High Sierra Music Festival 2008

As the 18th annual High Sierra Music Festival approached, some doubt was cast in the smoky air from the wildfires that plagued Northern California. Word was the main access route to Quincy might be closed off. The fires were still burning so recklessly around Plumas County, there was even speculation the entire festival could be cancelled. This fortunately did not occur and fans were treated to four days and nights of big festival vibes in a small festival setting, resulting in a glorious Independence Day weekend of near-utopian peace and harmony. The main route in from Highway 70 was closed off near Oroville, though, meaning most travelers had to go further east to Truckee and backtrack up Route 85 or take a circuitous canyon detour around Bucks Lake. The detour extended the trip by quite awhile, although it did offer some beautiful canyon scenery. Traveling out of the Bay Area on July 3 is always a dicey proposition. Even in this foul year of rising gas prices and economic downturn, traffic was still agonizingly heavy all the way from San Francisco to Sacramento and beyond toward the Sierras. Campers who were really on the ball traveled up the day before, leaving the traffic to late arrivals. Festival organizers were well aware of such potential issues though, as the first day of the festival wasn’t exactly front-loaded with top draws. But just about everyone had arrived by the time Idaho alt-rockers Built to Spill hit the main stage for Thursday’s headlining performance. Powered by three guitars, the band’s psychedelic sound sparkles as it soars across the starry night sky; the Big Dipper seemingly pouring cosmic ooze down onto the stage. Now it’s onto the late night action. On each night, one band performs for free in the Vaudeville Tent, while two or three other double-bills are offered in the late night music halls for extra ticketing fees. Depending on your mood and taste, these extra fees could be well worth it for four or five extra hours of entertainment. On Thursday night for example, The Slip plays the Vaudeville Tent; the Mother Hips, a band going through an impressive musical renaissance over the past year, are playing for $18; trip-hop star Bassnectar for $22; and rising jam phenoms Blue Turtle Seduction for $12. Opening for Blue Turtle Seduction is Phix, a Phish cover band that can’t seem to help keep getting back together even though they’ve supposedly broken up. The band delivers the goods with a truly Phishy sound that has the room moving to a variety of Phish classics. The key to the band’s sonic success is bassist Brian Adams, who delivers the dynamic low-end without which a Phish cover band would just sound like a garage band. He’s also the one member of the group who bears an uncanny resemblance to his likeness, as if he could be Phish bassist Mike Gordon’s younger brother or cousin. The highlight of the set is a stupendous rendition of “Divided Sky”. The classic tune is delivered with as much energy and precision as any “phan” could hope for, with guitarist Paul Murin nailing every one of Trey Anastasio’s licks.

