Musikfest Today: Five Things to Know

Good morning, ‘festers. Today is Friday, Aug. 12, 2011 – Day Eight of Musikfest.

1. We’re coming down to the precious last few days of the best party the Lehigh Valley throws every year. This may be your last chance to get your ‘fest on before the rains reappear – perhaps as early as Saturday afternoon. For today at least, it is another perfect day: sunny skies, low humidity and a high of 84 degrees.
2. Miss Amy & Her Big Kids Band and Uncle Rock provide the afternoon music at Banana Island, where the Cool Crafts Tent Kid-Tastic Theme of the Day is Outer Space. What could be cooler than that? Well, maybe the kids from the School of Rock, who hit the stage at Plaza Tropical at 3pm.
3. The best of the free stages includes the Trailer Park Troubadours, purveyors of an original style they call “folkabilly,” with often-comedic lyrics in songs such as “Aunt Beulah’s Roadkill Overcoat” and “It Ain’t Home ‘Til You Take the Wheels Off.” They take the Americaplatz stage at 9pm. Plaza Tropical features local guitar hero Todd Wolfe at 7pm, followed by bluesman Jimmy Thackery at 9. You can always find a good party at Volksplatz, and tonight is no different: The MarchFourth Marching Band, described as a “punk rock marching band of epic proportions,” takes over the tent at 7. The band will be followed by Brother Joscephus & the Love Revival Revolution Orchestra. Click here for the full schedule.
4. Hard-rock bands Buckcherry and FUEL are your headliners at the Sands Steel Stage, starting at 7pm. Tickets at $34 and $22 are still available. The Musikfest Café hosts folk supergroup The Red Horse Project, which stars Eliza Gilkyson, John Gorka and Lucy Kaplansky. None of these modern folk music greats are strangers to Bethlehem. At least two of them have played Musikfest before and all three are friends of . Gorka, in fact, used to live in Bethlehem and spent a lot of time honing his craft at the venerable coffee house and listening room. Tickets at $44 and $34 are still available. The show starts at 7pm.
5. It’s Friday, which means the party doesn’t have to end at 11pm, even at Musikfest. Yellowcake, a funk/Latin band from New York, starts its show at the Air Products Town Square at 11pm. If you want to catch a flick, the Frank Banko Alehouse Cinema, inside the ArtsQuest Center, is showing the Alfred Hitchcock classic The Birds, starting at 11:15pm. If you need a laugh, standup comic Doogie Horner hits the mike at The Musikfest Café at 10:30pm. A Lehigh Valley native, Horner appeared on America’s Got Talent last summer and is the writer of “Everything Explained Through Flowcharts.”