Highball is a new two-day festival that will take place on October 21 and 22 in Atlanta. Futurebirds will be curating the event which will be produced by Rival Entertainment. In addition to two days of music, Highball will offer local food, and a unique experience alongside the railroad tracks of the historic Pullman Yards. The host band will be joined by Band of Horses, The Head and the Heart, Wednesday, The Whigs, Seratones, S.G. Goodman, T. Hardy Morris and Hotel Fiction.
Band of Horses’ Ben Bridwell recently joined Futurebirds Carter King and Thomas Johnson online for a conversation about the weekend to follow.
Carter King: I’ve got a question for you about Highball. What, what song should we cover together? Should we do a Jimmy Buffett song? If so, what Buffett song are we going to do?
Ben Bridwell: I’m not a big student of his game, honestly. I grew up in a place where it was Hootie and the Blowfish. Every kid in school had a Hootie and the Blowfish shirt on because they’re from Columbia, South Carolina.
What’s up, Tojo? [Futurebirds’ Thomas Johnson enters the call.]
Thomas: Hey, buddy. Sorry, man. I got stuck in Atlanta traffic again.
Ben: You get like the office space thing where like, someone’s like walking faster than your car?
Thomas: Oh yeah, absolutely. I should have walked.
Ben: Well, you haven’t missed much. I was waxing unpoetic on Jimmy Buffett and the correlation to South Carolinians and Hootie and the Blowfish. It’s like a club that I wasn’t a part of for one reason or another. So to cover Jimmy Buffett, like Carter was kind of prompting me—I need to learn more and I’m not afraid to learn more.
Thomas: I mean, the first, the first four records are really solid. It’s not as much of the “Cheeseburger in Paradise” vibe—that kind of happened later. It’s definitely still beachy at times, but it’s not unapologetically and aquatically themed or nautically themed. It’s good country songs.
Carter: I feel for me it’s the same thing—early in life my dad was listening to Buffett and Bruce Springsteen. It was the later stuff and “Come on up for the Rising.” That kind of thing.
Ben: So, before you came on, ToJo, Carter had mentioned what song are we going to cover together? And that’s why we got into Jimmy Buffett. But I don’t believe I, I know enough about Jimmy Buffett…
Carter: Well, what should we do together?
Thomas: Yeah, what’s up? What’s on your mind?
Ben: Well, is it during your set or ours?
Carter: One of each.
Thomas: Yeah, well, you know, I’ll tell you the song, “Still the Same” that we did with y’all that one time, the Seger song.
Ben: Good song.
Thomas: It’s a fucking sick song. In the year since I’ve become way more comfortable with my love for Bob Seger.
Ben: Same.
Thomas: So, I’d be down to do something like that on, y’all’s set, where we just come up and sing backing vocals or something, but, I’d also be down with something that’s a little bit more collaborative.
Ben: Heard that. I know it freaks Creighton [Barrett, Band of Horses drummer] out because I’ve tried to do it a couple times, but Little Feat’s “Willin’”—I love that song so much, but it’s got such a weird kind of like timing grab in it.
Thomas: We did that one with Carl [Broemel].
Carter: Backing up Carl. So you come do that with us.
Ben: Well, if y’all are good at it, I’d be glad as shit to sing that with y’all. We could trade off verses, or I could just hit the backgrounds or whatever. That song is so fucking cool, man. We just traveled from Dallas yesterday or the day before, and I just kept thinking about “Dallas Alice,” dude, like who the fuck is “Dallas Alice?” I thought he was just making shit up because it sounds phonetically pleasing. But something like that would be fun.
We’re about to head out again. So we’ll be gone basically until Highball and we’re kind of in a little bit of a bind, honestly. Cause Brett—Y’all know Brett Nash? He’s in like every fucking band. He plays guitar for us now, but he has to officiate a wedding right at the end of our run, so we’ve got Jordan Hicks from Susto. He’s gonna step in for Brett on these two shows playing guitar. He’s never played guitar with us, so we might just be really cool or really scared.
Thomas: I love it. It’s gonna be great.
Ben: I can’t wait, dude. We’ve been having such a good time man, we’ve been having such a such a good time like on this summer run like I think we’re playing good shows, I think like our crew is so fucking cool man. Like we’re all so like happy together. We’re all like in one vehicle. It’s fucking summer camp, you know.
Do y’all feel as you’ve gotten older, that do you have more peace? I know Tojo, this might be a complicated question because your child’s only two years old.