Lake Tahoe’s Blue Turtle Seduction proceeds to rock the house with two sets that blend bluegrassy rock with pop, funk, a little bit of punk, and an ever-positive vibe. The weekend dance party is now in full effect. BTS also kick off a revolutionary patriotic spirit that stays strong throughout the weekend, demonstrating that today’s rockers are more socially conscious than radio and TV programmers might have the public believe. BTS get things going in that direction with their soon-to-be-classic call to arms “Government”, a rousing sing-along number on which charismatic vocalist Glenn Stewart urges that, “the people must lead for the leaders to see.” Late night activities also include nightly fire-dancing performances that draw large crowds of “oohs” and “ahhs” each night for compelling performances from Flamebouyant Productions and Instruments of the Now. With fireworks out of the question due to the dry conditions, the fire-dancing shows provide a nice alternate stimulation to the visual senses. The weather is downright perfect all weekend, with high temperatures around 80 and lows in the high 50s. Unlike the sweltering and humid climate of Tennessee’s Bonnaroo Festival, Quincy’s temperate weather allows fans to rock and roll all night and still sleep all morning. Those who are able to rouse themselves before noon, however, can partake in organized morning sessions of meditation, pilates, and yoga in a centralized meadow called The Lawn, which is surrounded by Tibetan prayer flags. The spiritual West Coast vibe is in evident effect. The heat is peaking when High Sierra vets New Monsoon hit the main stage at 2:15 pm on Friday for a 90-minute set that is as hot as the mid-day sun. Lead guitarist Jeff Miller delivers a stream of hot licks as the band tears into their classic rock-inspired sound with a summertime abandon that fits the 4th of July mood to a tee. Despite the heat, New Monsoon’s rocking sound draws a sizable crowd. It’s here that the festival shifts into high gear. Shortly thereafter, Bustle in Your Hedgerow — an instrumental Led Zeppelin cover band featuring the Benevento-Russo Duo on drums and keys—delivers a strong set on the Big Meadow stage. Guitarist Scott Metzger and Ween bassist Dave Dreiwitz round out the tight quartet as fans revel in scintillating versions of “Immigrant Song” and “The Wanton Song”, powered to a higher level by Benevento’s inventive lead organ work. Unlike some of the nation’s bigger festivals, none of the stages or campgrounds are too far from any of the others at High Sierra, meaning fans can come and go with minimum effort. This is the key to High Sierra’s trademark big festival vibe in small festival package. For food and drink, a plethora of tasty cuisines and beverages are offered at reasonable prices. But if you want to go back to your campsite for a cookout and happen to have a boom box, you can still listen to live music on the festival’s Grizzly Radio, which has four separate stations for each stage! This is the type of value-added service that makes the High Sierra Festival a hard bargain to beat. Another vital service is provided by water trucks that regularly wet down the main roads of the campgrounds to keep things from getting too dusty.

Ivan Neville’s Dumpstaphunk rocks the main stage in the late afternoon with a funky sound driven by Neville’s New Orleans roots. Neville is one of many artists over the weekend that promotes an appropriately patriotic, socially conscious vibe. One particularly funky jam finds Neville singing, “Bush didn’t help us, Cheney didn’t help us, did nothing for Katrina… we gotta turn this thing around, we gotta help those people out.” The band also delivers a groovy cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son” that’s clearly aimed at the same culprits. Next up on the main stage is the real Phish bassist Mike Gordon, who is currently touring behind a new album. After hitting the road over the past few years with a variety of partners, it’s an intriguing opportunity for fans to see Gordon fronting his own band. The man known to “phans” as Cactus delivers a great set reminiscent of the free-flowing, groovy vibe Phish became famous for. Gordon tears into the new songs with a dynamic attack highlighting why he’s gained a rep as one of the planet’s finest bassists. He also delivers a fresh take on Phish’s “Meat”, and kicks off the weekend’s Beatles love fest with a great “She Said She Said” that sounds delightful in the summer breeze.

