After the scheduling and technical problem-riddled Friday night, I went into MidPoint Music Festival’s Saturday night hoping to see how festival organizers and club show runners would learn from the previous night’s mistakes. Happily, everything I saw went more or less smoothly, and it all amounted to a solid ending to Cincinnati’s annual music showcase.

I did notice that the streets were a little more hushed than they had been on Thursday and Friday. This could have been attributed to a few factors – I-71/75 traffic coming north from Kentucky had ground to a halt as construction crews worked on the Brent Spence Bridge. Similarly, traffic around town was inflated by the UC-Oklahoma game hosted at Paul Brown Stadium. However, every venue I ventured into was satisfactorily packed with people. Maybe people just knew where they were going this night and spent less of their time wandering the streets peering at MPMF’s foldout maps.

I hit Madonna’s on Seventh Street to catch Mack West, a local country/western band. Actually, country/western is a bit of a misnomer. They did play music with country chord progressions and melodic lines, but their tone and lyric content replaced any hint of “honkey tonk” swing with deadly seriousness and drama. Dressed all in black, the band rumbled and sliced with solid drums and razor-sharp bass lines. The lead singer’s deep, rich baritone resounded in the low octaves that might have reminded most country fans of Johnny Cash. However, the expression it leant to their songs about empty whiskey bottles and flood waters rising reminded me more of Peter Murphy, minus the Dracula, singing gothic-tinged country. It’s worth mentioning that this group of clearly professional local performers, brutally on beat throughout their set, probably had the best overall sound I heard all night, even with Madonna’s smaller scale and sound system.

As I headed to Grammar’s to catch the Tom Tom Club, I finally had the chance to take one of Metro’s festival buses. Everyone had been lamenting the loss of the Streetcars, but this public transit system, which operated a continuous loop between Liberty and 5th via Walnut and Main, was a very capable and easy-to-grasp system. Everyone with a wristband pass was allowed passage to ride, and the driver of the bus I was on didn’t even balk at passengers finishing their drinks and street car food as the bus rumbled down Main. With all the stops along the way from Madonna’s to Grammars, I wasn’t sure exactly how much time I actually saved with the bus, but it must have been great for women with high-heel shoe fatigue, as well as the general fatigue most festival-goers probably experience after standing in one spot for hours watching live music.

Grammars seemed to have their act together this night – Tom Tom Club started more or less on time. I saw the group, originally formed by former Talking Heads members Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz, mostly because I kept hearing from friends that it was the act to see. Their funky songs did lean a celebratory atmosphere to the evening – it was clear the whole band was having fun on stage. Combining positive-vibe funk with reggae and punctuating the concoction with squealing electric guitar and crashing break beats, Tom Tom Club brought light-hearted fun the festival’s closing night.

I headed over to the Know Theatre to catch Josiah Wolf, but lingered before hitting the performance space to catch Powerhouse Factories’ poster showcase. The Newport-based graphic design group had laid out stacks of their uniquely vibrant concert posters for purchase, including posters for some of the individual shows of the festival. It was great to see this cross-platform community cooperation, but I mostly wondered whether or not my wife would let me to hang the awesome “Holy Fuck” poster in our living room.

Upstairs, Josiah Wolf launched into his set. With a steady gaze and vocal inflection eerily reminiscent of his brother, Yoni’s, work with their hip-hop/indie act Why?, Josiah gave a collection of intensely personal –sounding singer/songwriter work, punched-up with bass and accompanying female vocals. His musical chops wowed the audience when he somehow managed to play guitar and drum kit at the same time, using the same hand to work both his six-string and the snare drum.

At this point, the schedule at the Know Theatre began to drag – closers Phantogram went onstage about a half-hour late. I managed to stay for about three-fourths of their set of electronic synth, roaring guitar, and hyperactive drums before heading out to see Elf Power. While their vocals lost some of the power they might have leant to the songs after being buried beneath their multilayered effect processors and the slightly muddy mix, I was impressed by the professional care that had obviously gone into their video projections, which attempted to present a visual narrative spanning between songs.

At the Blue Wisp Jazz club, I watch Elf Power close out the festival with their sing-song indie rock. A product of the Elephant Six Collective (original home to artists such as Apples in Stereo, Neutral Milk Hotel, and Of Montreal), their folky rock numbers contained similarly yearning lyrics with songs built on fuzzed-out open chords. The single-geared group made a satisfying end to the weekend of music.

MidPoint’s 2010 offering was varied and exciting. There were a few issues, but it was clear that the focus remained on connecting with fans. Festival organizers used big-screen Twitter feeds to keep a constant crawl of festival information circulating, and local entities from food trucks to poster impresarios came out to prove the depth and detail in the Cinci scene. The whole weekend really showed how very interested Cincinnatians are in coming out for live music if they are given exciting acts to see.

It seems like MidPoint gets marginally better every year, and I can’t wait to see how next year shapes up. No matter the criticism, the festival still stands as the single best weekend of the year for live music in Cincinnati.

-John Crowell @terriblesounds

Phantogram live @ MPMF 2010