Rock the Garden 2022: Photos and highlights
by Staff
June 11, 2022
After a two-year hiatus, Rock the Garden returned to the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden on Saturday, June 11. Sunshine greeted festivalgoers for a day of live music on two outdoor stages. Check this spot for updates throughout the day.
Bombino
Bombino provided a perfect re-entry to Rock the Garden following the two-year hiatus. Backed by insistent drums, growling bass and jangling rhythm guitar, Bombino launched into blues-tinged North African grooves, tracing pentatonic-scale shapes up and down the fretboard of his chiming electric guitar. Dressed in bubus, traditional Taureg attire, Bombino and his bandmates — Kawisan Mohammed (rhythm guitar), Youba Dia (bass) and Corey Wilhelm (drums) — soon got a sizeable number of the crowd dancing joyfully in front of the stage, matching the band’s irresistible rhythms.
Interaction with the audience was sparse, but the music did the talking. “English is very hard for us,” admitted bass player Dia, alternately switching from English to French, the latter of which was met enthusiastically by a not insignificant francophone contingent in the audience.
The songs flowed seamlessly from one to the other, maintaining an upbeat spirit throughout the set. “With Bombino, there’s never a setlist,” Wilhelm explained afterwards. “It’s all feeling. Bombino sees what’s working with the audience and calls the songs as we go.” - Luke Taylor
Divide & Dissolve
The Australian doom metal duo took the stage as some clouds moved in, gracing the sweaty audience with some shade. Takiaya Reed began by looping a haunting saxophone riff. Its ominous sound juxtaposed with Reed’s bright pink sunglasses and the smile she flashed at drummer Sylvie Nehill, who quickly joined in for their first song, “Black Vengeance.” Reed took pause between songs to discuss their affiliations with the land they stood on, noting it both as the home state of Low — who they’ve been touring with — and a site of international trauma at the hands of the Minneapolis Police Department. Both members of the band have Indigenous roots and as a result the band delivered a deeply decolonialized message through their stage remarks and sound. Each song in their set was a sonically explosive exploration. The noise filled the space and shook it. - Darby Ottoson
Beabadoobee
After Bill DeVille introduced Beabadoobee, the London rocker and her band wasted no time ripping into a set of power-pop songs that had the audience captivated from the first downbeat. During the third song, the audience were singing so wholeheartedly they could be heard belting out the lyrics to “Care” from backstage. None other than Corin Tucker of Sleater-Kinney made her way to the wings to snap a smartphone photo of the band in action. The set comprised tunes from Beabadoobee’s 2020 album Fake It Flowers and this year’s Beatopia, as well as from the intervening year’s EP Our Extended Play and 2019’s Space Cadet.
Beabadoobee quieted things down for a bit when she gave a solo acoustic performance of “Coffee” before ramping up the energy again with the dynamics-hopping “Sorry.” The next song, “She Plays Bass” had the audience completely engrossed in singing and dancing (save for a bit of playful distraction from a supersize beachball making its way among the crowd). Beabadoobee seized a moment during “She Plays Bass” to introduce bassist Eliana Sewell, as well as drummer Luca Caruso and lead guitarist Jacob Bugden. (Bugden’s cool glasses and shock of bleach-blonde hair lent him a resemblance to Chris Collingwood of power-pop icons Fountains of Wayne.)
A moment of drama ensued during Beababoodee’s self-declared favorite song from Beatopia, “See You Soon,” when Caruso’s drum shield collapsed into his kit. After a scramble by the quickly responsive stage crew, the group closed out the set with a string of rockers given extra punch with the drum shield now gone, the audience hanging on to every last beat, lick and lyric. - LT
Set List
Worth It
Together
Care
Talk
He Gets Me So High
Coffee
Sorry
She Plays Bass
See You Soon
Back to Mars
Last Day on Earth
Cologne
DāM-FunK
The earthling known as Damon Garrett Riddick put on a set of interstellar funk as his DāM-FunK persona. He brought constant encouragement to the crowd over the course of a hybrid performance and DJ set. The funky tools of his trade kept evolving: Korg synths, turntables, and a sassy white Keytar. During an absolutely shredded solo, he drove that Keytar like he was behind the wheel of a Pontiac Fiero hugging the turns on the Pacific Coast Highway. The nods to Prince were subtle and overt throughout the set, including a triumphant roll out of “Controversy.” When he told the crowd to “just bounce,” we fell hard into the groove. “Keep your funk signs up, Minnesota,” he said. And we did with joy. - Reed Fischer
Sleater-Kinney
As Sleater-Kinney walked on-stage, a full hill of fans erupted in cheers. The iconic punk rock band that formed during the Riot Grrl movement in the 1990s clearly hasn’t lost their relevance. Similar to the age of those dancing in the audience, the setlist spanned decades, pulling from 1997’s Dig Me Out to their most recent and first self-produced album, Path of Wellness, released in 2021.
