MOVEABLE FEAST Nothing says “homecoming” like Hunnie Bunnies in blood-spattered nightgowns screeching, pouncing, and hurling themselves at the audience.
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When you follow an itinerant music scene, it can take you to unexpected places — in last Saturday's case, an oak-paneled former chapel on the Tufts campus during Homecoming weekend. It was the second night of Homegrown III, Boston's annual underground music festival organized by Dan Shea and Sam Potrykus of Bodies of Water, and the Crane Room buzzed with a heavyweight bill of local underground favorites and touring acts.After permits at the Fourth Wall Project in Fenway suddenly fell through, Shea and Potrykus changed course, taking the three-night festival — and the more than 60 confirmed bands — and spreading them across two venues, linking the DIY space on the Somerville/Medford line (Saturday) with Villa Victoria Center for the Arts in the South End (Friday and Sunday).
At the Crane Room, Peace, Loving came straight from a set at Occupy Boston and added instruments to their ethereal charm-jangling. Fedavees held down the spacey jamming, Shea's Needy Visions rocked out with garage pop, and Fat History Month's self-deprecating monotone charmed a sizable crowd. The dark basement room reeked of BO and victory. Besides, there's nothing like seeing Hunnie Bunnies in blood-spattered nightgowns screech, pounce, and hurl themselves at the audience to let you know you're home. San Francisco's Grass Widow, New York's PC Worship, Baltimore's Dope Body, and recent Wisconsin transplant Truman Peyote rounded out the bill.
"The point is to represent local bands who should be heard by more people and bring them together with great bands from elsewhere," says Shea. "We create relationships, and show bands from out of town that there's a great scene happening here."
Perhaps to avoid future licensing issues beyond their control, Bodies of Water hopes to open an all-ages venue in Somerville's Union Square later this year. Meanwhile, community grows where the music goes. "You do what you can at pop-up venues like this," said Potrykus, enjoying a well-deserved burrito as San Francisco's White Fence closed the night. "It's kind of good to keep people guessing."
