Solid Sound kicks off with a stroll down ‘Mermaid Avenue’

NORTH ADAMS — The most surprising thing about Friday’s headlining set at Solid Sound — the biennial Western Massachusetts music festival curated by the veteran alt-country/art-rock outfit Wilco — was that it took this long to come to fruition.

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The event’s opening night tradition is a unique, festival-exclusive show from the band, ranging over the years from full-album performances to a deep cuts set, an all-covers night, and an experiment dubbed “Karaoke with Wilco.” (Some concepts have proven more successful than others.) High atop many a fan’s wish list, though, has been a reunion of the band with the British folk singer Billy Bragg to spotlight their beloved “Mermaid Avenue” collaborations.

Released in two volumes between 1998 and 2000 — plus a “Complete Sessions” release gathering outtakes in 2012 — the “Mermaid Avenue” project set unrecorded lyrics by folk icon Woody Guthrie to original music, producing a bevy of fan favorites and setlist staples for both artists. Curiously, though, the two acts had never undertaken a formal tour — or even a full show — to perform the material together. Such a set finally came together at Solid Sound on Friday at the Mass MoCA grounds in North Adams.

That the occasion was both a special one and a long time coming was a sentiment echoed by Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy throughout the night, which dug deep to explore all alleys of the “avenue.” Guthrie might be best known for his politically charged songwriting, but the selections here spoke to the true breadth of a lyricist who was poignant (a stirring “Remember the Mountain Bed”), earnestly romantic (“Hesitating Beauty”), and often playful (the singsong rave-up “Hoodoo Voodoo”).

Politics certainly had their place, too; Bragg tore into the “bound to lose” refrain of the set-closing song “All You Fascists” with a pronounced fervor that the crowd gave him right back.

The whole endeavor felt spiritually Guthrie-approved. In a bit of well-timed scene-setting, a particularly noisy train rolled past on the tracks overlooking the festival grounds, and Tweedy suggested they stop to listen, as Guthrie might have wanted. “Woody would’ve climbed aboard,” quipped Bragg.

Rounded out by the surprise appearance of singer-songwriter Natalie Merchant for her pair of songs from the original LP, and closing with a mass singalong of the definitive Guthrie tune “This Land Is Your Land,” the show proved a wholly satisfying way to bring the project to the stage at long last.

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If there was any major drawback to the day, it’s that anticipation for the “Mermaid Avenue” festivities perhaps ran too high. A sense of general overcrowdedness atypical of the festival’s past years felt palpable past the gate, and the lines — for food trucks, beer, everything — seemed to extend in all directions.

Still, the logistics didn’t dampen the spirit of crowds that packed in from the start of the day’s programming. An outspoken set of solo material from Bragg kicked things off, touching on union solidarity, trans rights, ICE resistance, and the nature of music’s power (not to literally change the world, in Bragg’s eyes, but to recharge activism and tamp down cynicism).

As the evening rolled on, Chicago band Sharp Pins combined sunny hooks and garage-rock crunch with an idea-a-minute urgency at the festival’s most intimate stage, their momentum only stymied by a stripped-down stretch of the set from leader Kai Slater nearly succumbing to the encroachment of an adjacent soundcheck.

Post-punk legends Gang of Four — whose current lineup finds indie-rock lifer Ted Leo and Belly/L7 bassist Gail Greenwood joining original members Jon King and Hugo Burnham — faced no such obstacles with their thunderous main stage set. Burnham and Greenwood powered a rhythm section that wasboth groovy and menacing, while Leo did justice to the piercing tones of late guitarist Andy Gill with his own flair. Vocalist King brought a wild-eyed mania to it all, prowling the stage and engaging in his signature percussion technique of demolishing a defunct microwave with a baseball bat.

Always a festival to combine the traditional with the adventurous, Solid Sound’s late-night hours offered a choice between Brooklyn artist L’Rain’s alternately ethereal and bracing swirl of jazz, rock, and electronic experimentalism, or a vintage vinyl dancefloor curated by indie rockers Yo La Tengo.

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Much like the night’s main event, it was a combination you’d only find here.