Chaz Rough: Welcome everyone to this edition of Looking at Louisville. I’m Chaz.
Stacey Yates: I’m Stacey.
Chaz Rough: And we are here at Captain’s Quarters which is right here on the Ohio River. It’s kind of stones—a big stones away from the downtown portion.
Stacey Yates: It’s about a 10-minute drive actually.
Chaz Rough: But why are we here Stacey?
Stacey Yates: We are here for two reasons Chaz. One, its summertime and what a better place for some alfresco dining. You can get here by car you can get here by boat along the Ohio River. And also, there’s a great giant ship that’s getting ready to set sail in Louisville called Forecastle.
Chaz Rough: Huge!
Stacey Yates: The Forecastle festival coming up. It’s a music, art and activism and we’re going to meet the founder and captain of the vessel JK McKnight. So we couldn’t think of better place than the Captain’s Quarter to do that.
Chaz Rough: Okay, I’m here with JK McKnight and he is the founder or the captain of the boat for the Forecastle event that is based here and stationed here and docked in Louisville, Kentucky.
So JK, let’s talk a little bit about the event. Tell us about some of the great music that’s going to be here and some of the great music that you’ve had.
JK McKnight: We’ll we got Widespread Panic this year. One of only three shows they’re doing all summer which is huge!
Chaz Rough: Wow!
Stacey Yates: I have people coming in from 33 states for it right now, three countries. We also got the Black Crowes. This great has played here or played across the bridge about a year ago. We got the Black Keys on Friday night, we got Zappa Plays Zappa. We got Yonder Mountain String Band, Umphrey’s McGee and the Avett Brothers on Sunday. So these are the main headliners that everyone is excited about and everyone is talking about.
Chaz Rough: Now last year I recorded some of the music, let’s just go back and look at some of the music you had last year. Who is the DJ that we had?
JK McKnight: Z-Trip.
Chaz Rough: Let’s look at some of the video from him and—
JK McKnight: Amazing guy!
Chaz Rough: He’s incredible, where is he from?
JK McKnight: He is from Los Angeles. He never played here before. He was never been to Louisville and he was incredible probably the best performance of 2008.
Chaz Rough: Yes he was. So we’re going to take a little bit look of that right now.
That was Z-Trip and you had to be there to experience it because it was a very powerful event to be a part of. And I know that we were talking off camera that the Forecastle boat constantly moves forward so you rarely have the same acts twice.
JK McKnight: That’s right.
Chaz Rough: So if you’re going to come and you’re get on the boat and come to the event you should come because it’s always moving forward—the event.
JK McKnight: Get on the boat.
Stacey Yates: So JK the music is for the main stay of the festival, you’ve also has some great art. Talk a little about the types of artist that people are going to expect to see, the number of booths that sort of thing.
JK McKnight: Absolutely. A lot of outdoor sculpture work this year, a lot of installations. We got a guy named Brad White—he’s an amazing local artist. He’ll be doing the main exhibit for the festival. We also have Rebecca Norton, who is a Louisville native and now lives in Los Angeles, and she’s going to be doing an exhibition based on mountain top removal here which is really nice.
Stacey Yates: Is it all visual or is any of that for sale?
JK McKnight: It’s all for sale.
Stacey Yates: And I think we have some actual interviews with some of the artist from last year, so let’s take a look at that.
Chaz Rough: We do.
Male: I love this festival I do it for free. I think it’s a very positive message and that is what really counts to me that everybody is welcome, everybody has—no matter what creed that you’re with if you come to Forecastle you will have a good time.
Male: You know, we got hip hop artist here, folk artist here, rock artist here so a lot of different styles of music bring a lot of different types of people together and it’s important for me to market to all those types of people for them to all be able to see my stuff and appreciate it hopefully.
Male: I like the collaboration of all independent thinkers here. Because we do a lot of shows on our own and to have something this big and be able to—like all of us be able to come out and do it together is really cool.
Chaz Rough: It’s the thing.
Male: Yes, exactly.
Chaz Rough: So it’s the thing you have always coming together for a common good?
Male: Exactly.
Chaz Rough: With the music?
Male: I couldn’t say it better.
Male: It’s nice to support the local artist and local music and good people that starting I guess.
Female: I think it’s just like a good event like for the community to see what like goes on and like what issues are important around the world.
Female: I kind of knew about that talk to Louisville, but I really didn’t know like how to help and I picked up—it was like a letter that I could send and share.
Male: Fresh ideas, fresh music and good art!
Stacey Yates: You’ve sold me, I’m going to go. Tell me how I get tickets.
JK McKnight: Get tickets locally at ear X-tacy. It’s $40.00 for a single day, $100.00 for three days. Get them soon and if you don’t get them from ear X-tacy you can get them from ticketmaster.com.
Stacey Yates: So if you’re not from here, you can go online to—
JK McKnight: Absolutely!
Chaz Rough: What about your website? What’s your website?
JK McKnight: forecastlefest.com where you can get all the artist information, all the scheduling and ticket information.
Chaz Rough: They can purchase ticket from you as well.
JK McKnight: Yup! They can get tickets from there as well.
Stacey Yates: Well thanks for talking to us. We’re excited about the event. Chaz are you stuffed as I am.
Chaz Rough: I am stuff happy camper its good.
Stacey Yates: What a great meal we had here at Captain’s Quarters. I think we ate more in this episode than we have in two or three together.
Chaz Rough: Yes we have.
Stacey Yates: JK joined us of course for some appetizers after our interview and before we left for dinner. We started out with some fried banana peppers in honor of JK. They are the Captain’s banana peppers with two dipping sauces. We had Ahi Tuna tonight and we had the jalapeno and green chili wanton.
Chaz Rough: Yes.
Stacey Yates: Tell us about what you had for dinner.
Chaz Rough: For dinner I had the salmon teriyaki and some vegetables and I will say that it was awesome.
Stacey Yates: It looked good. Mark and I split spinach salad which is nice and fresh and then I had the fish tacos which are some of the best fish tacos I’ve ever had in the city of Louisville.
Chaz Rough: Hey, that’s really good.
Stacey Yates: They were delicious with the Ahi Tuna. And then Mark had the blue cheese and buffalo chicken which was also very good. I tasted it.
Chaz Rough: Of course you did, and he ate the whole—
Stacey Yates: Yes he did, and this has been a really fun episode just sort of the bell of Louisville that we just did recently. You know sitting here enjoying the relaxing Ohio River—it just doesn’t get much better than this. It’s a nice summer night.
Chaz Rough: There are people out there fishing and there’s people out there in their boats.
Stacey Yates: That’s great you can come up right on your boat from Captain’s Quarter.
Chaz Rough: And it’s a great tradition here at Louisville and hopefully you’ll be a part of it.
Stacey Yates: Are you looking forward to Forecastle as I am?
Chaz Rough: Yes, I am in fact—you know, they could actually win some Forecastle swag, right?
Stacey Yates: That's right. This month usually if you send us an email and give us a suggestion or ask a question, we’ll send you some great swag and JK has donated some great Forecastle swags—some t-shirt and posters and things this year.
Chaz Rough: So if you have any idea please send it to podcast@gotolouisville.com or you can of course Facebook us or twitter.com/gotolouisville.
Stacey Yates: We’ll see you at Forecastle.
Chaz Rough: Yeah, so as always—
Stacey Yates: You’re Looking at Louisville.
Chaz Rough: See you really soon.
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