Friday night’s main stage headliner is Gov’t Mule, with guitarist Warren Haynes delivering his ever-bluesy brand of guitar-driven rock to the nighttime crowd. The set leans a bit heavily on Mule’s old standbys, perhaps slightly disappointing to those who thought Haynes might seize the Fourth of July occasion to offer up some more timely material. But an entrancing cover of the Beatles’ “Dear Prudence” wins the day, featuring a deep jam that is a highlight of the festival. “Unring the Bell”, from the band’s latest album High and Mighty, invokes a vibe of revolutionary dissidence with outspoken lyrics like “Fake liberty is just another form of hate / Unring the bell before it’s too late.” Encore “Brighter Days”, from the same album, rocks the house with some smoking slide guitar and positive vibes for a better future, setting the stage for the band to close things out with “Soulshine”, Haynes’ classic contribution to the Allman Brothers’ catalogue. By Saturday morning, the skies have taken on a distinct haze due to the forest fires and attendees are being advised from the main stage PA that anyone seeking relief could find fresh air in the air-conditioned environs of the Mineral Room. An amusing incident occurs when one young fellow is brought back to his campsite by festival security and ordered to take four hours of bed rest. He’s told he will be summarily ejected from the premises if sighted on the festival grounds during this time. Since the fellow in question had clearly gone past his limits to reach a frazzled state, the order of mandatory bed rest actually seems like the most compassionate course of action for everyone concerned. It demonstrates that, unlike many large events, festival security is aligned with the same wise folks running the whole show. The lack of shade in the main stage area makes it difficult for the Chicago Afrobeat Project to draw much of a crowd for their early afternoon set, but they nonetheless throw down some sharp polyrhythmic grooves that pay tribute to Nigerian Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti. Over at the Big Meadow stage, the Akron/Family delivers a mid-afternoon set that starts off a little shaky but builds strongly until their “freak machine” has the crowd rocking out. One jam takes on the psychedelic flavor of the Grateful Dead’s “The Other One”, while the set closer begins with a beat-box jam that finds the crowd inspired to follow the band’s lead by making circle, triangle and square shapes with their hands while chanting “yeah yeah yeah.” The Slip follows Akron/Family on the Big Meadow stage with a set of jazzy space-rock jams. The trio hasn’t seen their star rise much over the past decade, but has continued to follow their own muse and developed a rep as musician’s musicians. Their sound fits right in at High Sierra. The festival is set up in such a way that you never know what you might see while traveling from one point to another. Walking back toward the main stage area in the late afternoon, one could encounter the Gamelan X crew, a world music group that would play the Shady Grove stage on Sunday and who had staked out a prime camping spot along the main drag. The group uses their prime location to deliver impromptu performances throughout the weekend to whoever might be passing by. Their diverse ensemble includes a set of four giant gongs, with one or two people sitting inside the gongs banging them with a hypnotic rhythm that’s in tune with the other instruments. In this location, one can walk right up, stand next to one of the gongs and receive a sublime vibration-fueled healing. Walking through the same corridor on Sunday evening, one could encounter a beautiful topless young lady who has painted “free hugs” across her chest, and is offering those hugs to anyone whose eyes light up at the prospect of some free love. The 40th anniversary of the Summer of Love may have been last year, but the vibe lives on thanks to this free spirit. Passing by The Lawn, a squadron of hula hoopers of all ages is in action throughout the weekend, as the spirit of peace and harmony continues to flow. Railroad Earth hits the main stage at 6:20 pm for a two-hour set of melodic, bluegrassy rock. New Monsoon guitarist Jeff Miller sits in for a tune that catches fire for a hot jam between he and fiddler Tim Carbone. Later, Cornmeal fiddler Allie Kral sits in for “Peace on Earth”, a tune that creates a great snapshot of the entire High Sierra vibe. The jam is fairly simplistic, but the gorgeous dual fiddle work from Carbone and Kral fits the early evening summer mood just right. Mandolinist John Skehan keeps a striking rhythm behind them and it’s clear that Railroad Earth, like the festival organizers, have some serious chemistry going.

Part 2: 96 Hours of Music

Bob Weir & Ratdog

A kind vibe permeates the grounds as fans prepare for Bob Weir & Ratdog to deliver Saturday night’s headlining set. Old hippies share party favors as what looks like the biggest crowd of the weekend packs the main stage area for some “good ol’ Grateful Dead” music. At the beginning of this decade, Ratdog was generally viewed as a lesser entity to the more intense and psychedelic energy of Phil Lesh & Friends. But since touring with Lesh from 2002-04, Weir seems to have been inspired to take his game to a higher level as the Ratdog shows of the past few years have seen a dramatic increase in high-powered jams.

Weir and company deliver an opening pair of fan favorites with “Golden Road” and “Jack Straw”, yet the band seems stuck in second gear for some reason. But when they break out seminal psychedelic classic “Dark Star” in the number three slot, the magic begins. The unfinished “Dark Star” segues into a lively “Little Red Rooster”—when Weir sings, “the dogs begin to bark and the hounds begin to howl,” the crowd responds with a howling in kind. Jerry Garcia favorite “Big Railroad Blues” comes next and this is where the band catches fire—Weir sings the lyrics with playful authority while bassist Robin Sylvester and drummer Jay Lane conjure a smoking groove that gets the Saturday night dance party hopping. Keyboardist Jeff Chimenti, guitarist Mark Karan and saxman Kenny Brooks all weave in their lines with expert skill as the band gels.

