The Philly Music Festival is now in its seventh year, a steadily growing enterprise that makes supporting local bands its (nonprofit) business.“Philly is our genre,” its motto reads.
The PMF started out as a one-venue fest at World Cafe Live in 2017 and now includes six different stages in the city and suburbs over the course of a full week. That makes the annual October fest a convenient way to get up to speed on the local indie scene and catch bands as they rise.
This year’s PMF starts with two nights headlined by Kurt Vile & the Violators at Ardmore Music Hall on Monday and Tuesday with opening acts that include Philly rap legend Schoolly D and on-the-way-up country-flavored rock band Florry.
In addition to headlining two nights, Vile curated his own shows, starting with the West Philadelphia rapper born Jesse Weaver whose 1985 hit “PSK: What Does It Mean?” pioneered what would become known as gangsta rap.
“I can’t believe we get to play with Schoolly, he was the first person I requested actually,” Vile said in a statement. “When I heard he agreed I definitely lost it a little bit. It’s just a Philly family affair all around, baby.”
Florry, the West Philly septet
On Monday, Vile’s hometown celebration will include guitarist Emily Robb, who opens along with Schooly. The next night, Vile’s undercard includes the hard rock band Purling Hiss, fronted by Mike Polizzi, and Florry, the West Philly septet fronted by Francie Medosch, the songwriter and guitarist who grew up in Chestnut Hill and Berwyn and is one of the brightest young lights in the Philly music scene.
The 22-year-old started playing in punk rock bands in her early teens. She named her band Florry — which she calls “a wild party band” — after a character in Betty Smith’s 1943 novel A Tree Grows In Brooklyn.
The music on The Holey Bible, the second full-length Florry album, draws from American roots source material reaching back generations. Opening track “Drunk and High” has a winning ramshackle feel reminiscent of Neil Young’s “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere.”
For our interview, Medosch rode to a Baltimore Avenue cafe on her Brompton folding bike.
She talked about getting a musical education from the Bob Dylan, Lucinda Williams, and the Band albums in the record collections of her mother, Susan Medosch, and stepfather, Josh Obercian (both of whom are thanked on The Holey Bible). And from her own pre-teen discoveries of Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music and the Byrds’ Sweetheart of the Rodeo at Berwyn’s Shady Dog Records.
Whom did she talk with about her taste in non-contemporary and indie music through her teens? “Adults!” she says with a laugh. “Or my music teacher. Or I would invite my friend Avery over and say: ‘I’m going to blow your mind by playing an amazing band called ... Yo La Tengo!’ ”
Florry’s 2021 album The Big Fall emphasized Medosch’s slide guitar and the influence of late guitar virtuoso John Fahey, also a favorite of Vile’s. “I definitely feel a kinship with Kurt.” she says.
Medosch graduated from Temple University in May and had an offer to become a full-time employee at the insurance company she worked part-time for through college. “That was the plan,” she says, while continuing to do music on the side. But after landing a booking agent and manager, she was persuaded to give full-time music-making a shot.
So far, so good. Florry opened for buzz act MJ Lenderman in the spring, toured steadily this summer, and opened for Vile for a week in September. WXPN-FM (88.5) is playing “Drunk and High.” Her bandmates, Medosch says, are earning enough to support themselves solely from music.
“I love it,” she says of playing live, an attitude that shines through in The Holey Bible’s “Cowgirl In a Ditch.” The song is a celebration of “the great American highway in us all” that owes a debt to Tom Robbins’ novel Even Cowgirls Get The Blues.
“I need to know what the next radical transformation of my life is. I hope it is touring, and trying to make that my living.”
Medosch is ready for the next shot of hometown exposure that will come with opening for Vile at the PMF.
“It’s fun,” she says. “It makes sense for us to play Philly Music Fest. At this point, we definitely could be labeled as up-and-coming. We sold out Johnny Brenda’s last month. So that’s a pretty big deal, not everyone in Philly can do that. But we could use a little more recognition. I’m excited.”
The Philly Music Festival runs Oct. 9 to 15 at multiple venues. For information, go to PhillyMusicFest.com
