Look! Are You One of These Cool People of Bear Creek?

One of the reasons festgrrl loves Bear Creek Music & Art Festival so much is that it's full of extraordinarily enthusiastic festers, who fill Spirit of the Suwannee Music Park in Live Oak, Fl. with spectacle after spectacle. Gathering together, dancing, putting on regalia -- it's one of the oldest facets of tribal community and it makes us FEEL GOOD.

Check out these lovelies from the just-finished Bear Creek 2013 -- which, as you will see,  included a Purple Day.

Are you in here?

Whew!

The great Bootsy Collins owned the ampitheater stage

Just back from the excellent Bear Creek Music & Art Festival, and I'll be posting more later on... stay tuned and THANKS FOR ALL THE LOVE PEOPLE!!!!

World Beat at Bear Creek

This weekend's Bear Creek Music & Art Festival has some top-notch world-beat bands -- in addition to the funk, jazz, hip hop, soul, R&B and elecronica that will rock the woods at Spirit of the Suwannee Music Park in Live Oak, Fl.

Here's a guide to Bear Creek world beat:

World Beat Thursday:

Toubab Krewe rocks The Paste magazine stage

Toubab Krewe from Asheville, North Carolina plays bouncy jam fusion and West African griot music These guys play some wild instruments including the Kora and Kamelngoni.  They play twice during the weekend -- the first show is Thursday at 7:30 p.m. on the porch stage and the second is Friday at 1:15 p.m. in the ampitheater.


World Beat Friday: 

Brownout

Brownout brings scorching Latin funk from Austin, Texas. This outfit began as a side band by some members of the Grammy-winning Latin ensemble Grupo Fantasma. Their funk-Latin fusion is reminiscent of the 1970s chart-topper band, band War. ("Spill the Wine," "Low Rider") but brings the genre new places. Brownout plays Friday at noon on the Purple Hat stage.

Then you can head over to the Toubab Krewe show mentioned above, at 1:15 p.m. in the ampitheater.

Antibalas

Antibalas brings the Afrobeat  jams in the style of the late Fela Kuti. Ths large band travels all the way from Brooklyn, New York to play for us Friday at 6:30 pm  in the ampitheater.

World Beat Saturday

The Resolvers

The Resolvers are a full-on 10-piece big-band reggae band out of Miami with brother and sister lead vocalists. They play Saturday at 2 p.m. on the campground stage.

Suenalo

Suenalo also hails from Miami. The Miami New Times named Suenalo as the best Latin band of the year in 2011.

"And we're not choosing it as the best because it's hands down one of the hardest-working bands on the scene. It's because nobody busts la rumba like these dudes.New Times issues you this challenge: Catch them performing live anytime, anywhere you choose. Then try to not let your hips move and your ass shake. Good luck with that one. Suenalo's signature blend — funk, reggae, Latin jazz, hip-hop, Afro-Caribbean rhythms, and electronic elements, among others — is the quintessential embodiment of Miami as melting pot."

The 9-piece Suenalo plays Saturday at 4 p.m. in the Music Hall.

This Week is Bear Creek, Baby!

Funk legend Bootsy Collins plays Saturday at 5:15

The music party that's been happening at Live Oak, Florida's  Spirit of the Suwannee Music Park in a series of festivals since October gets SERIOUS this week when one of the premier funk gatherings on the planet convenes starting Wednesday --- we're talking about  The Bear Creek Music & Art Festival . 

Bears, bears and more bears

This festival is ridiculous fun, packed full of  world beat, jazz, hip hop (The Roots,) cutting-edge funk (from New Orleans and elsewhere), old-school funk (George Porter Jr. of The Meters, Bootsy Collins and Bernie Worrell of Parliament Funkadelic, Ohio Players horn man Ron Haynes, and more), R&B, and DJ electronic dance beats for late night/early morning ragers.

Don't forget your costume

What makes Bear Creek such an absolute gas is the crowd -- the people who come to Bear Creek are there to get down. There’s an infectious vibe, outrageous costumes and it's a booty shaking dance party of epic proportions.

The festival proper runs Friday through Sunday with a standard Weekend Ticket. There is music for two more days for an extra charge -- a special musical benefit 4p.m. to 1:30 a.m. Wednesday night and a pre-party Thursday from 2 p.m. to 2:30 a.m. . 

The Roots -- Jimmy Fallon's house band, play Saturday at 8 p.m.

A Weekend Ticket (includes camping) is $175 advanced (though Nov. 11 at midnight), and $195 at the gate. Weekend Ticket holders can add two more nights of camping and music: $50 for Thursday night and $25 for a special musical benefit Wednesday night. Single-day tickets (no camping) are $80 for Friday, $80 for Saturday, and $50 for Sunday. See VIP ticket options at the website.

Bear Creek's musical offerings expand as the fest goes along -- it starts with one stage Wednesday, three stages on Thursday, and then  five stages run continuously Friday and Saturday. Things get cozy --- and super funky -- for Sunday, when New Orleans' Dumpstaphunk and killer New England funk band Lettuce close out the fest. Throughout the weekend, lots of musical sit-ins provide constant surprises. 

And don't miss a sojourn to take a break and go to the park's beach on the beautiful Suwannee River...