The performance was incredibly tight. After 10 albums, Sleater-Kinney are seasoned and wicked smart musicians. Vocalists and founding duo, Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein know exactly how to complement and make room for each other as they wove together wails and melodies. Their sound isn’t stripped down these days, but rather full with the support of a keyboardist, additional guitarist, and drummer Angie Boylan, replacement for long-time member Janet Weiss, who left the band in 2019.
The crowd kept jumping and screaming along until the very end, as Sleater-Kinney wrapped up with “Entertain” and “Modern Girl” - both from 2005’s The Woods and both prime examples of the band’s signature critique of consumerism, gender roles and sticking to the status quo.
As always, Sleater-Kinney played like they have nothing to prove and the only role they have to fill is the one they chose. - DO
Set List
High in the Grass
All Hands on the Bad One
Bury Our Friends
Worry With You
Surface Envy
Can I Go On?
I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone
Price Tag
Shadow Town
No Cities to Love
The Fox
A New Wave
Reach Out
Modern Girl
Dig Me Out
Entertain
LOW
The return of LOW to Rock the Garden was a celebration of the band’s 2021 masterpiece HEY WHAT. The first five songs dove deep into the album’s complexities and heightened the dynamic shifts between soft a cappella harmonies and walls of roaring distortion. Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker were joined by bassist Liz Draper, who added a satisfying rumble to “Days Like These” when it explodes midway through. The set felt like a delayed local celebration of the Duluth band’s umpteenth boundary-pushing classic. All the tracks flowed together much like they do on the record, and LOW made sure everyone could revel in its jagged beauty.
The set wrapped with a few back catalog favorites, including “Plastic Cup,” a song that fans were hoping to hear the last time Low graced the Rock the Garden stage. Before closing it out with a rockin’ “Canada,” Sparhawk joked that their last song would be “Do You Know How to Walz?” — the song that totally engulfed their entire 2013 performance. He remarked he was pretty pleased to be leading a clap-along all these years later. - RF
Set List
White Horses
I Can Wait
Days Like These
More
The Price You Pay (It Must Be Wearing Off)
No Comprende
Plastic Cup
Canada
Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats
“It’s been a couple years,” Nathaniel Rateliff observed from the stage, gazing out at the fan-filled hillside at Rock the Garden. “We’ve missed you all. We love you guys. It’s so good to be back.”
Rateliff hadn’t been in Minnesota since March 2020, when he was touring in support of his solo album from that year, And It’s Still Alright. Now back onstage with his full band The Night Sweats, Rateliff and company rolled out a passionate set of songs from all three of their albums, including their latest release, The Future. In the lead-in to “A Little Honey,” Rateliff was proud to remind the audience that that song’s video was filmed on location at the Turf Club in St. Paul.
In a notable change from earlier performances, Rateliff appeared hatless — a symbol, intended or not, of opening up his whole self to the audience, and they responded in kind. The evening proved a catharsis as the band and audience engaged in a dialogue they hadn’t enjoyed in more than two years: the band giving their all — including keyboardist and bandleader Mark Shusterman appearing to direct both band and audience — as the audience bobbed their heads, danced, clapped and thrust their hands in the air in a glorious reunion that included several instances of call and response. Later on, Rateliff repeated his earlier sentiment, telling the crowd between songs, “We thank you for all your years of support. We love you guys so much.”
Perhaps in one of the set’s most poignant moments, Rateliff held a microphone in his hands, standing at the lip of the stage, ostensibly singing to each and every person in the audience: “Just remember, I’m on your side.”
And there was no doubt the feeling was mutual. - LT
Set List
The Future
I’ve Been Failing You
Look It Here
I’m On Your Side
You Worry Me
Baby I’ve Lost My Way
So Put Out
A Little Honey
Love Me Till I’m Gone
Face Down
Oh, I
Hey Mama
Survivor
Coolin’ Out
I Need Never Get Old
Out on the Weekend
S.O.B.
Love Don’t
