Your guide to the A.V. Club and WMSE-sponsored Cascio Interstate Music Groove Stage

By now, every picnic-table-dancing man, woman, and child in Southeastern Wisconsin is aware that Summerfest kicks off tomorrow afternoon. And you know what? It’s a solid year for the Big Gig. You have plenty of top-shelf names like Kanye West, The Black Keys, and Def Leppard headlining the Marcus Amphitheater, and acts like The Flaming Lips, Girl Talk, and Hall And Fucking Oates rocking the outdoor stages. You also have 66—count ’em, 66—area bands setting up shop at the Cascio Interstate Music Groove Stage. Sponsored by WMSE and yours truly, the stage will be our home away from home during the fest. Here’s the complete lineup, along with a few highlights:

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 29
1:30 p.m.: The Big Strong Men
Minneapolis band The Big Strong Men possesses such poise and talent that it can incidentally make the music come across as stripped of soul and overly showy. Christopher “Philly” Williams’ death-defying honky-tonk keyboard antics on “Don’t Go Too Far”—off the debut EP of the same name—scream, “Hey, check this out,” but in a landscape that’s often dominated by young bands getting by on style over substance, Big Strong Men stand out. And if you can’t admire the band’s chops, at least you can sit back and stew over the fact that these guys are probably much better musicians than you.
3:00 p.m.: The Nod
4:30 p.m.: The Sensationalists
6:00 p.m.: Pictures Of Then
7:00 p.m.: Worrier
8:30 p.m.: The Right Now

THURSDAY, JUNE 30
1:30 p.m.: The Andrew Hawthorne Band
3:00 p.m.: Tony Memmel And His Band
4:30 p.m.: Wamsley
6:00 p.m.: Death Ships
7:30 p.m.: Vic And Gab
9:00 p.m.: The Jeanna Salzer Band
Jeanna Salzer has distinguished herself in Milwaukee music with bouncy, upbeat pop songs and vocals akin to Regina Spektor, but with a more soulful sensibility and deeper range. The instrumentation manages to be technical and precise, yet retains the raw, driving qualities to make the songs feel urgent and human. A handful of releases—including 2009’s Breaking Point, and the just-released mini-EP Two More—have garnered enough attention in Milwaukee to earn her a regular string of shows and steady play on the radio.

FRIDAY, JULY 1
1:30 p.m.: The Berettas
3:00 p.m.: Trapper Schoepp And The Shades
4:30 p.m.: Midnight Reruns
6:00 p.m.: Ikarus Down
7:30 p.m.: Nick Miller And The Neighbors
9:00 p.m.: I’m Not A Pilot

SATURDAY, JULY 2
1:30 p.m.: Tonight, The City Skyline
3:00 p.m.: Disaster March
4:30 p.m.: Trent Fox And The Tenants
6:00 p.m.: Testa Rosa
Testa Rosa’s self-titled 2007 debut was a breath a fresh air, boasting a series of well-crafted and unassuming pop-rock songs anchored by chiming guitars, crisp rhythms, and the knockout vocals of Betty Blexrud-Strigens. It was the rare local album with the courage to be pretty, a quality that many bands in Milwaukee’s male-dominated and punk and metal-weaned music scene cross the street to get away from. In many ways, Testa Rosa was a nod to the city’s college-rock past, though the band never veered into full-blown ’80s revivalism. It was a record steeped into mood and melody, and those attributes also form the foundation of Testa Rosa’s long-awaited follow-up, II.
7:30 p.m.: The Danglers
9:00 p.m.: The Invaders

SUNDAY, JULY 3
1:30 p.m.: The Vitrolum Republic
3:00 p.m.: Paper Thick Walls
4:30 p.m.: Me And My Arrow
6:00 p.m.: Crooked Keys
7:30 p.m.: Union Pulse
9:00 p.m.: The Uptown Savages

