A Rothbury Recap - Part V: Day 4 (Fin)

Sleeping in a tent overnight requires a strategic approach to staying warm, which involves closing all the flaps, pulling up the blankets, and huddling close together. Sleeping in a tent once the sun rises requires a considerable shift in tactics. Flaps come down, fans go on, damp covers are tossed to the floor, and the goal is to generally avoid baking as the sun quickly and unbearably heats the stale air. Sunday was the hottest morning yet (maybe because we hadn't gone to bed until the sun was getting ready to come up), and as it was the last day of the festival, it gave me the same feeling as the last day of college: it all went so fast; I wish I could do it all over again; and I'm somehow ready to move on.

And so, it was with a heavy heart that we ventured out of our stifling shelter and proceeded to break down the tent, pack up the car, and prepare for our long trip home. By the time we'd finished breaking camp, Day 4 was about to begin.

Most of the day was spent at The Odeum mainstage, with an all-too-brief aside at the Ranch Arena for John Mayer (more on this later). It was a day of some of the best guitarists out there: Rodrigo y Gabriela, Trey Anastasio, John Mayer, Warren Haynes, and Phil Lesh all took the stage on Sunday. Rodrigo y Gabriela kicked off the day's festivities with a set of their lightning-fast Spanish classical guitar meets acoustic heavy metal. Other than those positioned near the stage, the crowd was lazy, and the duo would have benefited greatly from a nighttime set that could have gotten the audience more involved. Their fingerwork, which seems impossible on their album and even more so in person, was impeccable. As if to make sure we believed what we saw, cameras were mounted and pointed downward from atop their guitar heads, picking up every intricate slap and scale for all to marvel at. In their thick Mexican accents, Rodrigo y Gabriela successfully woke up the slumberous crowd with such endearingly lost-in-translation phrases as, "I'm going to play crazy music for you now! Later gator." Crazy indeed. Some call it "just finger tapping," but as is proven by their debut Rodrigo y Gabriela, they have a sense of build and composition that other tappers like Justin King just haven't attained. And, in improving upon their record during the performance, both Rodrigo Sanchez and Gabriela Quintero traded long, jerky, often multi-part (though obviously scripted) solos that were simply awesome.

As the crowd poured out of The Odeum by the thousands to go see Colbie Caillat (just kidding, no one saw her...Trey was on next, after all!), we managed to push our way towards the front in preparation for Trey Anastasio's first official performance in eighteen months, following his many well-documented drug-related law enforcement struggles. The audience's mood was unlike anything I've ever experienced. I think the prevailing emotion was sympathy for Trey's situation and simple gratitude to have him back on the touring circuit. Of course, it didn't hurt that Phish members Mike Gordon and Jon Fishman were also at Rothbury, though Page McConnell made a point before the festival to assure fans that the imminent Phish reunion would NOT be happening at Rothbury. Still, the fans swayed and yelled and showed undying appreciation for Trey's release from house arrest. The set was very subdued, with Trey strumming shyly on his acoustic guitar for all seventeen songs. Phish "covers" were the focus, from an opener of Farmhouse's "Back on the Train" to A Picture of Nectar's "Chalkdust Torture" (featuring Phish bassist Mike Gordon), and Gordon was also featured on Anastasio's new tune "Alaska" and the Tom Marshall penned "Backwards Down the Number Line." The smile never left Trey's face, and his sheer bliss at playing to tens-of-thousands of adoring fans seemed to humble him to the point of shyness.

Regrettably, I never attended a legendary Phish concert, but Trey and Mike seemed to enjoy each others' company so much on stage that it made a reunion seem inevitable. This was nothing less than confirmed when Trey teased, "All we need now is a drummer and keyboardist." And they got it when Trey joined Gordon and his band to play during the entire set later in the day, and drummer Fishman guested during the finale on the sloppiest, most disjointed and inharmonious cover I've ever heard...and of The Beatle's "She Said, She Said" no less! It wasn’t a promising three-quarters reunion, and it was definitely unpracticed, but Phish has never shied away from exploring new things on stage. Regardless of quality, it was a welcome impromptu hoedown, and the next time the three are all on stage together it will hopefully be with McConnell, as a reunited Phish.

