Festival Recap: The 11th Annual Jam on The Grass at Cannstatter Volkfest Verein 9/14/2024

This past Saturday, The Wallflower Observer and Three Fourteen hosted their annual one-day festival at the German-American social club, Cannstatter Volkfest Verein in northeast Philly, which hosts the city's largest outdoor beer garden. Opening the festival at 12:30pm on the nose, we saw Pennsylvania experimental folk duo, Knorwood, with a substitution for Joey Knorr on drums by Jeff Mann of the power trio, Consider the Source. Following up was Uncle Kunkle's One Gram Band up from Baltimore to deliver an afternoon set of jams in the sunshine to Jam on the Grassers. Next was Philly songstress and singer, Maggie Mae, who took charge of the stage for an explosive set of tunes, performing some fun covers and original music. Taking the stage at 4:30pm, our hosts, blues-driven area rockers, Three Fourteen, put down a 105-minute set of great original music sprinkled with a cover or two to get us in gear of the evening ahead.

Muscle Tough at Jam on the Grass

As the sun slowly started to set, we saw Muscle Tough take the stage for a powerful set of bizarro instrumental jams with a triad of covers to boot, even one the 90s technopop punk outfit, Republica, watch that here. Following the Philly trio, we took in the final set of the scheduled outdoor event from Grateful Dead/Allman Brothers tribute, Steal Your Peach, for a full set of danceable, fun jams we all love.

As we know, you simply cannot be outside making noise all night in Philadelphia, so this party moved indoors with Philly's Eastern psych trio, Qway, for a set of riveting instrumental tunes. The event and night finished off with south Jersey's Odyssey Lab, dishing out some sax-lead covers and creative improv jams joined on guitar Muscle Tough's Ross Bellenoit, who stuck around after his set with Muscle Tough to help close out the night.

In its 11th year, after starting in the backyard like many small festivals, Three Fourteen's Jam on the Grass proves to be a growing/thriving local festival, bringing hand-picked favorites and familiar acts from all over the region, while celebrating the music, the art and artists, the wares and merch, and all the great people of the Philly-area music community. A seemingly perfect day, barely teetering off schedule, Jam on the Grass artists seem to flow in and out of the venue with ease and were all greeted with big smiles. With large and concentrated support, this festival blossoms every year...we saw a great and successful effort by production, staff, vendors and all those who helped make Jam on the Grass go down, what a great day!

Photos from Jam on the Grass 2024