The O+ Festival began in Kingston in 2010 with a proposition: What if artists and musicians could exchange their work for healthcare? Sixteen years on, the Artist Clinic still operates during festival weekend, with volunteer providers offering care to the people who make the festival happen. The exchange now continues throughout the year, including primary care at O+’s Wall Street storefront. A donation-based festival wristband helps support that work.
For most of us, though, O+ happens out in the streets. A parade goes by. You walk into a deli and find an exhibition. Someone plays a theremin in a church. October 9–11 brings more than any one person can see, so consider this an invitation to follow your curiosity—and occasionally your ears.
ALL WEEKEND
If You Want to Watch Kingston Change Color
New O+ murals | Locations across Kingston
Over the years, O+ artists have painted over 70 murals across Kingston, changing the visual look of the city one wall at a time. This weekend, you can watch the next ones take shape: BoogieREZ and Mr Ewok One at Good Eat’n on Broadway; Sam Kirk at the Makery; Casey Inch and Hannah Williams on Smith Avenue; and the Living Letters Collective at the Schwenk Drive municipal lot.
If Your Record Collection Needs Wall Space
The Steve Keene Art Store | Rocket Number Nine Records, 50 North Front Street
Steve Keene painted the cover of Pavement’s Wowee Zowee, along with artwork for Silver Jews and the Apples in Stereo. His paintings belong on living-room walls as readily as record sleeves: He works on plywood panels in batches, keeping original art within reach of ordinary budgets. During O+, the Hirshhorn Collection presents the Steve Keene Art Store at Rocket Number Nine Records, where you can browse paintings just beyond the vinyl stacks. Go looking for a record and leave with something for the wall. The shop is open Friday and Saturday, 11am–6pm, and Sunday, 11am–7pm.
FRIDAY
If You’ve Ever Wanted Art With Your Sandwich
“Of Paper and Plate” opening | 6–9pm, Market Basket Delicatessen
Site Seen has made a practice of putting art where people don’t expect to find it: a former Kingston shipyard, a vacant Dollar General in Esopus, and now a working deli. Co-curators Aleksandra Scepanovic and Jennifer Miller let each location shape the exhibition. At Market Basket, 14 artists’ work sits amid the daily traffic of sandwiches and errands, asking you to look again at a place you might usually pass through. Friday’s opening runs from 6 to 9pm; the show remains on view all weekend.
If You’d Like the World to Sing in Perfect Harmony
Ladies of the Valley | 6:30pm, Old Dutch Church
Chloe Cannon, Malerie Day, Katie Jones, Rose Stoller, and Carly Walsh came together through a shared love of Joni Mitchell. As Ladies of the Valley, they bring their distinct voices to folk, soul, covers, and original songs, finding harmonies that belong to all five. They open O+’s weekend at Old Dutch Church, a fine room in which to hear what happens when those voices meet.
If Your Fairy Tale Needs an Accordion
Dust Bowl Faeries | 7:45pm, Somewhere Solar Stage
Dust Bowl Faeries make accordion-driven dark cabaret and freak-folk, a combination that suggests the house band at a carnival you entered by accident and have no intention of leaving. Their set offers a good reason to wander toward the Somewhere Solar Stage after dark. If you prefer your festival music with theatrical flourishes and a little dirt under its fingernails, here’s your stop.
If You’re a Fan of Knee-Slapping
Comedy Showcase | 9:45pm, O+ Exchange Space
By this point on Friday, you may have marched in the parade, inspected art beside a soup tureen, and heard cosmic soul and foot-stomping Americana. Sit down and let somebody tell a joke. Sarah LaDuke hosts a showcase featuring Beth Carestia, Gary Levitt, Gina Ginsberg, Griefcat, Rachel Summers, and Sarah Mesler at the O+ Exchange Space.
If Ani DiFranco Had a Texan Baby
Blair Baldwin | 10pm, Snapper Magee’s
Woodstock-based Blair Baldwin came out of Houston and musical theater, but her new EP, proof of life, hits with distorted guitars, big vocals, and a healthy refusal to be told what to do. “Men May Rule” takes aim at power; “WUT?” turns defiance into a hook. Baldwin brings those songs to Snapper Magee’s, Kingston’s punk dive, where their edges should be right at home.
SATURDAY
If Your Festival Day Begins on Two Wheels
Group bike rides | Morning departures
There are several ways to arrive at O+ on Saturday feeling you’ve earned lunch. The rides leaving Overlook Bikes range from a self-guided 25-mile route to a 55-mile road ride, with 39-mile road and 40-mile gravel options between them. An 11am mural-to-mural tour leaves from Keegan Ales for riders more interested in painted walls than mileage. The rides reconvene for a barbecue at Blue Duck Brewing from 1 to 2:30pm.
If You Want to See a Tree Change Its Address
“Nobody Told the Flowers to Come Up” | Saturday, 11am, Forsyth Park
The physical theater and Butoh dance company inkBoat brings a moving tree to Forsyth Park—literally moving, with human attendants helping it reach a new home. Shinichi Iova-Koga, Dana Iova-Koga, and Cass Tunick perform to live music by Danny Tunick in a piece about planting hope for the future. Enter by the Lucas Avenue playground. If Saturday’s weather intervenes, the performance moves to Sunday at 11am.