Sensing a possible early overload from the hyped-up crowd, Weir brings things down a notch with a superb solo acoustic rendition of the Beatles’ “Blackbird”, a staple of the Ratdog repertoire since the day of Garcia’s untimely departure from the planet in 1995. The band then takes a mid-tempo turn into the political territory of Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”. They follow this with a stellar up-tempo take on “Liberty”, one of the last tunes that Garcia contributed to the Grateful Dead catalogue, as the revolutionary spirit of Independence Day weekend is further conjured—“Ooh, Freedom / Ooh, Liberty / leave me alone to find my own way home.” Weir then throws a curveball with “The Days Between”, another of Garcia’s final tunes—a ballad that never became a particular crowd-pleaser. But here, Weir elevates the song with a more elaborate arrangement the song lacked in its Grateful Dead days.

The band takes “Days Between” into an unprecedented psychedelic territory, but it all makes sense when it segues back into the second verse of “Dark Star”, drawing a triumphant cheer from the adoring crowd. The latter section of “Dark Star” becomes a psychedelic tour de force, with Weir and the band exploring each passage and visiting any number of alternate realities and sonic landscapes. Karan’s lead work is superb. Having recently participated in a 45-minute exploration of the song (when sitting in with Phil Lesh & Friends for their May 14 performance of the Dead’s 1969 Live/Dead album) seems to have had a noticeable effect on Karan’s approach. The High Sierra crowd basks in the results. This is Ratdog 2.0, light years beyond where the band was in its early years.

Weir brings the set home with purpose as he leads the band into a rousing rendition of “One More Saturday Night”, a high-energy Chuck Berry-esque number that closes the set with a flourish. The band then encores with the apropos “U.S. Blues”, once again rocking the song with an energy that the Dead version lacked in latter days. The show is a definitive triumph and sends the crowd dispersing into the evening elated.

Over at the Vaudeville Tent it isn’t long before the Charlie Hunter Trio is throwing down a set of their trademark jazzy funk-rock jams. The grooves are well received as the tent is absolutely packed. Hunter’s virtuoso skills on his own unique guitar have continued to evolve, as he now delivers a more danceable brand of tunes than he did a decade ago.

Those who find themselves up at dawn are treated to an epic sunrise as the smoky conditions in the area cause the rising sun to appear like a fiery comet shooting slowly up into the sky. It’s a superb performance from Mother Nature, appropriately on par with all the great music being played throughout the weekend.

It’s a slow rising crowd on Sunday and with good reason. Most festivals last for only two or three days. But here’s High Sierra heading into fourth day. Many fans are taking it easy in the early part of the day, just trying to regain some energy. Blues rock guitarist Robben Ford hits the main stage at 2:15 pm and does his best to get things going, but the combination of hot sun and no shade leaves him playing to a sparse crowd.

A bit of shade can be found over at the Big Meadow stage though, and those who venture there are treated to one of weekend’s breakout surprises from the everybodyfields, out of Tennessee. The band’s smooth alt-country Americana sound fits the sweltering afternoon just right. With pedal steel guitar from Tom Pryor over soaring vocal harmonies from guitarist Sam Quinn and bassist Jill Andrews, the band’s sound feels like a slice of alt-country heaven. The aching harmonies on “So Good” fill the soul with a spiritual/sonic manna that marks the band as one to watch.

Most of the growing crowd is sitting throughout the set, but attentive nonetheless with appreciative applause between each song. Quinn tells the crowd that Andrews is looking for a ride back to San Francisco and there’s no doubt the charismatic bassist will find a willing driver with ease. The band caps off their set with a magnificent alt-country take on the Smashing Pumpkin’s “Today” that wows the assembled crowd, a large number of which mass at the side of the stage to buy CDs from the band afterward, and/or offer Andrews that ride.

