The Piedmont Park era begins.
I used to live at the corner of Central Park Place and Renaissance Pkwy, which meant during the Central Park years, attending Shaky Knees was as simple as walking out onto my porch, or down a flight of stairs and into the festival grounds. It was amazing to see the festival rise and disappear in a monthlong flurry each May (or that one Spooky Knees October). We really loved having the festival in our back yard each year. It felt local. Approachable. Like it was ours.
So needless to say, I was curious — I think anyone who attended Shaky on an annual basis was curious — to see what the festival would feel like in its (surely permanent) move to Piedmont Park.
Thoughts on the change
I’m not sure on distance between stages how the two grounds compare (felt about the same), but in terms of center mass where people can converge, Piedmont was immediately, clearly a much bigger space. I have never seen a daytime crowd at any Shaky Knees as large as the one Sublime attracted.
A Reddit thread suggested that the crowd moved from somewhere in the 45,000 range to somewhere in the 85,000 range. That headcount doubling was the first thing you felt when you got into that lower bowl where the Peachtree and Piedmont stages lived. It was Bono’s kid on the mic first with his band Inhaler. 4pm on a Friday, people everywhere. Tons of space, skyline views, natural ampitheaters…like, wow ok, this festival got big, huh?
That scaling up was reflected in the stages themselves. In the Central Park days, Ponce de Leon used to be in a tent, and Criminal Records wedged between a couple of old oak trees on a shaded hill. Now, both stages felt larger than in years past. Big bones on this festival. Wouldn’t be surprised to see some serious names on the top half of the poster next year, now that they’ve proven the market for a larger audience.
I asked five different groups on Friday where they were from. Want to know how many were from Atlanta? None.
Notes from the music
The opening day of Shaky Knees 2025 was a study in contrasts, where raw, politically-charged punk energy shared the stage with rock showmanship from the before times.
No band embodied the confrontational spirit of our era more than Lambrini Girls. With “Free Palestine” scrawled across a bass guitar, the band spoke of being banned in the UK for their politics. When they led the crowd in the weekend’s first (but not last) “Free Palestine” chant, they even point blank told the VIP section, “I wanna hear you now.” To their credit, VIP delivered.
That same political energy continued with IDLES. Frontman Joe Talbot delivered a message of unity, telling the audience, “Just remember when you are out there we are all very similar… we want to love and be loved, don’t let those cunts divide you.”
Let’s just pause for a moment on the undeniability of IDLES. They are on a short list of the most relevant, most hard hitting bands in the world. If you wish you could’ve seen Rage Against the Machine in the 1990s, you should go see IDLES in the 2020s.
In between that punk sandwich, Jakob Nowell came out to a massive daytime crowd filled with cheers for the new frontman of Sublime. You know that GIF from Saving Private Ryan where Matt Damon gets old all at once? That was me seeing the late Bradley Nowell’s son, all grown up and leading his dad’s band.
Lenny Kravitz proved that time has done nothing to diminish his power. And across the festival, The Marías delivered a dreamy, captivating performance. In a nod to the city, a trumpet player emerged for a surprise medley cover of OutKast’s “SpottieOttieDopaliscious” during their song “Care For You.”
It was day one, year one of a whole new Shaky Knees. You would not believe the crowd as Deftones closed out the night in Piedmont Park.
It would’ve been easy to put the night to bed on that note…IF IT WEREN’T FOR THE BEST SET OF THE WEEKEND: the Fat Dog late night set at The EARL. Holy shit.
In fact, Fat Dog gets its own review. Read this.
Shaky Knees 2025 Day 1 was a success!
All photos by Mike Gerry
