Bluegrass great Peter Rowan has just done an interview with National Public Radio's Fresh Air show, so you might want to check it out at the link I just included.
The Farm To Family Full Moon Festival takes place Saturday and Sunday outside Gainesville near Ginnie Springs. This little low-cost fest is sweet and filled with wonderful folks and great roots music.
This festival has been on a long hiatus due to complaints from neighbors of too many cars and commotion on their dirt road. So they moved it to 120 acres in Gilchrist County. Camping is primitive, no hook ups, but plenty of room for cars, vans, tents, and the RV's . . . there are three camping areas. Back Stage Camping, Remote Camping, and Drum Circle Camping.
In past shows, the promoter has set up couches under and open-sided tent so it's like a living room. This fest is family friendly and there's usually a big bonfire and drum circle. And, of course, it's under the full moon!
The excellent, steppy Gainesville world music band 3rd Stone headlines Saturday night. Tickets are a mere $23 for the weekend, $12 for a day pass. Gates open at 11 a.m. and show starts at 2 p.m. Saturday and goes through Sunday at 6 p.m. A nice, chill way to spend a gorgeous fall weekend.
A big thank you to Paul Levine and Lyle Williams, creators of Bear Creek!! (Photo by the wonderful Jeffrey Dupuis.)
The gathering if the funkateers at Bear Creek Music and Art Festival was everything it was cracked up to be -- a glorious assemblage of the finest funk and jam players on the planet. "This," declared trombonist Fred Wesley (an alumni of James Brown's band and George Clinton's Parliament Funkadelic) "is where the funk lives."
And it is -- horns blaring through live oaks dripping with Spanish moss, booties shakin' through the starry night, newcomer funk bands popping up in the campgrounds and drawing an impromptu raging crowd. All of it is rare and special. To have the funk greats come play at Spirit of the Suwannee Music Park and to get a chance to really pay them their due is a beautiful thing indeed. People like Wesley, James Brown saxophonist Pee Wee Ellis, Maceo Parker, George Porter of the Funky Meters, the Rebirth Brass Band, and Ivan Neville. Seeing a show by any one of these folks is a treat. Six stages for five days is epic!
Mix in the second-generation funk players -- bands like Orgone, the New Mastersounds, Matt Grondin Band, Snarky Puppy, Soulive, and The Amazing JC's, and you've got the tasty musical stew that Levine and Williams are getting known for. Besides the funk, jam band fans had their fill with acts like moe., Umphreys Magee, Toubab Krewe, Cope, The Everyone Orchestra, the Heavy Pets, and Garage Mahal. Again, all these players brought ridiculous talent and energy to the nonstop party. Add to that an audience that manages to rage and be kind at the same time and its a euphoric mix.
Bear Creek festival gets better every year, as the word spreads among musicians that they'll get treated right and fans learn that seeing this explosion of talent in a gorgeous, friendly setting is an experience not to be missed.
Promoters Williams and Levine put so much love into creating the musical mix of this very special festival, and their taste is impeccable. Make your plans to get to Bear Creek for next year, people -- this is one you definitely don't want to miss!
Matt Butler of the excellent Hot Buttered Rum band puts together this ad-hoc group of musicians, and it’s a different mix every time. At Bear Creek, the Everyone Orchestra will include Kai Eckhardt and Fareed Haque from Garaj Mahal, Joel Cummins from Umphrey's McGee, Jeff Mosier of Blueground Undergrass, Jen Hartswick from T.A.B. , Jan's Ingber of the Motet plus Justin Perkins, Luke Quaranta and Teal Brown from Toubab Krewe. During the show they will be taking donations to support the festival’s recycling and new composting program.
THE EVERYONE ORCHESTRA, according to their web site, “is a celebratory, interactive, improvisational experiment orchestrated by a mad scientist conductor!
The list of Everyone Orchestra participants is an increasingly wide and intercontinental group including members of The Grateful Dead, Phish, moe., String Cheese Incident, The Flecktones, Club d'Elf, ALO, Tea Leaf Green and Adrian Belew, Taj Mahal, Maria Muldaur, Tuvan throat singers, live painters, dancers, chanters, choirs, hula hoopers, firespinners, jugglers, stiltwalkers, storytellers, a presidential candidate and hundreds of others among a growing legion of other performers.
Butler’s version of breaking down the barriers between musician and audience derives in part from desert art festival Burning Man’s ‘no spectators, only participants’ ethic and is undoubtedly influenced by his old friend and mentor Ken Kesey, the king of the Merry Pranksters.”
The Everyone Orchestra is dedicated to working for good and has performed numerous concerts for non-profit organizations, coordinated donation drives for the needy, and has brought their brand of participatory performance to student groups, schools, hospitals, an orphanage and more.
In an excellent interview with Jambase, Butler explained his approach to EO:.
"I don’t think about how I want it to sound. I think about who I have as players and that ultimately dictates what happens. I try to be in touch with all the players, just be in communication with them and make sure that everyone’s comfortable on stage, that they can hear well and that they’re fed and happy, so that they’re going to have a clear path to musical discovery.
And then I have this thing of getting everybody to agree to be on the same page of not knowing what’s going to happen and just going for it. And that’s part of my job, different people need different counseling before we get on stage to get into that state of mind in a comfortable way.
…I feel really blessed that for the most part I think the musicians have a fun and interesting time in EO and sometimes they’re very surprised: “That was insane, I loved that.” Sometimes we’ll have that perfect mix of craziness, a perfect moment of almost pop song beauty that we came up with on the spot and some high energy dance music and it’s all just perfect.
...it’s a departure of having expectations either within the band or as an audience member, in that literally anything can happen in EO for better and worse. That’s one thing that Ken Kesey taught me and the Grateful Dead taught me, that the mystery of the unknown is what’s interesting and in those moment of searching musically you won’t always land on the golden nugget but when you do it really really shines.
Like at one point in a song if the chorus is repeating I’ll hold up a sign that says repeat the chorus and I’ll have them keep on repeating it and have the audience singing it. Then I might take the band out so that just the audience is singing and then take it a little bit higher and then throw it back into the song. I’ll do little tiny moves like that and then sit down for 10 minutes. It’s an interesting application of the conductor role. I’m working on a couple pitches for other bands to do this in a larger setting because those are some of the most fun shows I’ve done."
Honey Island Swamp Band is great (check out their streaming music player) and they have a cool back story on their web site:
"The band came together after Aaron Wilkinson (acoustic guitar, mandolin, vocals) and Chris Mulé (electric guitar, vocals) were marooned in San Francisco after the levee breaches following Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, and had a chance encounter with fellow New Orleans evacuees Sam Price (bass, vocals) and Garland Paul (drums, vocals). They'd all worked together in New Orleans bands for years, but with no prospects of getting home any time soon, they figured they’d better cook up something new, and quick!
A few days later they had put together a song list, landed a recurring gig at San Francisco’s Boom Boom Room, and settled in to share a little taste of Southern culture with their new West coast neighbors. Their 7-song eponymous EP was recorded in 2006 at famed studio The Plant in Sausalito, CA, and was received so well that they all decided to continue the band upon moving back to New Orleans in early 2007.
Honey Island Swamp Band's sound has been described as "Americana on the Bayou", with timeless songs from Wilkinson & Mulé, highlighted by Mulé's searing guitar, Wilkinson's sure-handed mandolin, and 4-part vocal harmonies, all anchored by the powerful groove of Price & Paul's Louisiana stomp rhythm section.
In April 2009, the band released its first full-length album, Wishing Well, produced by Tom Drummond of Better Than Ezra. Throughout the rest of 2009, the band toured relentlessly in support of Wishing Well, on the strength of such songs as "Natural Born Fool", "Till the Money's Gone", and the album's title track. In January 2010, Wishing Well was named 2009's “Best Blues Album” at OffBeat Magazine's BEST OF THE BEAT Awards, where the band was also honored as “Best Emerging Artist”.
The newest offering from HISB, Good To You, was released in April 2010, and has quickly become a staple of most DJs on the Crescent City's legendary radio station WWOZ, as well as on Sirius/XM satellite radio’s Bluesville and traditional stations from coast-to-coast. Featuring the southern strut of songs such as “Rod n Reel” and the album’s first single “Chocolate Cake”, Good To You illuminates the mix of country-inflected rock and New Orleans funky blues that makes Honey Island Swamp Band's music so familiar and unique at the same time."
They're a Brooklyn-based 8-piece (sometimes more) led by Kalmia Traver (lead vocals, sax) and Alex Toth (trumpet, vocals, hyper-kinetics). The band released their new Triangular Daisies EP on Oct. 19th. The band won last year's Boston Music Award for Live Act of the Year.
Our friends at Jambase write: “Their sound sits along the same horizon line as Yeasayer and Akron/Family… one feels as if they're body surfing the edge of what's possible in melodic yet actively experimental rock.”
Check out Rubblebucket's unusual cover of The Beatles' "Michelle."
This is what I love about Bear Creek promoters Paul Levine and Lyle Williams, they are always finding tasty musical surprises for us!
festgrrl unfortunately had the flu last week, and was delusional with fever. She listed the wrong Tuesday for this post about Tornado Rider at the Engine Room! It's tomorrow. Get yer dancin' pants on and bring your protective headgear, 'cause this show's gonna rage. Tally bluegrass band Two Foot Level opens, doors open at 9, and it's $10 cover.
You never know quite what will happen at a Tornado Rider show (high-voltage acrobatics, hilarious theatrics) but you can be sure that you've never seen anything like it.
Local bluegrass band Two Foot Level opens. Doors open at 9 and it's a bargain at $10. I can say with complete confidence that this show's gonna rage.
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