Minnesota Yacht Club Festival Ends in Loud, Crazy Style with Chili Peppers

After a rather meaningful and quiet start on Friday, the Minnesota Yacht Club festival got dumber, sweatier, crazier, more muscular and wilder on Saturday.

For better or worse, Twin Cities music fans finally got a taste of what big rock festivals are all about.

The highly anticipated, nationally acclaimed inaugural festival continued Saturday at Harriet Island Park in St. Paul, with a lineup led by perhaps the ultimate ’90s party band, the Red Hot Chili Peppers. They played the same venue in 1992 during the second Lollapalooza tour with their famed bassist dressed in a diaper.

Flea and his bandmates have since cleaned up, but haven’t matured much. Their noisy, spineless, semi-insipid spirit seemed to waft through Saturday’s festival like the semi-legal marijuana smoke that was prominent throughout the 10-hour day.

There was a lot more weed, bouncing beach balls, backwards hats and mosh pits on Saturday for artists including Offspring, Gary Clark Jr., Hold Steady and Soul Asylum — a marked contrast to Friday’s more refined (and less virile) lineup of Alanis Morissette, Gwen Stefani and Joan Jett. There were also about a thousand more people in attendance, as attendance swelled to 35,000.

It was really a tale of two festivals in two days. The atmosphere of the Yacht Club was so festive and crazy on Saturday, even the Offspring came across as a halfway decent band. Yeah, two long days in the sun can really mess with people’s heads.

Below is a look at Saturday’s defining moments:

Those Minnesotans were really smart. “I came to the show on my yacht,” Soul Asylum frontman Dave Pirner said just before his band’s midday set on the main stage. More hunting jokes followed. And then there was Hippo Campus singer Jake Luppen’s greeting to the crowd: “Thanks for coming. We’re the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Both bands got serious when they weren’t chatting between songs, mixing new songs from albums released that fall with older radio hits. Soul Asylum also dropped a few deeper oldies for their hometown fans in addition to “Runaway Train,” including “Little Too Clean” and “Bittersweetheart.” Hippo Campus had fans twice their average age singing and clapping along to the most upbeat songs, including “Way It Goes” and “South.”

St. Paul finally got the recognition that two bands gave him. Nathan Stocker, guitarist for Hippo Campus, took the microphone to express his gratitude to the city and especially to the St. Paul Conservatory for the Performing Arts, which he and his bandmates attended and could see from the stage.

Hold Steady’s Edina-raised bandleader Craig Finn could also see the source of many of his songs on the second stage: the Mississippi River. He sang about it on “Stevie Nix,” then paid tribute to the smaller Twin City on his band’s still-rousing jam “We Can Get Together,” which he introduced with the words, “Minneapolis is hard to rhyme with, so thank you St. Paul. Y’all got it.”

Finn also enjoyed the nautical theme of the festival, which was in keeping with his choice of attire for the day: a stylish, elegant light blue suit he bought for the Kentucky Derby: “I want to thank them for calling this the Minnesota Yacht Club so I could wear this suit again,” he said.

The Chili Peppers’ set wasn’t the funkiest of the festival. New Orleans funk and soul band Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue — an odd addition to the rock-heavy lineup — crashed into the afternoon heat like a hungover beignet on stage two. Their hyper-grooving set featured fun originals mixed with snippets of New Orleans classics like Ernie K-Doe’s “Here Come the Girls” and even Green Day’s “Brain Stew,” all of which they seamlessly and tirelessly mixed together nonstop like a good DJ mixing on two decks. The real show-stopping moment came when they exuberantly covered Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy.” Even with all the Minnesota acts on Saturday’s bill, there was no better act to honor Minnesota’s big boss.

Gary Clark Jr. defied expectations. Though he’s played plenty of shows around town that would have thrilled Saturday’s crowd, the Texas blues-rocker filled the day’s penultimate set with many of the hazier, more soulful, Curtis Mayfield-tinged numbers from his new record, “JPEG Raw.” It was an impressive departure, but the crowd somewhat passed him by. At least until he launched into the older, heavier jam “Bright Lights,” and things did indeed brighten up.

The chili peppers were slightly spicy. Fans who saw the Los Angeles rock veterans perform at U.S. Bank Stadium last year were likely thrilled to see them outside with excellent acoustics. However, they probably didn’t appreciate the setlist’s greater reliance on recent songs, while 2022’s slow-building “Eddie” reiterated how great it is to have John Frusciante back on guitar.

Appreciation for the improved setting and sound seemed to permeate the band as well. Flea, sometimes aloof vocalist Anthony Kiedis and St. Paul-born drummer Chad Smith bounced good-naturedly and excitedly through the 90-minute set, not lingering as they began ticking off some of their many hits late in the final half hour, starting with “Californication” and then picking up steam with “By the Way” and “Give It Away.”

“We’re so happy you’re here and we love making music for you,” Flea said at one point, as sweetly as she could be.

Okay, maybe the guy has grown up. It certainly felt like the Twin Cities had grown up as a concert market at the end of the Yacht Club on Saturday, when the festival seemed to flow even more smoothly and impressively than it had on Friday, despite a bigger, rowdier crowd. On to next year’s trip.