Get Your Bad Self To Bear Creek!

This time next week, folks will start rolling into the Wednesday night pre-party for Bear Creek Music and Art Festival. We are blessed here in the Southeast with many excellent music festivals throughout the year. Even with all that abundance, Bear Creek (Nov. 10-13) rises to the top. Fests don't get much better than Bear Creek – the lineup, the musicianship, the intimate atmosphere, the kind crowd, and the sheer joy of dancing in Florida paradise (Spirit of the Suwannee Music Park in Live Oak.)

Bear Creek’s excellence ties back to the promoters’ main goal: to have more sit-ins than any festival outside the big daddy of fests, New Orleans Jazz fest.

More sit-ins means that musicians are energized all weekend, not rushing back to the tour bus to move on to the next gig. It means fans are constantly surprised and delighted with instant, one-of-a-kind collaborations that you’ve just got to be there to experience: Mofro’s JJ Grey singing lead with Ivan Neville’s Dumpstaphunk on Sly Stone’s Thank You Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin; guitar ace Derek Trucks popping on stage unannounced to play with Berklee School of Music funkateer alums Lettuce in the moss-draped, hammock-filled ampitheater; the surprise midnight act Soullive performing a scorching cover of the Beatles’ Eleanor Rigby in a circus tent.

Once you go, you’ll always want to come back. At least that’s how it’s been for me, since the days of Down on the Farm, the precursor festival to Bear Creek, where the (relatively unknown at the time) Avett Brothers played an astonishing show for a tiny crowd of us in a sunny field in Quincy, Florida. This fest has come a long way since then, but it manages to maintain the intimate feel of the early days. Expect a crowd of 4,000 to 5,000 on the spacious Spirit of the Suwannee grounds.

Bear Creek promoters Lyle Williams and Paul Levine are artful in their selections -- last year, James Brown band players Fred Wesley, Pee Wee Ellis and Maceo Parker roamed the festival as artists-at-large, sitting in – and kicking ass – with band after band. Legendary funky keyboard great Bernie Worrell (Talking Heads) has torn up Bear Creek’s stages. This year we’re going to enjoy a reunion of New Orleans’ greats, the original Funky Meters. Watching young funk players jam with the folks who first laid it down back in the day is something to see.

This year, there’s an emphasis on funky jazz. Trey Anastasio of Phish fame brings his jammy Trey Anastasio Band; Medeski, Martin, Scofield and Wood and Dr. Lonnie Smith, Pee Wee Ellis and others bring the jazz. There is a ton of funk, including Galactic, The aforementioned Funky Meters, Lettuce, Dr. Klaw, The New Mastersounds, Orgone, Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe, Soullive, and smaller acts like horn-heavy Snarky Puppy and the quirky young Rubblebucket. There’s a bunch of electronica acts and a silent disco (headphones) as well. Music’s going to go all night. Here's the full, kick-ass lineup.

Williams and Levine have been known to scout  for Bear Creek acts in the late-night scene after NOLA’s Jazzfest, and so you’re always going to get the chance to see something new. I saw Trombone Shorty and Orleans Avenue for the first time at Bear Creek a couple of years ago before he got all Treme-big-time on us.

Bear Creek is about wandering the woodsy campgrounds and coming up on a horn section wearing high school band uniforms bringing the funk. It’s about groove-man Zach Deputy setting up an impromptu late-night stage on scaffolding above a food vending tent in the campground and instantly drawing a crowd getting down to a Michael Jackson cover. It’s about the magnificent Where the Wild Things Are wooden painted larger-than-life creatures placed around the cypress-lined pond a la The Wild Rumpus. It’s about reunion, new friends, great conversation, wacky costumes, and celebration. It’s about escape.

Ready to escape?  Tickets (which include primitive camping) are available online at $175 for 3 days, $225 for 4 days, and $245 for five days. Saturday and Sunday tickets at the gate are $130. Day-only tickets (no camping) are $80 Friday and Saturday and $50 for Sunday. 

Definitely plan on taking Monday off work — Sunday night is a funk get-down, including an extended jam session with Ivan Neville's Dumpstaphunk and a whole mess of ridiculously talented musicians sitting in. (Ivan's dad is New Orleans balladeer Aaron Neville of the Neville Brothers.)


If this video doesn't make you wanna go, well, I don't know: