BY MIKE GERRY / OPENEARSMUSIC.COM
Oct 21, 2021
Shaky Knees Music Festival kicks off their 2021 fest this Friday in Atlanta’s Central Park!!! We all know the headliners – Foo Fighters, Run The Jewels, and The Strokes, but there is always a lot more to this festival than the big names. Shaky Knees has always been a great place to discover new up and coming artists, and today we present The Undercards – 10 Under The Radar Artists to Catch at Shaky Knees 2021!
Admittedly, these days I’m not even sure what “Under The Radar” is. How do you measure that? Have my friends heard of <insert weird indie rock band name here>? Probably not. How many social media follows do they have? Oh millions of followers? But I don’t know a single person in my indie rock bubble, nor anyone else that has heard of them. Oh they are getting millions of monthly streams on Spotify? Again, never heard of them and don’t know anyone that has. Or maybe they are getting tons of critical acclaim! But then I look at their socials and streams, and they have maybe 5k follows, and if they are lucky 50,000 streams. Perhaps radio is still the all out measuring stick these days (is radio still a thing?), which means, yeah, I probably don’t listen to them. So I really don’t know anymore.
The good thing about Shaky Knees, despite getting seemingly bigger every year with especially big time headliners this year, there is always new artists to discover that may just be your next favorite artist. We searched through the smaller print on the SK21 poster and picked 10 “Under The Radar” artists you probably aren’t going to want to not miss this weekend. Some of these artists are legit still very much up and coming, while a few we hope you DO in fact already know about. But if you aren’t as familiar as us with the lineup much past the headliners, let’s not forget about artists not included below that maybe you didn’t know already that seem obvious much catch sets to us – like St. Vincent, Ty Segall, Mac Demarco, White Reaper, Arlo Parks, Cloud Nothings, Idles, Tennis, Delta Spirit, Orville Peck, Phoebe Bridgers, All Them Witches. It’s going to be great weekend!
THE ALIVE
Friday, 1:30pm-2:15pm – Criminal Records Stage & Saturday, 1:45pm-2:30pm – Piedmont Stage
The Alive is a California-based young rock band that’s ready to give Shaky Knees a double dose of their big sprawling rock influenced by bands like Queens of the Stone Age, Black Sabbath, The Meters, Led Zeppelin, Nirvana, Rush and more of the classics. But don’t let their young ages fool you, guitarist/vocalist Bastian Evans is 16 and joined by brothers Kai & Manoa Neukermans who are ages 17 and 13 on drums and bass, there’s some experience despite their age. These kids have been in other bands with a previous iteration being The Helmets, who gained some buzz alongside their former bandmate, Tye Trujilo, the 10-year-old (at the time) son of Metallica’s Robert Trujillo. Tye eventually became a touring member of Korn, and the band part ways with their singer at the time and regrouped as The Alive. The Alive has already performed at Lollapalooza Chile, Bottle Rock and other big fests and shows, and now with a few singles out in the world, these young bucks are ready to slay the Shaky Knees stages.