Thomas: There’s only so much peace that can be had.
Ben: For sure. And it’s tough, like as people’s relationships grow, as they get older it could be a bit more challenging or does it get easier in a way? I feel lately I have so much more room for gratitude. My heart’s just like expanded and my gratitude has expanded.
Thomas: Well, I think kind of what you were just saying—we’ve been through a lot of lineup changes. I mean, the core of us has been the same, but we’ve added as we’ve gotten the ability to—we’ve added some crew members and stuff. And, I feel like we feel as strongly about the crew we have now as we ever have. It really feels like its own family.
I think there’s something about getting older, just being more comfortable with yourself, settling into who you are. For us, just having a lot of lineup volatility over the years, to finally settle into something that feels like home you’re like, yeah I’m definitely very grateful just to be able to play the whole catalog again and to call out random songs and somebody misses a chord or forgets the lyrics or something it’s just funny and everyone’s laughing and everything’s less serious but also it sounds better. I’m able to take that other stuff more in stride. We’ve experienced some growth over the last several years, but it took so long and we had to hustle for so long—I still can’t believe this many people are coming out to see us and that’s fucking awesome.
Ben: Let’s, can we talk about that for a second? And maybe Carter, I can get you to chime in a bit here. But y’all have had, like, you’ve had a really interesting—I don’t want to call it a career trajectory, because it sounds so fucking lame—let’s just say, the level of success that you guys have earned, that you’ve worked for to keep that faith in something that sometimes doesn’t give back a lot of help. The amount of work that you put in is admirable. And to see the songs that y’all make mature as well in a different way. How are you feeling about it at this point?
Carter: think this goes into what we were just talking about. You work so long and hard and it wasn’t always total belief in it—like, what the hell are we doing? There’s burning time, burning energy on something that doesn’t seem to be growing. But then when it does catch on and you have done it by yourself for so long, you end up in a better place. You’re okay with being who you are and comfortable in us doing what we’ve done for the last decade and a half.
Ben: Are you surprised that it’s kind of picked up in the last few years? I come and see y’all’s shows and they’re fucking packed out with young people.
Carter: I don’t know what the hell happened there. We started off as a college band in Athens in 2008 / 2009. And those people grew up with us and started having kids and getting older. And for whatever reason, the last couple of years, these young college kids have caught on again.
Thomas: It kind of happened really quickly, too. We put out a record a couple months before the pandemic hit, but we weren’t able to like go out and play the shows. Then all of a sudden we started playing shows again. It’s like we still had the fans that were there before, and then there’s like kids 10 and 20 years younger.
Ben: I moved up to Arizona under the guise of finishing high school, but I didn’t know nobody. I went up because Archers of Loaf were playing in Phoenix. This band I grew up with living in Irmo, South Carolina, you know they were kind of like our like R.E.M. I got into the show, I was 16, with a fake ID. I was outside their show, when Archers came off, their bus, or their van, or whatever, and I met Matt Gentlen, who’s now in our band, and I swear to God, I mean, that’s like eons ago, you know, that I got to meet my musical hero and now I get to play next to him every night. It’s fucking amazing, man.
I wonder with this earned gratitude that we’re afforded being longer in the tooth and getting to do this job. Do you guys get those moments of euphoria where you look at the person next to you and it’s just like, how the fuck are we allowed to do this?
Thomas: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Carter: 100%.
Ben: All right, I’ll shift a little bit here. I didn’t know that I was gonna fucking be Geraldo to y’all. Okay, you guys have weathered quite the storm, and your whole body of work, and your legacy that you’re building do you think that we’re designed to be future legacy acts?
You guys have the kind of rabid following that you can sustain you throughout the years. Your body of work is so inspiring and so unique that you really do have enough work to sustain you throughout our older years as we go. I really believe that. I’m not sure if I believe that about us, but I hope so.
Thomas: Oh, I do too.
Carter: I absolutely believe that about y’all.
Thomas: I already have a name for it, Ben. It’s the Reverb Revival Reunion Rock Tour, 2035.
Ben: Sign me the fuck up.
Thomas: Let’s call it 2040.
Ben: Let’s be the first ones to take one of those Tesla flights into outer space and t’s all Jimmy Buffett songs.
Carter: Legacy space cruise.
Ben: There we go. Side project, at least. I love you guys fucking so much, man. I can’t believe we get to see y’all at the end of this thing to celebrate. Um, it’ll be our last night.
