Courtney Barnett is coming to MASS MoCA in North Adams this summer, and she’s bring a whole lot of friends with her. The Australian artist and doer of all the things this week unveiled her Here And There touring festival, and among its 15 locations is an August 13 stop out in Western Mass.
Barnett is curating unique lineups for the boutique fest, and on board for the MASS MoCA gig is a pretty impressive slate: Lucy Dacus, Men I Trust, Faye Webster, The Beths, Bartees Strange, and Hana Vu. According to Bowery Boston, tickets go on sale April 1 at 10 a.m., and there’s a pre-sale that begins a few days earlier.
Other stops along Here And There, its moniker taken from a lyric in Barnett’s 2012 song “Scotty Says,” feature a fantastic list of performers, including Sleater-Kinney, Japanese Breakfast, Waxahatchee, Wet Leg, Snail Mail, Alvvays, Caroline Rose, Chicano Batman, Indigo De Souza, Julia Jacklin, and others. Pretty nice.
“When I was a kid I would make mixtapes and dream up my own festivals, I’d even design the t-shirts and pair up musicians for iconic collaborations,” says Barnett. “I’d listen to the mixtape and pretend it was the live recording of a concert, all my favorite artists on stage together. 10 years ago I wrote this lyric: ‘I got lost somewhere between here and there, I’m not sure what the town was called’. Whether that was meant to be interpreted as a geographical, emotional or philosophical journey, I thought it was the perfect title for my roaming festival.”
She adds: “This concept was something that remained floating in the back of my mind when I started playing music. Here And There feels like a natural culmination of energy after years of touring, and ten years of working on my label Milk! Records. It’s something I’ve been forever daydreaming about, and part of an always evolving project to share spaces and build new platforms for art and artists that I believe in… It’s always been important to me to share the stage with people that I admire and artists that inspire me, which is why I’m so excited and grateful to announce this amazing lineup.”
Get the list of all the participants, and participating locations, over at hereandtherefestival.com.