If Bali Is on Your Bucket List
Gamelan Kingston | 11:30am, Old Dutch Churchyard
Gamelan Kingston brings the layered sounds of an Indonesian percussion orchestra into the Old Dutch Churchyard. If gamelan is new to you, this is a fine place to begin: Listen for the patterns passed among instruments and the way they gather into something larger. Saturday’s schedule offers plenty of occasions to rush from one stage to another. Give this one your full attention.
If Fireflies Have Ever Stopped You Mid-Sentence
Into the Dark | 1pm, Assembly
Fiona Otway’s 18-minute documentary follows photographer Pete Mauney’s long fascination with fireflies and the images he has made of them. (We’re fans—we ran one of Mauney’s photos on the cover in 2017.) It’s about looking long enough to notice what most people pass by after sunset. Otway and Mauney will join a Q&A after the screening, so you can stay with the film a little longer—and find out how someone manages to photograph that elusive light.
If Your Kid Wants to Eat a Cloud
Ratboy Jr. | 2:15pm, Kingston Kids Stage
New Paltz duo Tim Sutton and Matty Senzatimore have been making gloriously peculiar music for families for more than two decades. Their songs have involved eating clouds, guitar-picking chickens, and, in the new “Hoppin’,” a morning so bad it includes missing breakfast and dodging an alligator. The hooks are sturdy, the banter is loose, and the audience gets pulled into the show.
If “The Artist Is Present” Made You Wish She’d Play Piano
Piano Portraits by Linda Mary Montano | 5:15–5:45pm, O+ Exchange Space
Legendary performance artist Linda Mary Montano is offering interactive, three-minute keyboard portraits. What will yours sound like? That’s part of the pleasure of showing up. “Piano Portraits” brings artist and visitor together for a brief encounter that produces something neither could make alone. There’s time to watch, but if you want a portrait, step forward. You may leave with a new way of hearing yourself.
If Your Record Collection Has a GBV Section
Doug Gillard | 8pm, Keegan Ales Tent
Doug Gillard wrote “I Am a Tree,” one of the great Guided by Voices songs that Robert Pollard didn’t write. His guitar has also run through Nada Surf, Cobra Verde, Neko Case, and the Hold Steady, but he arrives at O+ with Parallel Stride, his first solo album in more than a decade. Its sharp power-pop hooks make a case for Gillard as the songwriter at the front of the stage, guitar still very much in hand.
If You’re Hoping Sufjan Stevens Sits In
Meg Lui | 8:15pm, Old Dutch Church
Meg Lui’s debut album, Instant Validation, arrived September 25 with Sufjan Stevens as producer. At her release show at Tempo Kingston that night, he joined her on piano. You saw it happen; now you have a perfectly reasonable reason to wonder whether he’ll turn up at Old Dutch Church. No guest appearance has been announced, but Lui hardly needs one: She brings the new songs, a commanding voice, and the pleasure of hearing an album begin its life onstage.
If Country Music Should Leave a Bruise
Lucero | 9:30pm, Assembly
Lucero came out of Memphis in the late ’90s with Ben Nichols’s battered voice, punk guitars, and songs about people who know better and do it anyway. More than two decades in, the original five members are still together. Their album Should’ve Learned by Now turns that longevity into a joke at their own expense: “One Last F.U.” finds Nichols on both sides of an irritating barroom encounter. He knows these people. He’s been both of them.
SUNDAY
If You Were There for the ’90s—or Wish You Had Been
Melissa Auf der Maur | 2pm, Old Dutch Church
At 22, Melissa Auf der Maur was pulled into Hole in the aftermath of two deaths, then spent the rest of the ’90s inside rock’s enormous, unruly machinery. She eventually put down her bass for a decade and helped build Basilica Hudson, a home for the music she no longer wanted to perform. In Even the Good Girls Will Cry, she returns to those years as a witness with her own story to tell. Carmel Holt joins her in conversation. (Our profile of Auf der Maur from March.)
If She Had You at “Theremin”
Caroline Scruggs | 4:30pm, Old Dutch Church
Caroline Scruggs uses the theremin as a second voice, letting its wavering notes meet her singing, loops, and folk songwriting. On her album Space, the instrument moves through songs about the natural world and more distant reaches; “Human” even pairs Scruggs with Bruce Hornsby. Their collaboration continued on this year’s “Glass House.” Watch how she shapes a melody with her hands in the air, then listen past the novelty: There are actual songs in there.
If You’ve Got a Case of Joni
“The Road to Joni: Live!” | 7:30pm, Old Dutch Church
Carmel Holt’s “Road to Joni” podcast becomes a live show to close the festival, with musical direction by Meg Toohey and performances by Amanda Seyfried, Laura Stevenson, Carl Newman, Kalmia Traver, Peter Silberman, and many more. Mitchell’s songs have a way of becoming part of other people’s lives; this gathering lets a remarkable mix of artists answer them in music.
O+ Festival runs October 9–11 across Kingston. A donation-based wristband gets you into festival events all weekend, and each contribution supports O+’s healthcare exchange for artists and musicians. Give what you can; no one will be turned away for lack of funds. Wristbands are available online and at festival locations.
