Megan Jean and the KFB at FloydFest

Megan Jean and the Klay Family Band — which means Megan Jean and her husband, Byrne Klay — are a multi-instrumental duo with soul and power.

Megan Jean stomps a bass drum, bangs a washboard with a good groove, picks guitar and sings like nobody’s business. Byrne Klay is equally adept at upright bass and banjo. Meshed together, the two create a show that blew away audiences at FloydFest, which selected the band as its 2012 Under the Radar Contest winner.

This duo has plenty of originals songs — and here is a new one of them, to which I hope to get the title soon. [Update 11:59 a.m. 10.24.12: It's "Little Miss Fortune," which as Megan Jean says at the top, is a new one] But the covers are unexpected, too. They played “Thriller,” “Shoop” and “My Prerogative,” all MJ & KFB style. Fun show on a Friday night at Growler’s.

Orgone | Courtesy Pinnacle Entertainment

Los Angeles funk/roots/ mixing pot Orgone, heroes of the late night Village Stage scene at FloydFest 11, returned to the valleys last night for a long set at Martin’s Downtown.

I’ve written this before about The Pimps of Joytime — when that band plays at Growler’s, it transcends the dragon-car-hoop-girls-and-fire-dancers atmosphere of a summer festival. Set it up in a small- to medium-sized nightspot, and the funk is still stank.

Definitely the same thing is happening with Orgone. The band’s mix of funk, soul, R&B and Afrobeat styles never feels forced and always feels deeply grooving, with shouting horns and a monstrous rhythm section. Singer Niki J. Crawford’s vocal work broadens the flavor.

Here is Orgone, playing “Rock Me Again & Again,” at Martin’s. It was nice to see a crowd of about 100 on a Tuesday night, including plenty of happy musicians watching some great ones at work. Hang in for a bit on this one — I made my way back in the room to get a good frame of the full band from stage right.

Megan Jean and Byrne Klay share a moment after a great dance tent set at FloydFest | Photo courtesy facebook.com/FloydFestVA

Every year at FloydFest, show-goers vote for their favorite up-and-coming acts in the festival’s Under the Radar Contest for regional acts.

This year, the buzz around the fest was for Megan Jean and the KFB (Klay Family Band), a remarkable duo from Charleston, S.C. Though it is just two people — husband/wife team Megan Jean and Byrne Klay — the act puts up a mighty ruckus of sound with guitar, stompbox, washboard, upright bass and banjo, with Megan Jean Klay’s vocals and lyrics giving a ton of depth.

Not only did the KFB win this year’s Under the Radar Contest, its appearance at the festival led to a Sept. 6 booking at the Kennedy Center, according to publicist Malcolm J. Wilson. We predict big things ahead for this act, which is as much or more fun to watch as to hear. The Under the Radar first-place prize take is a main stage slot next year, $3,500 and a $3,600 microphone package from Floyd County-based Peluso Microphone Labs. The latter prize is the one that will keep on giving for years to come. Ask any sound engineer worth her ears.

Chapel Hill, N.C., act Lizzy Ross Band finished second ($1,000 cash money, plus $1,600 in Peloso microphones) — Ross has formidable vocal skills and stratospheric range. New York City group Spirit Family Reunion, which I missed that weekend, finished an “honorable mention” third.

That said, shouts to Grass Monkey, Another Roadside Attraction, The Floorboards and The Boatman — all from the Roanoke area or very nearby. All those bands did their thing well, but it’s hard to beat an act like the Klay’s and Ross. I hope to see all of them next year.

About two months from now, the major domos at FloydFest will get together, post-decompression, and figure out what went right and wrong at No. 11. The wait allows them time to receive feedback from the thousands who have been here this weekend. And while most of the feedback probably will be good, there will be some legitimate gripes — particularly from folks who waited for hours for shuttle buses after arriving today.

It’s FloydFest’s first-ever Sunday sell-out, with about 12,500 people on the grounds, and today was the only day for which the festival sold single-day advance tickets. About 1,000 single-day reserved tickets went on sale Friday before last, and it’s certain that folks bought up the 250 tickets set aside for 11′s ultimate day.

But for some Sunday-only folks, it was the ultimate bummer. Joie Ayala, of Charleston, S.C., said that people in the lot where she parked spent up to three hours waiting on a shuttle bus. She and her friends gave up waiting and began to walk before someone in a pickup truck saw them and gave them a lift the rest of the way.

Ayala said one man she spoke with in the lot told her that as he waited, he had missed every act he came to see.

From the timeline that Ayala gave me, it seems that many of those stuck waiting had not arrived particularly early. Others onsite said they showed up early and got in fine. But it’s definitely something for the organizers to look at next year.

