LIVE: LarkFest @ Albany’s Lark Street, 9/20/14

Photographs by Timothy Reidy

When the first LarkFest took over Albany’s Lark Street back in 1981, the concept was two-fold – showcase the considerable Local 518 musical talent and bring folks down to shop, eat and drink at Lark Street businesses. Heck, Lark Street wasn’t even closed to to traffic that first year.

Over the course of more than three decades, LarkFest grew to unmanageable proportions, and the bands came not from the neighborhood or even the city. Instead there were regional and then national bands grabbing the stages at Albany’s annual end-of-summer/back-to-school celebration.

It took a while, but this year’s LarkFest party marked the return of the original musical concept – an all-local line-up of bands. And it was a solid homegrown line-up, too – eight bands on two stages spanning a pretty fair range of musical genres with the Graham Tichy Trio, the Chris Dukes Band, the Chronicles, Conehead Buddha, Holly & Evan, Wild Adriatic, Titanics and Mirk.

Welcome back – Live. Local. LarkFest…