THROUGH THE LENS: Brandi Carlile’s Mothership Weekend and JJ Grey’s Blackwater Sol Revue

Two recent roots music fests in Florida are featured this week: Brandi Carlile’s Mothership Weekend (May 10-12) and JJ Grey’s Blackwater Sol Revue (May 25-26). 

Being namesake festivals, their lineups reflected the unique perspectives their host artists have on roots music. However, both took a similar approach to their presentations by offering a select number of performers (three or four) on a single stage each evening and landing on the calendar shortly before the summer heat hit full blast.

Last year’s inaugural Mothership Weekend was featured in this column with reporting and photos from Boom Baker. He attended again this year, and his photos, along with those of Alan Perry, are featured in the gallery below. Meanwhile, it’s a double Through the Lens first for Blackwater Sol Revue: This is the first time it’s been featured, and the photos are provided by a photographer new to the column, Alycia Pollock. 

Brandi Carlile’s Mothership Weekend 2024 

Brandi Carlile’s Mothership Weekend is one of six festivals that Topeka Music Vacations has or will present this year. Held at the Seascape Resort in Miramar Beach, Florida, and selectively curated with sets of engaging music on a single stage each evening, Topeka bills these festivals as “boutique music vacations,” and I’d say they live up to that promise.  

Held during Mother’s Day weekend, and presided over by Brandi Carlile, Mothership Weekend was focused on motherhood. Nowhere was this more apparent than when Carlile and the Hanseroth Twins’ children shared the stage and sang, along with their parents, the poignant lullaby “This Time Tomorrow,” featuring the lyrics that only a mother could write: “You know I may not be around this time tomorrow but I’ll always be with you.”

Carlile indulged her love for covers during her sets, highlighted by Paul McCarney’s “Live and Let Die,” Queen’s “We Are the Champions” (which Boom called “incendiary”), Elton John’s “Madman Across the Water,” and Joni Mitchell’s “Carey,” on which Tim Hanseroth played an Appalachian dulcimer. SistaStrings joined in with the spiritual “Wade in the Water” and Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water.”

The fest saved its best moment for the finale, during Bonnie Raitt’s closing night set: Boom told me there was a wave of emotion that swept over the audience when Raitt performed the Grammy-winning “Just Like That,” a song about a transplant recipient meeting the mother of the son whose heart was now beating in her. And another crest came later in the set, when Sara Bareilles, S.G. Goodman, Nickel Creek’s Sara and Sean Watkins, and Carlile joined Raitt for James B. Coats’ 1946 ”The Sweetest Gift,” a song about a mother’s love for a imprisoned son.

JJ Grey’s Blackwater Sol Revue 2024

JJ Grey’s Blackwater Sol Revue was first held in 2008 at the spacious St. Augustine Amphitheatre in St. Augustine, Florida. As it is presented by St. Johns County Cultural Events Division along with Friends of Anastasia State Park, this fest is also like family, albeit a bigger one, to the local community. Grey is a North Florida swamp rocker who specializes in funkified rock and front-porch Southern soul music. His festival lineup reflected that perspective. 

Grey and his band Mofro headlined both days of the fest that also featured The Allman Betts Band, Lucero, American Aquarium, and someone I don’t think gets enough praise, Anders Osborne. The Osborne set was a bit different: a duo show with saxophonist Brad Walker.

Despite the amphitheater’s size, there was a front-porch vibe, and the only negatives of the weekend were a huge downpour that occurred on day one and somewhat unseasonable oppressive heat on day two. But that was a meager price to pay, Alycia says, for so much great music in the picturesque city of St. Augustine.

Click on any photo below to view the gallery as a full-size slideshow.