Violent Femmes
Stern Grove
August 2, 2026
Photos by Paul Piazza
On a seasonally warm afternoon in Stern Grove, the Violent Femmes heated things up with a killer set of their well-known percussive, acoustic folk-punk attack.
The band, who have performed for the better part of 45 years, celebrated this Sunday show right along with the crowd and seemed to be having as much fun as anyone out there in the sun.
The Violent Femmes first came together as a trio in 1981 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The current version features original members Gordon Gano on vocals, guitar, and fiddle and Brian Ritchie on bass and vocals. Ritchie plays a distinctive bass that is a Big Johnson Hybrid Acoustic instrument. It sounded great too. It cut through the mix with a percussive attack and Ritchie handled that big beast seemingly without too much strain. Gano, for his part, mostly played guitar but switched over to the fiddle for a number as well.
They played a great set that featured many of the expected crowd favorites. In fact, they included nine cuts from their astonishing self-titled debut record. And as expected, when the band played their biggest numbers like “Blister In the Sun,” Gone Daddy Gone,” Kiss Off,” and “Add It Up,” the crowd went berserk, dancing and singing passionately.
On drums was John Sparrow, who has toured with the band since 2005 and has been a fixture since 2013. He is distinctive for playing percussion on a 22” Weber barbecue grill. In fact, just last week, a video of Sparrow playing the National Anthem on the grill at an August 9 Brewers game went viral. Original drummer Victor DeLorenzo called it quits for good in 2013 and remains active with a couple of different jazz and avant-garde projects.
Touring member and saxophonist Blaise Garza steps in intermittently to punctuate or flavor things and plays the gigantic contrabass saxophone on a couple tunes. Throughout the set the band played and sounded fantastic.
Tune-Yards, who opened the show, are a unique group. The art-pop and indie-pop duo, which features the creative and animated multi-instrumentalist Merrill Garbus along with her partner Nate Brenner, create a sound that blends global rhythms, lo-fi percussion, ukuleles, and layered vocal loop pedals.
The duo formed in 2006 and had a breakthrough record with 2011’s Whokill, which scored the top position in the Village Voice “Pazz and Jop” album poll. It also received strong ratings in the New York Times and Rolling Stone among others. The band have subsequently released five albums. Most recently, they have gained acclaim with their collaborations with Oakland rapper (The Coup) and filmmaker Boots Riley. The band did the soundtrack to both the Riley films Sorry to Bother You and I Love Boosters and received critical recognition.
On this afternoon, they played a visceral set of grooves, loops, and expressions, and made a connection with the early Stern Grove sound warming the crowd up for the exhilaration they would display when the Violent Femmes started a little while later. In fact, Garbus was invited out to join the Femmes on vocals and percussion for their final encores of “Add It Up” and “Gone Daddy Gone,” which neatly threaded the generational paths of uniqueness forged by both artists. And of course, there was a full throttle sing along until the very last note.
