Bunbury 2K15: The Music, The Food, The Fun

Posted July 1, 2015 by shooting in Uncategorized / 9 Comments

Walk the Moon- Photo by Kari Becker

I attended the Bunbury Music Festival in Cincinnati, Ohio, with my sister, Kari over the second weekend in June. We were provided with free tickets to review the show, but all opinions throughout this post are our own. This post will be a mix of bands, food, and other festival notes. I will have future Bunbury posts too, so if you have any specific questions, please let me know and I’ll answer those later!

Friday, June 12

First off, the main band of Friday was Walk the Moon (at least for my sister and me). The leading artists for each night were actually The Black Keys, The Avett Brothers, and Snoop Dogg (yeah, that was a bit random to me too.) With an already full weekend and some random rain, we didn’t see any of the main bands. However, we saw the artists that we really wanted to check out and that’s the main thing I think!

Walk the Moon – Photo by Kari Becker

Walk the Moon were a lot of fun and definitely high energy. My sister was closer to the stage, but she still had to use the two screens on both sides of the stage to get photos. There were a ton of people, but Walk the Moon is a Cincinnati band, so it makes sense. One of the changes for the main stage this year is that there was another large screen further back from the stage so it allowed people in the way back to really see what was happening on stage. I stayed back for most of the shows on the main stage, so this was great!

Walk the Moon- Photo by Kari Becker

Like I said above, there were some random rain showers that were a bit of a bummer. This seems to happen a lot at Bunbury, which is interesting since this year’s show was moved from the second weekend in July to the second weekend in June. At any rate, where Bunbury is located, there are two big bridges so a lot of people just hung out under there until things died down. I was pretty soaked by the time I reached one, but it was still better than standing in the rain non-stop.

Saturday, June 13

Graceful Closure- Photo by Lauren Becker

On Saturday, I immediately went to the stage where Graceful Closure would be playing. This stage is here every year, but what was different is that there is another, new stage to the left of it. Bunbury limited its stages this year which meant less walking between them, but it also limited the amount of artists that could play. I think it also caused a lot of congestion throughout the festival too; I talked to some other people that had been to previous festivals and they all seemed to agree that it was a lot more crowded, for whatever reason.

Graceful Closure is from Columbus, Ohio, which is one thing I love about Bunbury. They are always featuring more local artists that I didn’t know before. I listened to a few of their songs before the show, so that’s why I decided to see them live. They were a lot of fun, but I still think “Chasing Fears” is my favorite from them.

Graceful Closure – Photo by Lauren Becker

The singer/guitarist and drummer are brothers, and the guy on keyboards (photo above) is an old friend. I always like hearing how people know each other within a band!

Graceful Closure – Photo by Lauren Becker

Graceful Closure- Photo by Lauren Becker

I think the band did a good job at interacting with the crowd. They even played some cover songs, which was nice for those that didn’t really know their lyrics yet.

Graceful Closure- Photo by Lauren Becker

And finally, some girls in the crowd were yelling for them to play Echosmith and the lead singer was like “Oh, you’ve seen Youtube” because they have a cover of “Cool Kids” on there. He let the girls all come on stage to help him out, because he hadn’t sung the song in awhile. These girls were all from England and Ireland, which is kind of awesome. Unfortunately, they didn’t really help with the song, so another girl came on and helped a bit more, which is nice! It was still a fun, spontaneous moment.

Later that night, I went and saw Kacey Musgraves. She was an interesting addition to the festival as she’s mostly country, but I think she fit in really well. She was a lot of fun and quite humorous! 

Kacey Musgraves- Photo by Lauren Becker

I knew some of her music beforehand, but I really fell in love with her stuff. She has two albums out now (the second was just released this month) so I need to buy those!

Kacey Musgraves- Photo by Lauren Becker

There isn’t a whole lot to say about Kacey besides the fact that I think you should check her out. She’s fun, down to earth, and perfect for fans of country and those that aren’t so sure! She’s very real, and I love that.

Sunday, June 14

Brand New – Photo by Lauren Becker

On Sunday, I had to see Brand New because they have been a favorite of mine for years and I’ve never seen them live. Sorry the photos aren’t that great – I was taking them off the back screen on the main stage because I wasn’t that close to the actual stage. This was a good show though and they played a nice mix of older and newer songs, which is nice!

Brand New – Photo by Lauren Becker

One of my favorite songs by Brand New is called “Jesus Christ” and they played that, which really made my night. I wasn’t sure if they would! Overall, it was a nice show and I’m happy to say that I’ve seen them live now.

All About That Food

Most of what my sister and I ate over the weekend were things that Bunbury had offered in the past. For example, we both had a smoothie from Maui Wowi. One of the things that were new is that they had flavored ice and oh goodness, this was fantastic. I had it Saturday and Sunday. Most flavored ice is mostly ice in my opinion, but these guys were not stingy with their flavoring!

On Saturday as well, my sister and I both got noodles from Island Noodles. We were going to bring some home for my mom but by the time we went back, they had closed up for the night (this was Sunday, I believe at that point).

Despite some of the usual, Bunbury did mix it up a bit this year with some new items. For one, they had Auntie Anne’s pretzels and lemonade which I love and it tasted great. However, I don’t think they are equipped for a festival. They had to make the pretzels at their truck and then bring them all the way to the booth where people ordered, and they only had so many pretzels each time. You stood in one long line to order and then another to wait for pretzels.

Photo by Kari Becker

And finally, on Sunday, I had Hungry Bros. Food Truck which is located in Cincinnati and just opened this past Spring. They were so good! We ran into a couple friends after Brand New so we all decided to go here and the friends both got something called Kevin Bacon something. Sorry I don’t know the full name! I tried some and oh so yummy!

Photo by Kari Becker

The photo of the Kevin Bacon is above. I personally had a root beer float, which believe it or not, I have never had before. But seriously, amazing. I really love having cold options at festivals because it’s so hot!

That Other Booth

Photo by Lauren Becker

And finally, I should mention that there were some merch booths as well as other booths to buy clothes, jewelry, etc. This one is called Arnar Limited and a friend of mine was helping to work the booth all weekend. My sister ended up buying one of the pocket tees you see in the photo. They are really cute and they look super comfy. My sister really likes the one she got. There was a girl there under the booth sewing on the pockets herself, which was cool to see.

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And that’s it! Sorry for the long post, but I didn’t want to break everything up too much. If you have questions, let me know!

9 responses to “Bunbury 2K15: The Music, The Food, The Fun

  1. I have no idea what a float is, I'm guessing it's something like what we call a Spider. Coke, with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. It looks amazing Lauren and I'm a big fan of Walk The Moon as well. It sounds like a really eclectic mix of indie and alternative bands, why on earth would they put Snoop Dogg on the bill for, he's pretty much a has been isn't he? That Kevin Bacon concoction has me wanting to lick my screen, it looks disgustingly unhealthy but super delicious! So glad you and your sister had an incredible time Lauren and thank you so, so much for sharing <3

  2. That sounds great with the music, shopping, and food. This was an amazing experience. I'm not familiar with all the bands. I love alternative music, but haven't been listening to a station steadily.

  3. Looks like a lot of fun! It's been a while since I've gone to a music festival. :/ I love how these are mostly indie bands. Oh and the food! That looks super nom. 🙂 Thanks for sharing, Lauren!

  4. How fun! I love attending festivals, and I could tell that you and your sister had an awesome time! I love all of the pics 🙂 Thanks for sharing!!!

    Lindy@ A Bookish Escape

  5. Fun! I've never been to a music festival or concert or anything like that, really 🙁 I would like to go, though! They look like so much fun!!

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