that becomes a thread throughout … we try not to repeat the same set every time.”

A new studio album, Broken Hearted Boys Club, arrives July 17. Little Stranger’s third LP, it includes collaborations with Andy Frasco, whose band The U.N. is playing Sunday at Northlands, along with members of the band’s growing extended musical family. The title refers to how a few of the latter group became John’s roommates.

“Four years ago I went through a bad breakup, and then Damn Skippy went through a bad breakup,” Shields recalled. “I was like, come on, move in, buddy. Then another good friend went through one, so we named the house Brokenhearted Boys Club. That’s where a ton of the music was made.”

Shields believes the new record is their most cohesive to date.

“There’s maybe a little more honesty in the lyrics,” he said. “We always write better when we’re happy, but even the sad songs on this one are kind of upliftingly sad. It’s the homies helping the homies out.”

The production, he continued, is intentionally raw, with fewer vocal edits, less tuning, more first takes. The Frasco collab, “Love You When I’m Sad,” is the third song the two have written together. “We banged it out in an afternoon from scratch at the house,” Shields said. “He’s just easy to write with, always throwing out ideas. He’s a great writer.”

The release will be followed by their biggest tour yet. They’ll play 800- to 1,500-capacity venues and, a far cry from their Hyundai days, travel by bus.

“That’s a big milestone,” John said, giddy. “It’s the first time we’ve truly lined up an album drop with a tour. Our albums always take longer to finish than you’d think. We feel like we nailed the rollout on this one.”

Northlands Festival
When: Friday, June 19, through Sunday, June 21
Where: Cheshire Fairgrounds, 247 Monadnock Hwy., Swanzey
Tickets: $25 and up (single day), $269 and up (three-day pass), northlandslive.com

Festival main performers
Friday, June 19
Dirty Heads, Little Stranger, Mihali, Circles Around The Sun, Ghost-Note, Magoo, Night Zero, and Hayley Jane Band
Saturday, June 20
Joe Russo’s Almost Dead, Dogs In A Pile, Lotus, The Slip, Kanika Moore & the Brown Eyed Bois, and Caylin Costello
Sunday, June 21
Disco Biscuits, Andy Frasco & The U.N., Super Sonic Shorties, Moontricks, Jennifer Hartswick Band, Dizgo, Sqwerv, Annie in the Water and DJ Brownie.

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.