This past weekend, on a sunny, beautiful, slightly too warm Saturday, a little event called the Riverfront Times Music Showcase celebrated its fifteenth birthday. Actually, scratch that description: There was nothing "little" about the event at all. Held for its third consecutive year in the Grove district, this year's outing was our biggest yet — with more than 90 acts performing over the course of twelve hours and attendance totaling more than 3,000 people, it was technically the largest all-local music festival in St. Louis history.
Quite a feat, and there's no way we could have done it if St. Louis wasn't bursting at the seams with talent. Which brings us to the RFT Music Awards, the ostensible reason for the season. In our last issue we told you about 145 different bands and acts that are more than worthy of your time and consideration. These superlative groups and solo artists were nominated by the public, with input from a committee of local DJs, promoters, venue and record store owners and employees, music writers and other scene enthusiasts.
We asked you to vote for your favorites; you happily obliged. We still had to weed out some ballot-stuffers (sigh — if only you guys knew how easy that is to spot), but this year's winners prove that you have been paying attention to the recent happenings in the local scene.
Fister and Everything Went Black, who recently released an excellent split covering one another's songs, took home the metal and hardcore honors, respectively. 18andCounting, an impossible-to-categorize musician who has won twice before for Best Solo Project and Best DJ, won this year in the Electronic (Eclectic) category — some kind of hat trick, we suppose. The Indie-Pop category saw an actual tie this year — a first for these awards — with Middle Class Fashion and Whoa Thunder finishing in a dead heat. (It is worth noting that scene vet Brian McClelland used to perform in the former and now leads the latter. Not sure what that means exactly, but it is data worth analyzing.)
And of course there are dozens more winners, but we'd like to stress: This isn't just about the winners. Sure, the voting process can be fun, but every one of the nominated bands is worth listening to and seeing live, and you'll have plenty of opportunity to do that right here in St. Louis.
In keeping, we are going to reprint the full list of nominees, with the winners listed at the top of each category in bold. Tell them congrats, and then go check out the rest of the nominees as well. You won't be disappointed.
See also: Here are some of the bands who blew us away at this year's RFT Music Showcase
Americana
River Kittens
Arson For Candy
Beth Bombara
Brothers Lazaroff
Loot Rock Gang
Blues
The Maness Brothers
4th City Rag
Big Mike Aguirre & the Blu City All Stars
The Green McDonough Band
Rum Drum Ramblers
Country
Cree Rider Family Band
Jack Grelle
Southwest Watson Sweethearts
Tortuga
Trigger 5
Cover Band
Fat Pocket
Bullseye Womprats
The Town Drunks
Warhorse
We Bite
DJ
Nappy DJ Needles
DJ MAKossa
DJ Mahf
DJ Uptown
Mister Ben (NO HITS)
Electronic (Dance)
ICE (formerly known as Black James)
Adult Fur
D-M-Y
Giant Monsters On The Horizon
Hylidae
Electronic (Eclectic)
18andCounting
Biggie Stardust
Blank Thomas
Eric Hall
Hands and Feet
Experimental
Demonlover
The Conformists
Hardbody
Ish
Yowie
Folk
Letter to Memphis
The Aching Hearts
Cara Louise Band
Dubb Nubb
Whsky Gngr
Garage Rock
Shitstorm
The Bobby Dazzlers
The Brainstems
Kenshiro's
Tiger Rider
Hard Rock
Buttercup
Apex Shrine
Boreal Hills
Fumer
The R6 Implant
Hardcore
Everything Went Black
The Bubbleheads
Lumpy and the Dumpers
Q
The Warden
Turn the page for more winners .....