We’re into the homestretch now as the Charlie Hunter Trio hits the main stage at 5 p.m. for another set. Like a number of other bands, Hunter is playing multiple sets on different stages throughout the weekend. The band still sounds great, but can’t quite match the energy of their late night throw-down. Right after this set, the everybodyfields appear again on the Radio Stage, which offers short sets for the radio listeners. It’s near constant music for 96 consecutive hours.

Former “one-man band” Keller Williams leads his new band onto the main stage at 6:45 p.m., with bassist Keith Moseley from the String Cheese Incident, drummer Jeff Sipe, and guitarist Gibb Droll forming a rocking quartet. The heat has finally cooled off to the point where a large crowd has now gathered, as Williams leads the group through a high energy set, clearly having a ball. Moseley and Sipe form a stellar rhythm section and one senses that this newly formed unit is just scratching the surface.

At 7:45 p.m., Blue Turtle Seduction hits the Big Meadow stage and delivers another high adrenaline set that turns out to be one of the festival’s best. Mandolin/fiddle player Christian Zupancic and guitarist Jay Seals are putting out a lot energy, the crowd is feeding it back and Blue Turtle is riding the wave, totally in the flow. The band throws down one catchy, uplifting song after another and the crowd parties like its still Saturday night. The mood is truly festive and one gets the sense that BTS will be playing the main stage at High Sierra 2009.

The Blue Turtle set ends at 9 p.m. sharp, just as Michael Franti and Spearhead are coming on for the final main stage set of the festival. Franti and crew have been one of the decade’s best success stories, growing from a club band to a festival headliner and showing that being a band driven by socially conscious themes is not an impediment to success. Just the opposite—the band’s growing popularity stems from their conscious vibe, along with their feel good grooves.

The band delivers a rocking set appropriate for the finale of the main festival. “East to the West” is a particular crowd pleaser, with Franti intoning that “God is too big for one religion.” Later, Franti shares a touching story about having a son at a young age and being stressed about not having as much personal freedom. He tells of how this caused him to have to prioritize his time, which led to an increased focus on music, and the writing of a large number of songs while essentially babysitting. As the band steams toward the finish, they rev the crowd up for one of the biggest charges of the weekend with “Yell Fire”, a high-energy ode to imminent spiritual revolution. It’s the perfect capper to the Independence Day weekend.

But the fun’s still not over yet. Most festivals don’t have late night acts on the last night. But this is High Sierra, so serious party animals can still choose from a Buckethead / Eric McFadden Trio show or a pairing of New Monsoon and EOTO (End of Time Observatory.) EOTO, the new live electronica act from String Cheese Incident percussionists Michael Travis and Jason Hann, kicks off the late night party at the High Sierra Music Hall with a scintillating set of psychedelic dance jams. The smoking grooves have an otherworldly quality that seems to take over listeners’ bodies the moment they enter the hall. The duo has clearly been refining its skills throughout the year and it pays off here.

New Monsoon hit the stage around 1:15 a.m. and fire off two more strong sets that finally bring the festival to a close. Railroad Earth’s Tim Carbone sits in for much of the show on fiddle, as he did with the band earlier this year at the Fillmore, and the chemistry is almost as if Carbone is a full-time band mate. Lead guitarist Jeff Miller seems to hold back a bit with Carbone present to share the leads, but it gives acoustic guitar/banjo player Bo Carper a chance to shine, which he does. New Monsoon are clearly in their element in the late night atmosphere, delivering a seamless show that keeps the party rocking all night with rich harmony vocals and one crowd-pleasing song after another.

By the time the next morning rolls around, campers are already departing and the bittersweet feeling of the festival’s end fills the air. But as fun as this was, the music wasn’t just about good times. The entire festival was interspersed with songs that directed listeners to the problems of this world and the solutions needed to make it better. It’s an idea first put forth when the San Francisco socio-cultural revolution of the 1960s swept the nation; the concept that rock and roll can be an effective tool for creating a more just and harmonious society. At the High Sierra Music Festival this idea was still alive and well, and while music might not have all the answers, it can at least point us in the right direction.