Recap of The Hamtramck Music Festival

This weekend the bars of Hamtramck filled with people who were ready to get out of their homes and see some live music. The First Annual Hamtramck Music Festival was held in place of the Blowout which would historically be in Ham Town the second week of March. This festival boasted over 100 bands from Detroit playing over two nights for only $10. It seemed to be thrown together rather quickly, so we weren't exactly sure what to expect.

The lineup was posted online before the event so that you could plan your route for the night, but just like Blowout, it was fun to go in with a plan and see where the night takes you. When we got down to Hamtramck on Friday we were pleased to see that there was no line to claim will call tickets and we were in and out the door with two bracelets in less than 5 minutes. Kudos to booking company Ben’s Encore for making that pickup so seamless, they seem to know what they are doing when it comes to booking a big multi bar festival. We saw a lot of great music Friday night including Size Queen, Yum, Blaire Alise & The Bombshells and Radio Burns. Saturday night Bars of Gold and Snakewing stuck out as great performances.

This festival reminded us of Blowout circa 10 years ago, before it went downhill, for a few reasons. One, there was a huge mix of music. There could have been a little more hip-hop, but other than that it was a great representation of all kinds of Michigan acts. They also used smaller bars and did not include the big Polish Hall. This made every bar packed and added to the fun of the weekend. Actually, my only complaint was that I wish that they would have advertised that there was a bus going from venue to venue because we didn't learn that until the end of the night on Saturday and we would have been using it all weekend if we had known. We also had so much fun that we forgot to be on our social media game for the weekend. We instagramed and tweeted out as much as we could, but we only captured a few pictures and videos. This is actually a compliment to the festival, it was so packed and we were having so much fun that we stayed in the moment instead of fighting to get our camera out. We did get a great video of Radio Burns for all of you to check out. They were one of the highlights of the weekend and we hope to see them more in the future.

We really only have positive things to say about the weekend. There is something about having a fest that is only in Hamtramck that makes it more fun for the attendees. It even warmed up a little, which made walking between bars that much more bearable. This festival stepped in and took the place of Blowout, but as far as I'm concerned, they did it even better than it has been done for the last few years. I hope they bring it back next year!

~S