Hawkstock kicks off the weekend early at the Granada

May 3, 2024

Nick Spacek,

The Whips. // photo by Nick Spacek

Hawkstock
with The Whips, City Hall, Rudy Love and the Encore, and Lavender Bride
The Granada
Thursday, May 2

Ah, Stop Day Eve. The night which officially kicks off the last three days before finals start at the University of Kansas, wherein college kids get one last weekend before summer starts to hang out, kick up their heels, and get nicely faded.

Lawrence funk act the Whips put together a fully-danceable four-band bill for Thursday night, bringing to the party themselves, plus City Hall, Rudy Love and the Encore, and Lavender Bride.

Lavender Bride. // photo by Nick Spacek

Lavender Bride kicked things off with a short set of pop, occasionally shot through with indignant anger at relationship drama. It was never not an energetic demonstration that you can have a blast while also being pissed off. A couple of covers, including one from Father John Misty and Vanessa Carlton’s “A Thousand Miles,” give a pretty solid base for their sound, which went from soaring pop to sad bops, sometimes within the same song.

Rudy Love and the Encore. // photo by Nick Spacek

The drummer for Rudy Love and the Encore soundchecked his vocals with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme, garnering cheers before they’d even properly kicked off their set. It was an indication of just how much fun the Wichita musicians were about to bring. Their set was expectedly good – frontman Rudy Love Jr. is, of course, son of the legendary Wichita soul musician Rudy Love – but the mixture of ’80s funk, classic soul, and modern R&B was refreshingly vibrant. It seemed to never take a moment to breathe, even slotting in a reggae-tinged funk break of Smashmouth’s “All Star” early on, bringing an eager crowd to the dance floor. When they brought the Whips onstage with them to create an 11-person band, the Granada went absolutely wild. It was dummy good in a way which made me giddy with pure, goofy-grinning joy.

City Hall. // photo by Nick Spacek

City Hall played hard-edged jangle pop. It was as if college radio from the early ’90s had been run through a blender, strained, and presented straight. Big vocals, which swung between soaring, crooning, and belted, were paired with insistently propulsive, choppy guitar riffs anchored with a rock-solid bottom end. Maybe like Vampire Weekend listened to a lot of Alice in Chains? That’s still wrong, but the five-piece was the odd band out with the three other, more directly dancey bands, yet their sheer unfettered energy made them fit right in. Also, when they launched into their cover of Hüsker Dü’s “Don’t Want to Know If You Are Lonely,” I held up a hand, stopped the conversation I was having, and yelled out, “Holy shit! The kids are all right,” and goddamn if they aren’t.

Headliners and show organizers, the Whips, absolutely killed it.

The six-piece knows how to make a crowd of college kids fucking move, and from the minute a massive drumroll brought the band onstage, through an early in-the-set singalong to “Beggin’,” and through to the end, the whole place was bopping along. I feel like every four or five years, the students of KU get blessed with a party band, and for the past few years, it’s been the Whips. Who knows how long we’ll be lucky enough to have these guys, but getting to watch them grow from house parties to headlining at the Granada is a journey for which I’m happy to have been along. Go see ’em. You won’t regret it.

All photos by Nick Spacek

The Whips