Gainesville Florida brings on Playground Festival
gainesville, fl January 20th, 2024
Florida hosted its annual Playground Music & Arts Festival, presented by Florida-natives Flipturn. The festival has grown bigger with each passing year, both in size and popularity. This year, the grounds sported two stages, along with a wide variety of local food and merch vendors, and sold out all of its tickets weeks prior to the event. Fans attended from all over the country, eager to catch some of their favorite acts throughout the day, and to congregate to watch Flipturn close out the festival at the end of the night.
We began the day by catching The Housing Crisis on the secondary stage. The Housing Crisis is a Gainesville-native duo signed to local record label, Swamp Records. They gave a great opening performance and introduced the crowd to some unreleased songs from their debut album, Astral Apartments, which was released 3 days after the festival. Next, we caught Quail Hollow on the main stage, also a Gainesville-native band with Swamp Records. They have built quite a strong local fanbase, and many fans were singing along to their tracks from the crowd. They brought fiery rock & roll energy to the festival grounds by closing out their set with a high-energy cover of The Chain by Fleetwood Mac, with lead singer Dominic Fonseca leaping into a diving roll off of the stage and running into the crowd.
We slowed down with a beautiful set by Corey Kilgannon afterwards, who showcased his guitar prowess on some meaningful folk tracks. His lyricism and personality tugged at the crowd’s heartstrings and had some fans teary-eyed as they swayed to his performance. He brought out his younger sister, Shayla, to sing several tracks with him, and their voices harmonized so beautifully, closing out the set together with some amazing energy. We caught Girlpuppy next, who delivered another ethereal performance as the sun set over the festival grounds. Fans were beginning to get cold, as the January weather is unforgiving, even down in Florida. However, Girlpuppy still got the crowd moving and showcased some of her biggest hits, like For You and Wish.
As the skies grew dark, we were able to catch The Brazen Youth and Trash Panda back-to-back on opposite stages. Both bands brought some serious guitar solos and captivating stage presence, truly putting on a great show for fans as they danced along. Right before Flipturn was set to take the stage, we stopped by the secondary stage to catch Nashville native Liz Cooper, whom many fans were extremely excited for as well. She took the stage by storm, dancing through some of her big hits and engaging with the crowd beautifully. As her set began to wind down, we headed over to the main stage to catch Flipturn’s entrance.
The band built the anticipation with a long instrumental, rising in tempo until they finally ran onto the stage, one by one. They kicked off their headlining set with Churches, a hit off of their debut album, and then they jumped straight into Vanilla and Chicago, two huge hits from their debut EP. Frontman Dillon Basse brought so much energy to the stage, engaging with the other band members and getting the crowd up and moving after some time huddled in cold anticipation. In between songs, they spoke to the crowd about their mission in founding this festival, uplifting the music scene in Gainesville, Florida, and the importance of Heartwood Soundstage as a local venue. They thanked the fans who traveled from near and far to sell out the festival, and promised that new music was in the works and on the way.
As their set progressed, they lit up the crowd with their biggest hit, August, as the entire festival grounds boomed with the sounds of the fans chanting the lyrics back to the band. They closed out the show with an encore of two songs, first an electrifying cover of Tears for Fears’ Everybody Wants to Rule the World, and finally, fan-favorite Nickel from their debut album. Fans roared as Flipturn thanked them for coming and closed out their set with exhilarating guitar and drum solos from the band. As they left the stage, the third annual Playground Festival finally wound down, and fans rushed home to warm back up. It was a wonderful testament to the Gainesville music scene, and always such a treat to see Flipturn perform.