Review: Minnesota Yacht Club festival ends in rowdy, dopey style with Chili Peppers

After a rather meaningful and mellower start on Friday, the Minnesota Yacht Club festival turned more dopey, sweaty, goofy, brawny and wild on Saturday.

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

The highly anticipated, nationally touted inaugural festival continued Saturday on St. Paul’s Harriet Island Park with a lineup led by the ultimate ‘90s party band, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, who played the same site in 1992 on the second Lollapalooza tour with their famous bassist dressed solely in a diaper.

Flea and his bandmates have cleaned up since then but haven’t grown up much. Their rowdy, back-slappy, semi-tawdry spirit seemed to waft through Saturday’s festival like the semi-legalized marijuana smoke that was prominent throughout the 10-hour day.

There was way more weed, bouncing beach balls, backward ball caps and mosh pits on Saturday for performers, including the Offspring, Gary Clark Jr., the Hold Steady and Soul Asylum — quite a contrast to Friday’s more sophisticated (and less virile) lineup with Alanis Morissette, Gwen Stefani and Joan Jett. There were about a thousand more people, too, as attendance topped out at 35,000.

It really was a tale of two festivals over the two days. The Yacht Club vibe was so festive and kooky on Saturday, even the Offspring came off like a halfway decent band. Yes, two long days in the sun can really mess with people’s heads.

Here’s a rundown of Saturday’s defining moments:

The Minnesotans sure were smart-alecky. “I arrived to the gig in my yacht,” Soul Asylum frontman Dave Pirner said near the start of his band’s midafternoon set on the main stage. Lots more yachting quips followed. And then there was Hippo Campus singer Jake Luppen’s hello to the crowd: “Thank you for coming. We’re the Red Hot Chili Peppers.”

Both bands got down to serious business when they weren’t talking between songs, though, each blending in new songs from albums out this fall alongside older radio hits. Soul Asylum also dropped in a few deeper-cut oldies for the hometown fans alongside “Runaway Train,” including “Little Too Clean” and “Bittersweetheart.” Hippo Campus had many fans twice the age of its typical crowd singing and clapping along to its most buoyant tunes, including “Way It Goes” and “South.”

St. Paul finally got its due from two of the bands. Hippo Campus guitarist Nathan Stocker got on the mic to express their gratitude for the city and specifically the St. Paul Conservatory for the Performing Arts, which he and his bandmates attended and could see from the stage.

The Hold Steady’s Edina-reared bandleader Craig Finn could also see the source of many of his songs from the second stage: the Mississippi River. He sang about it in “Stevie Nix” and then paid homage to the smaller Twin City in his still-thrilling band’s mellower jam, “We Can Get Together,” which he introduced by saying, “Minneapolis is hard to rhyme with, so thank you St. Paul. You have it all.”

Finn also had fun with the festival’s nautical theme, which tied into his wardrobe choice for the day: a dapper, gentlemanly light-blue suit he bought for the Kentucky Derby: “I’d like 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 fest. New Orleans’ funk and soul band Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue — something of an odd entry in the rock-heavy lineup — went over like a beignet goes with a hangover on the second stage in the afternoon heat. Their hyper-grooving set included fun originals blended 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 mixes on two turntables. The real show-stopping moment came when they jubilantly 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 chief.

Gary Clark Jr. went against the vibe. While he’s put on many shows in town that would’ve delighted Saturday’s crowd, the Texas blues-rocker instead filled the day’s penultimate set with a lot of the hazier and more soulful, Curtis Mayfield-tinged tunes from his new record, “JPEG Raw.” It was an impressive divergence but was somewhat lost on the crowd. At least until he launched into the older and heavier jam “Bright Lights,” and things indeed brightened.

The Chili Peppers were mildly hot. Any fan who caught the Los Angeles rock vets’ concert last year at U.S. Bank Stadium was probably overjoyed seeing them outside with excellent acoustics. However, they probably did not appreciate that this set list leaned more heavily on recent tunes, even while 2022′s slow-builder “Eddie” reiterated how great it is having John Frusciante back on guitar.

Appreciation for the improved setting and sound seemed to carry over on the band’s end, too. Flea, the band’s sometimes-aloof singer Anthony Kiedis and St. Paul-born drummer Chad Smith good-naturedly and excitedly bounced their way through the 90-minute set and didn’t waver as they finally got to playing some hits in the last half-hour, starting with “Californication” and then picking up steam with “By the Way” and “Give It Away.”

“We’re really happy that you’re here, and we love to play music for you,” Flea said as sweetly as could be at one point.

OK, maybe the dude has grown up. It certainly felt like the Twin Cities grew up as a concert market by the end of the Yacht Club on Saturday, when the festival appeared to run even more smoothly and impressively than Friday, despite a bigger and more ruffian crowd. Here’s to next year’s voyage.