The California rockers returned Sunday to Meijer Gardens, closing out a week of electronic mayhem at Breakaway, Lettuce in Paw Paw and a goodbye for a Grand Rapids favorite.
Going ‘The Distance’: CAKE unfurled a full evening of music at Meijer Gardens on Sunday. (Photo/Veronica Ann Dearborn)
SCROLL DOWN FOR PHOTOS OF CAKE, BREAKAWAY FESTIVAL, LETTUCE, WEATHERHEADS
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It’s been six years since CAKE last shared an evening with a sold-out audience at Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park. As vocalist and primary lyricist John McCrea pointed out, that was “the before times” and a veritable lifetime past — it might as well have been a century ago for all the history and “interesting times” that have since passed.
But as the California pop/alt/rock/funk band demonstrated Sunday night during its packed-to-capacity performance for the amphitheater’s popular summer series, absence only makes the heart grow fonder.
The heavily Gen-X-represented crowd adoringly lapped up the roughly two hours (20 songs) of material and a blissful, mostly phone-free experience (photographing or recording the show was strictly prohibited and enforced). This was a “civilized” evening (McCrea’s descriptor) with the band, complete with intermission, and no opener.
A 20-minute interlude featured the band’s trademark “tree giveaway,” during which McCrea awarded a cherry tree to super-fan Jolene, who said she previously won a tree many years ago at another CAKE show, making her the band’s first repeat tree winner. (You can track the “CAKE forest” on their website to see the concert giveaway trees planted around the world, if you’re craving some wholesome content.)
Even those fans who didn’t make the dendrology/arboreal cut were able to enjoy a set packed full of crowd-pleasing tracks, including opener “Frank Sinatra,” “Sheep Go to Heaven,” “Love You Madly,” “Never There,” “Meanwhile, Rick James,,,” and show closer “The Distance,” plus familiar covers “I Will Survive” and the more-appropriate-than-ever “War Pigs.”
New track, “Billionaire in Space,” from a possibly-forthcoming (but-not-yet-formally-announced) album was another apt-for-our-times offering, and reflective of the band’s “for the common man and the common good” political ethos. – By Tricia Boot Woolfenden
UP NEXT AT MEIJER GARDENS: Andy Grammer performs 7 p.m. Monday, Aug. 18. Tickets are $62-$64, available online here.
PHOTO GALLERY: CAKE at Meijer Gardens
Photos by Veronica Ann Dearborn
BREAKAWAY’S DAY 2
Picturesque Ending: The scene at Belknap Park on Saturday night. (Photo/Veronica Ann Dearborn)
With Friday night proving to be one of the hottest Breakaway Music Festival events on record, the party cloudy skies and light drizzle on Saturday proved to be an amazing respite from the previous evening.
While Breakaway has made improvements every year thus far, this year was clearly different in escalating their efforts. The Launch Pad stage in its second year at the top of Belknap Park is one of the best ideas I have experienced at any festival, in that it is separate from everything else with room to move while remaining intimate, and it also had a proper nightclub feel to it. Worth noting, the new space activation toward the rear of the festival grounds provided much needed additional room for food vendors, with an immersive experience from McDonald’s of all things.
Mount Pleasant’s Delato kicked things off on the Launch Pad stage with a maturity years beyond his age. While his style is somewhere between bass house, progressive house, and tech house with with upwards of 50% of the tacks played being his own productions, it proved to be the ‘right place at the right time’ effort every festival is counting on.
OMNON’s energetic and driving tech house had the Launch Pad moving as one while the sun started to set, and Wax Motif brought it all home with his future-forward stylings by weaving seamlessly through familiar vocals juxtaposed against an underground house rhythm. (Wax Motif also played the after show at The Intersection.)
Rezz closed it all out after rain held off to give attendees a gorgeous sunset and an exclamation point on Breakaway 2025. – By Todd Ernst
PHOTO GALLERY: Breakaway Music Festival Day 2
Intersection After-Party with Wax Motif
Photos by Eric Stoike (On the Run), Veronica Dearborn
THE WEATHERHEADS SAY GOODBYE TO GR
Barb and Pete Weatherhead have led the beloved, Americana-leaning West Michigan band The Weatherheads for decades, but with a planned move south, the group staged its final Grand Rapids show over the weekend at Bud & Stanleys Pub & Grub with special guests Susan Mora on fiddle and Tommy Davis on drums. (Sara Quashnie also joined in.)
As fellow musician Alex Austin put it: “Pete and Barb are the best.” And Michael Packer: “What a great evening. It was hard to say goodbye, but there are adventures ahead.”
PHOTO GALLERY: The Weatherheads at Bud & Stanley’s
Photos by Anna Sink
