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What Made Milwaukee Famous
Austin (not Milwaukee’s) What Made Milwaukee Famous —- vocalist/guitarist/keyboardist Michael Kingcaid, guitarist/keyboardist Drew Patrizi, bassist John Farmer and drummer Jeremy Bruch —- has every little rock ‘n’ roll duck that a band needs to thrive lined up in a row.
Except for an over-the-top live show.
They’ve got the well-crafted songs, they’ve got a singer in Kincaid who can croon and coo like a bird, and they’ve got a rock-solid rhythm section between Farmer and Brush. Unfortunately, the band’s late-afternoon ACL set on the Austin Ventures Stage was too routine and a touch too conventional for the expansive Zilker Park setting.
While several bands broke past the festival prosceniums to gain a closer connection with the audience, WMMF kept using their between-song banter to lure the audience to their autograph session in the Waterloo Records tent.
Despite all the band’s courting, the set highlights included the Beatles-esque bounce of “Sweet Lady” and the Who-inspired keyboard arpeggios vs. guitar rock of “Idecide.”
WMMF is a great band with an original spin on indie rock that should take them very far. Now let’s see whether its ACL performance, and its slew of touring to come, yields its stage show to be less of a paint-by-numbers affair.
(photo by Ricardo Brazziell AMERICAN-STATESMAN)
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