“I love FloydFest, and I’m not dogging it,” said Ayala, who has been to many of them and was just meeting up with her mother, Diane LeBlanc of Roanoke, as we spoke in the line at Sugar Shack. She just wants them to work out that kink. Send them your feeback, Joie.

Alison Krauss headlining the main stage on Sunday | Photos courtesy Ty Brady

I didn’t get to hear much of Alison Krauss and Union Station featuring Jerry Douglas, but what I heard was nice, though pretty reminiscent of the show the band put on recently at Roanoke Performing Arts Theatre. Here’s the review from that July 2011 show. Wow. A year has passed.

Bruce Hornsby at the main stage

Ricky Skaggs doing a workshop at the folklife porch

Read notes from Hornsby and his band’s set with his “country cousin,” Ricky Skaggs.

Sam Bush, the festival king

What do you do if you have a long line of festival-goers slowly making their way out the gates? If you’re FloydFest co-founder/music booker Kris Hodges, you find The Primate Fiasco and get it out in the field.

I didn’t hear very many of the Under the Radar bands this year, but this act was to me one of the most adventurous of any act here, period. You won’t necessarily see that in this clip, as the band busts out a cover of the Ohio Players “Love Rollercoaster.” But catch this Fiasco sometime and see for yourself. If you know Zambi, you’ll recognize a kindred musical spirit in this Northhampton, Mass., act.

Here is the band, getting folks happy as they wait in line about an hour ago (yes, it takes that long to lead two=odd minutes of hi-rez video from here). Within 10 minutes of this, the line had moved on. Looks like it’s really over now.

Larnell Starkey & the Spiritual Seven band warm up a folklife porch audience for the S7 singers

This great Franklin County gospel act played late Sunday afternoon at FloydFest. Larnell Starkey & the Spiritual Seven, known internationally for their smooth, deep grooves and tight old-school harmonies, was a great Sunday choice.

The band’s keyboardist/manager, Dar Alexander, said a documentary about the S7 is in the works, with a premiere date set for Oct. 13 at William Fleming High School. The doc, produced by Two Rivers, out of Williamsburg, will cover the act’s decades-long history and includes a performance shot recently at the old Mount Moriah Baptist Church, near Bonsack.

Check out some video of the band in action, a scene that must have been nice for folks standing in a long line out for shuttle buses.

AJ and me. Love you, buddy. Thanks for shooting this, Ginny B.

Way back on Thursday — seems like a lifetime ago, I wrote a little tribute to my friend A.J. Moose, who has run admin here for years and is retiring after this one. On Sunday afternoon, I handed site volunteer Ginny Boehling my phone and asked her to snap a shot of A.J. and me. Here’s what happened before we got serious.

You all know I normally don’t post pics of myself here, but this woman has been such a help to me over the years I’ve been covering FloydFest that I just wanted to get this online. Fest co-founder Erika Johnson says the crew is trying to talk A.J. into staying. We’ll see. I say she deserves at least a break for this time next year. Enjoy it, friend!

Big crowd the beer garden, chilling, socializing, listening to Big Daddy Love as FloydFest 11 nears its conclusion

After catching a  bit of Darrell Scott at Hill Holler, my worn-out rump trudged out for some iced coffee, food and Bruce Hornsby & the Noisemakers. As I approached, I could hear Hornsby call on his “country cousin, Ricky Skaggs.” As I waited for food, I could hear a funky long jam, with Skaggs sympathetic in the groove. And by the time time I had eaten and made my way within earshot and eyeshot, Hornsby was sitting with a dulcimer, telling the crowd that the next song was about his 20-year-old son’s childhood days of wanting to own everything he saw.

That son is Keith Hornsby, a basketball player at University of North Carolina-Asheville. Read my colleague Robert Anderson’s story about father and son. UPDATE 2:44 p.m. 8.1.12: A commenter is telling me that the song is actually about Keith’s twin, Russell. I can’t find that information on the web. Anyone else want to jump in on this?

Back before the little fellow grew up to his pop’s 6-foot-4 height, he was a shopping addict.

“I’m gonna buy a big red truck/Then a rabbit’s foot for  real good luck/Gonna get me some plastic gunga dins/And I’ll buy a big house to put ‘em all in,” Hornsby sang over a laid-back country feel.

Hornsby and crew followed-up with “Valley Road,” the “special FloydFest version,” he told the crowd. In this case, it was acoustic and in 6/8 time, with a cool percussion break and some mean mando picking from Skaggs. Sad to say, Skaggs is just wrapping up his holler stage set now, and I’m bummed. After all, Skaggs and his band, Kentucky Thunder, is one of the best bluegrass bands on the planet. As Maxwell Smart would say, missed it by *that* much.