Iron & Wine will be the headlining act for the 2009 Pygmalion Music Festival, to be held in Urbana from September 16 to 19, 2009. Early bird tickets for the festival go on sale this Friday, May 1, at krannertcenter.com.
Iron & Wine is Sam Beam, an impressively-bearded, South Carolina-raised, Texas-based singer-songwriter who — incidentally — hates hyphens. He’s never performed in Champaign-Urbana before, so a good time should be had by all.
Syracuse, New York’s Ra Ra Riot and The Books, based out of Massachusetts, are also among the national touring acts who have been announced as performers for the fifth annual festival.
In addition to the headliners, 27 other artists have also been confirmed as part of Pygmalion 2009. We’ll stick with a link to their Myspace and the location of their base of operations for now, as there’s plenty of time for speculation about the quality of their bodies of work in the coming months:
- Margot and the Nuclear So and So’s (Indianapolis)
- Maps & Atlases (Chicago)
- Headlights (C-U)
- Owen (Chicago)
- My Brightest Diamond (Detroit)
- Maserati (Athens, Georgia)
- The Hood Internet (Chicago)
- The 1900s (Chicago)
- Joe Pug (Chicago)
- Now Now Every Children (Minneapolis)
- Mazes (Chicago)
- Phantogram (Saratoga Springs, N.Y.)
- Liesel Booth (C-U)
- Santa (C-U)
- Mordechai in the Mirror (C-U)
- New Ruins (C-U)
- World’s First Flying Machine (C-U)
- Neoga Blacksmith (C-U)
- Tractor Kings (C-U)
- Common Loon (C-U)
- Zach May and The Maps (C-U)
- Ohtis (Bloomington-Normal)
- The Jips (C-U)
- The Number One Sons (Champaign/Chicago/Rockford)
- Rock Plaza Central (Toronto)
- Pomegranates (Cincinnati)
- Elsinore (C-U)
- Mason Proper (Detroit)
Keep an eye on the SPlog over the coming weeks for announcements about additional bands being added to the Pygmalion lineup.
Ed. note: It’s no secret that Seth Fein runs Pygmalion and is also a founder and editor of Smile Politely. We welcome your ire. If you’d like to codify your ire into article-length form, we’d welcome it even more formally.