Pop Rocks: Rock Fore! Dough rolls dice with new music acts

Looking back on the lineups for the annual Rock Fore! Dough shows, held the Tuesday of Masters Week every year, it’s easy to determine that they were built on a sturdy and dependable foundation of nostalgia. Headliners were chosen less for their current star power than the warm memories a spring evening spent with familiar songs might generate.

Though many of the acts, and the headliners in particular, are still producing music, there has always been an appeal based on the artists’ prior work. Hootie and the Blowfish (and later, Darius Rucker as a solo act), Cheap Trick, Collective Soul and Goo Goo Dolls all bring with them a certain degree of sense memory. Those songs take us back. It’s a gambit, in terms of building the Rock Fore! Dough brand, that has worked exceedingly well, and I cannot – and will not – argue its logic.

That said, I’m pretty excited that this year the organization has decided to roll the dice, taking a chance (or two or three) on rising rock acts, acts just entering into their rock prime. It’s a bill that might have some fans running to Google video clips, but it is also a bill that, in five years’ time, people will look back on in astonished admiration. If you are curious as to what the movers and shakers in rock music might look like in the future, look no further that this year’s bill.

At the top are the previously announced acts Needtobreathe and Grace Potter. Needtobreathe could easily become the art rock equivalent of Rock Fore! Dough favorite Hootie and the Blowfish in its Cracked Rear View prime. Like Hootie, Needtobreathe hails from South Carolina. Unlike Hootie, the band built an early fanbase writing thinly veiled praise music rather than far more secular barroom ballads. Although the band’s current music isn’t quite as, well, sanctified as its early work, the ability to write a soaring vocal hook that neatly overlays dynamic arrangements remains intact. It’s a formula that has, over the past few years, garnered an increasingly large base of faithful fans.

Grace Potter, on the other hand, is more of a classicist. Her comfort zone is in finding new and engaging ways to summon the spirit of classic female rockers such as Pat Benatar, Stevie Nicks and Joan Jett. Her songs don’t try to reinvent the rock ’n’ roll wheel. There’s no experimenting with style and structure. Instead she, both with her band the Nocturnals or as a solo act, is able to take the tried-and-true tropes of rock music and mold them into new music that feels familiar without sacrificing a sense of freshness. It helps that Potter is blessed with an almost supernaturally fine rock voice.

This week, Rock Fore! Dough also signed Ed Roland and the Sweet Tea Project. Fans of the successful rock act, and Rock Fore! Dough alumnus Collective Soul will recognize Roland as the band’s lead singer. But this is something different and, after nearly 20 years with the Soul, something new. It will be interesting to hear what Roland, a proven hitmaker, will do when working with a different set of musicians. Given the quality of his previous releases, I’d say fans can safely assume this will be worth hearing.

Rock Fore! Dough is an event built on tradition, an anchor during a week when tradition is particularly important. This year it’s throwing tradition to the wind and I, for one, feel as though this Masters Week staple can only grow stronger for it.