MONDAY, JULY 4
Closed

TUESDAY, JULY 5
1:30 p.m.: 10 Paces, Fire
3:00 p.m.: Greatest Lakes
4:30 p.m.: Sleepcomesdown
6:00 p.m.: Elusive Parallelograms
Milwaukee band Elusive Parallelograms built on the promise of 2007’s Doublethink EP with 2008’s great full-length debut, And Everything Changes, an album that drew on ’60s psychedelia, late-’80s shoegaze, and ’90s indie rock with a firm grasp of pop-rock songcraft. The new Modern Splendor takes that same grungy, psychedelic schizophrenia and fleshes it out into more of a conventional rock package. The Parallelograms may take fewer risks on the album, but they’re still at their best living and dying by the dirty, catchy riff, like the growler found in “Odds And Evens,” and the dizzying, criss-cross strummage that caps the title track. The Parallelograms have grown up faster than expected, but maturity suits them unexpectedly well.
7:30 p.m.: Faux Fir
9:00 p.m.: The Fatty Acids
Most new bands looking to book their first shows end up reaching out to local music clubs, but Milwaukee’s The Fatty Acids took a more proactive approach, actually establishing their own underground venue in the basement of their Riverwest house. The band has since become a fixture of the local scene, and with good reason—2010’s, Stop Berries, Berries, And Berries, Berries is a terrific album full of songs that lament problems both personal and political with quirky, psych-synth eccentricity. As good as the record is, it’s best to see the Acids in a live setting, and their Summerfest set should be another boisterous, high-energy crowd-pleaser.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 6
1:30 p.m.: The Form
3:00 p.m.: Kinetic
4:30 p.m.: Burgundy Ties
6:00 p.m.: Mike Droho And The Compass Rose
Mild Madison popster Mike Droho’s band, The Compass Rose, puts a new finish on his upbeat, seeker-next-door songwriting with hip-hop beatboxing and violin on the 2009 album And The World Makes Sense Again. The former winner of a Madison radio station’s American Idol-inspired contest, Droho manages to skirt the trappings of overly earnest adult-contemporary rock by letting his voice flow free of unnecessary melodrama. And even if the unusual musical ingredients of the band aren’t being exploited to their funkiest potential on record, they do manage to come together and create a lively stage show.
7:30 p.m.: Blake Thomas and Josh Harty
9:00 p.m.: Brighton, MA

THURSDAY, JULY 7
1:30 p.m.: El Valiente
3:00 p.m.: Scarlet Escape
4:30 p.m.: Sunday Flood
6:00 p.m.: Revision Text
7:30 p.m.: The Melismatics
9:00 p.m.: Mark Mallman
Between creating electronica remixes of Fleet Foxes with his band Ruby Isle and composing for film trailers, Twin Citian Mark Mallman somehow found time to record 2009’s Invincible Criminal and release an accompanying comic book recounting the mock-serious tale of a semi-psychotic rocker, The Incredible Urban Myth Of The Invincible Criminal. But where Mallman really shines is the over-the-top showmanship of his live show, straddling his piano like a postmodern love colossus and belting out his arena-ready rock ballads like his life depends on it. And he’s had a lot of practice lately: Last October, he completed Marathon 3, a nonstop, 78-hour live performance that involved almost 600 pages of lyrics and dozens of backup musicians playing in shifts.

FRIDAY, JULY 8
1:30 p.m.: Land Of Vandals
3:00 p.m.: Maudlin
4:30 p.m.: The Andes
6:00 p.m.: Spiral Trance
7:30 p.m.: Group Of The Altos
9:00 p.m.: John The Savage

SATURDAY, JULY 9
1:30 p.m.: The Up And Atoms
3:00 p.m.: Stock Options
4:30 p.m.: Jackraasch
6:00 p.m.: First Known Ruler
7:30 p.m.: Canyons Of Static
9:00 p.m.: Into Arcadia

SUNDAY, JULY 10
1:30 p.m.: Musikanto
3:00 p.m.: Keith Pulvermacher And The Rustangs
4:30 p.m.: Daniel And The Lion
6:00 p.m.: Castle Thunder
The subdued tinkering of Castle Thunder doesn’t sound like the roar and tumble of thunder itself, but the gentle ring of its after-echoes. With only a single song from the upcoming Wolf In Sheepskin EP to their names, the members of Castle Thunder have already proven themselves the masters of the mellow through a surprising euphony of acoustic, electric, and percussive sounds. But quiet isn’t all they’re capable of—the terrific “The Observer” begins with slow, wandering chimes before building and tumbling its way into a catchy pop tune highlighted by an enchanting chorus guaranteed to keep an audience’s ears fixated.
7:30 p.m.: Super Custom Deluxe
9:00 p.m.: Surgeons In Heat