The lineup includes The Roots, Bootsy Collins and the Funk Unity Band, Galactic, Karl Denson's Tiny Universe, Lettuce, Bonobo Live Band, Ivan Neville's Dumpstaphunk, The New Mastersounds, Antibalas, Lee Fields & The Expressions, Zach Deputy, Toubab Krewe, George Porter Jr's Runnin Pardners, The Motet, Jennifer Hartswick Band, Break Science, Mike Dillon Band, Pimps of Joytime, Robert Walter's 20th Congress, Bernie Worrell Orchestra, Roosevelt Collier Band, Dr. Klaw, The Revivalists, Kung Fu, The Werks, The Malah, Space Capone, Nth Power, Flow Tribe, Dopapod, The Legendary JC's, Ron Haynes Game Changers, Brownout, Johnny Sketch & the Dirty Notes, Jaime McLean Band, The Monophonics, Ghost Owl, Greenhouse Lounge, Cope, Chris McCarty and the Underground Movement, The Resolvers, Profit, Suenalo, Lucky Costello, Oteil Burbridge, Skerik, Natalie Cressman, Dave Watts, Joey Porter, Jans Ingber, Clay Watson, and Pee Wee Ellis.

You can check out a general list of who plays which days here and peruse the full schedule here 

Don't forget to thank our hard-working and hosts from Big IV Productions,
Lyle Williams and Paul Levine!

Suwannee Hulaween Delivers Killer Tunes, Art and Spectacle

Spirit Lake 

Leaving the Suwannee Hulaween festival at Spirit of the Suwannee Music Park in Live Oak, Fla., festgrrl’s main take-away is that The String Cheese Incident is a collection of amazingly talented musicians.

The Colorado jam band dazzled with the breadth of it's musical material – from jam to jazz to pop to funk to bluegrass to funk and electronica. All that with lightning fast stops. Oh, and a super-slick nightly light show too.

Michael Kang and Bill Nershi lay down some Cheese

Michael Kang of The String Cheese Incident

Bill Nershi of String Cheese Incident

Thousands showed up sporting outrageous Halloween costumes for the band’s first night, which featured three balls-to-the-wall String Cheese sets.

Spot-on Napoleon Dynamite costume

An "illusion" costume -- homemade!

Indie-rockers  Van Ghost and souped-up bluegrass pickers  Larry and Jenny Keel owned the Thursday late night stages which kept everyone up and grooving until the wee hours, where we prowled the psychedelic Spirit Lake art and light installation – wow!

There were 30-foot-tall metal sculptures – one a three-faced bull and one phoenix -- which breathed fire. A giant geodesic dome was made up to look like a jellyfish and was filled with jellyfish swings for anyone to use. Artists painted a beautiful mural which came alive under black lights. Hammocks hung beneath black-light string sculptures suspended from the trees. There was an infinity mirror installation and giant, glowing Alice in Wonderland mushrooms. The cypress lake at the park is always gorgeous – for the Spirit Lake installation it was ringed with lights and the center fountain had a color-changing light show. Add a Spirit Lake performance stage with bands, fire dancers, hoopers and a burlesque show -- seriously the most amazing lake area ever at Spirit of the Suwannee.

The Spirit Lake bull sculpture

Spirit Lake stage

Spirit Lake dancer

Black light string sculpture

Spirit Lake phoenix

Spirit Lake dancer

Friday featured sets by Tallahassee's fun  hip-hop rockers Catfish Alliance (featuring Big E the Sexual Manatee,) jam band Comeback Alice and Van Ghost. Steve Kimock and Friends took the stage at 4 p.m. Friday for an excellent show that showcased Kimock’s killer guitar skills.

Catfish Alliance

 At Friday’s evening two-set String Cheese show, lightning flashed in the distance and it started raining. The rain held off for the most part during the String Cheese show but let loose afterward, as the funky Main Squeeze band from Chicago was killin’ it in the ampitheater.

And wow, it rained hard. Sadly, flooding ended up cancelling the much-anticipated performances by Big Gigantic and Conspirator..

Vince Herman of Leftover Salmon

Thankfully, the rain was gone by Saturday, and everybody’s soaked stuff was able to dry out. Fans had a full slate of daytime music featuring Brock Butler (formerly of Perpetual Groove), Latin-funk-reggae-jam Savi Fernandez Band out of Orlando, The Heard (BLISTERING full-on funk band from Chicago,) a high-energy show by Colorado’s Leftover Salmon, and in the early evening, an excellent psychedelic-jam-kickass-bluegrass “Leftover Cheese” -- collaboration between String Cheese and Leftover Salmon.

Trumpeter Jennifer Hartswick  and Trombonist Natalie Cressman
sit in with The Heard for a killer set

Live electronica band Sound Tribe Sector 9 hit the stage at 10:45 p.m. to a colorful, packed-out crowd, followed by trip-hop DJ Emancipator. Tampa Bluegrass-funk-jam band Applebutter Express hosted a late night jam with lots of sit-ins by festival musicians  at the Spirit Lake campground stage and then the silent disco raged until dawn.

Overall, Suwannee Hulaween had a nice mix of bluegrass, funk, jam and live electronic. Having a ferris wheel and Gravitron in the field by the main stage was a new twist for Spirit of the Suwannee Music Park and it was great.

Aside from the rain event, the sets all ran on time, and it was nice that no sets overlapped so everybody had a chance to see everything at the same time. The crowd was just great, with the exception of people lighting fireworks Saturday night in the middle of the dancing audience (Seriously people?)

On Saturday night, multi-instrumentalist Michael Kang of String Cheese announced from the stage that this inaugural Suwannee Hulaween is going to become a recurring event. And THAT was great to hear.

Gone Festing!

Gone festing at Suwannee Hulaween.

Check out photos and updates on the festgrrl page on Facebook