Thomas: Well, we got a show the next day, Ben. Highball’s two nights—you guys are playing night one. It’s funny because we haven’t really played that many shows together, except for outside that one tour, but it feels like we became closer. Maybe it’s because we have a similar headspace or because we’re genuine fans of y’all’s shit and keep up with you anyways.
I’m going to tie this back for a second for the other guy’s sake. When we were putting on our festival and we tried to do it in 2022 and y’all weren’t available for one. And we ended up behind the eight ball and just couldn’t get our stuff done in time.
But when we were conceptualizing this, we were like “Big brother Band of Horses, let’s fucking go!” We were like, “Clearly they’re going to be one of the headliners. It was just very obvious to us—this is the perfect band and perfect dudes. We wanted the festival to be as much as possible people that we had a history with and that we genuinely liked.
Carter: You guys absolutely were the cornerstone for making this thing happen. It was like, make sure they can do it. I mean, if they can do it, then…
Ben: For real. I hope y’all know that we’ll be bringing it. We feel so fortunate and so grateful. We’re going to bring a vibe there that I think you guys won’t be disappointed by your choice.
I’m not sure if I’ve completely fucked up this whole interview. But, I do believe there’s an overarching theme of gratitude going on here, especially as we’ve had to kind of scratch and claw our way to a place where we can, be functional like citizens also pay our fucking taxes and have a reason to not go to jury duty.
Carter: The people who put on this festival, allowing us to do this and help curate it is mind blowing to us.
Ben: I’m so glad.
Carter: We want to do a really good job and know this is a dream for so many people to get to do this.
Ben: We’ll bring the vibes and y’all we can chat leading up to it too. If there is a song that stands out that we can make something that’s really beautiful. I don’t want to just cover a song to cover a song ever. I want to cover a song because there’s a beauty that needs to be shared in a live setting like that. I’m sure y’all feel the same way.
Carter: Absolutely.
Ben: Let’s find the right thing to do together, but not put pressure on ourselves to do it, just to do it.
Thomas: I agree. A hundred percent.
Thomas: We’ve done that before where we’re like, “Oh, let’s do this thing,” and no one’s really vibing on it or don’t have time to learn it. And it’s just like, that could have been cool, but now I don’t want to do it again because we kind of fell on our faces.
Ben: Y’all don’t ever fall on your faces. Y’all are brilliant, man. My dad introduced me to y’all’s music. So I should say that. My dad gave me my first Futurebirds record—y’all’s Baba Yaga record.
Carter: That’s pretty funny because talking about the young fans, we met some parents and kids that both came out of the show and talking to the dads, “Yeah, you know, during the pandemic, I started playing my kid Futurebirds.” “Don’t even try that. Dad, don’t even try that. You know, I played you Futurebirds.”
Ben: I admit it. I admit it.
Thomas: Hey, Ben anybody else on the Highball bill you’re excited to see?
Ben: Honestly, Tojo. I’m really bad at looking at things ahead of time. Here’s the deal, I’ve tried to learn to hide less. I used to really hide a lot. So I’ve tried to strip those layers away- go sit in the front lounge and be with everybody—go out and see more bands.
So, I know it’s a short story long, I’m excited to see what’s happening at this festival to see and learn of new artists that I haven’t heard yet. And just experience things in real time instead of looking back. I’m really trying to be more present and I’m really excited for all of it. And again, we’re all very grateful to be there. So I think you’ll find us enjoying all of it.
Thomas: I feel like festivals are cool because you can be removed, but still be vibing with the bands.
Ben: Can y’all tell me, who are y’all looking for? What are you looking forward to at Highball? I’m sure there’s a lot of things, there’s a lot of weight on your shoulders and that’s going to be a bit stressful. But what are you looking forward to as far as the joy part of it? Is it playing yourselves or is it hearing other people?
Carter: Yeah, it’s definitely playing ourselves, but getting to get into really organizing a lineup and pick our all-star team from who’s available. I’m so stoked about everyone playing. Have you heard of Wednesday?
Ben: I don’t know them yet.
Thomas: I think, you’d love them, man.
Ben: I feel like we got a lot of stuff handled here.
Carter: A lot of stuff handled here.
Ben: It’s nice to just catch up with y’all.
Thomas: You want to do this once a week?
Carter: Every week, yeah.
Thomas: Alright man. Thanks for taking the time, Ben. Let’s do it again, brother.