And then came the moment I'd been waiting for since February. John Mayer was finally getting the chance to prove himself to all of the doubters! People constantly link his arrogance and pretentiousness to their own uncertainty about his pop-turned-blues career, but Mayer was playing a festival, the one place where people are certain to show up with at least somewhat open minds. So how did he capitalize upon this golden opportunity? He started his set early! Though slotted to go on at 6:45pm, Mayer took the stage at about 6:15pm and played a range of his early songs, including the stagnant-since-2002 "Why Georgia" (a great song on the record, a dud live) and the most overplayed song of 2001 - 2003, "No Such Thing." Mayer also performed a weak and sololess interpretation of Clapton's classic "Crossroads," and an emotionless rendition of George Harrison's usually deeply moving "My Sweet Lord," which conspicuously lacked Harrison's proclamations of love and devotion to Hare Krishna. Despite his early start, the only one of the entire festival by any artist that I know of, Mayer was able to redeem himself at times, though they were few and far between. His new favorite tune, "Gravity," had a distinctly fresh feel and soaring solo. Other than that, the blues tune "Mercy," complete with more fiery solos, was the only song that really stood out in the set. And, to add insult to injury, Mayer cut the show short, ending at 8:10pm instead of his scheduled end time of 8:45pm. Again, he was the only artist I saw over four days of music who didn't play out the entire time slot. If you've read my blog before, you know that I am unequivocally a devout Mayer fan, and have never been one of the doubters. I've seen him several times, and was at his first ever blues-trio show in 2004. I know what he can do with a guitar. He has so much control over it, it becomes like his third arm. I also know that he has countless epic Hendrix jams in his repertoire, including "Red House," "Little Wing," Continuum's "Axis: Bold As Love," and TRY!'s "Wait Until Tomorrow." The skeptics in the crowd would have welcomed some hard blues, which was clearly lacking throughout the entire festival, but instead Mayer played to the girls-in-the-front-row types with more pop hits than anyone behind that front row cared to hear. There was a single beacon of hope when Mayer said, just before his premature encore break, that we were a "pull-it-out-of-you type of crowd." My heart leaped. What would it be? Who would come and play with him? Trey? Warren Haynes? What Hendrix tune did we extract from his catalog? He quickly doused the flame when he launched into a studio-replica of his latest chart topping single, "Say," which he didn't even attempt to spice up for the live show. If that's what we pulled out of him -- if that's what he thought we wanted to pull out of him -- he completely misread his audience and made some true mistakes by pandering (like McCain) instead of reaching across the aisle to convert the haters (like Obama). I know Mayer is the type to claim that he plays what he feels like playing and never does things just to impress the crowd, but anyone who prefers his more recent material had to feel very disappointed, as I did, by his performance on Sunday. The only positive of the entire performance was the encore, which consisted of the previously mentioned "Gravity" and "Stitched Up" from Herbie Hancock's duet album, Possibilities.

I left the Mayer show bitter and dejected. Hadn't I driven hundreds of miles to see him play? And he brings me what? Colbie Caillat, Brett Dennen, a bunch of old pop tunes, and two sub-sub-subpar covers of two incredible songs.

I waited near the backstage area, wishing I had a baseball bat, but the coward never showed to fight me like a man, so we moved on to the final concert of the festival. Phil Lesh & Friends, including a sit-in by Warren Haynes for the first handful of songs, provided a fitting atmosphere for the festival's end. The energy was high the closer you got to the stage and died as the more exhausted festivalgoers lay spent in the grass, alongside so many cigarette butts. The vibe was not at all like that during the Widepsread Panic sets, which had had the entire field of thousands dancing on the 4th of July until midnight. Lesh & Friends were smooth and easy to listen to, and the twinkling night sky was a peaceful backdrop. At midnight, after two hours of Lesh and almost fifty hours of music over four days, we barely had the energy to get up off the still lush grass on the field of The Odeum.

As we walked to the car, I couldn't shake that end-of-college feeling. I knew I had a struggle ahead in that twelve hour drive home, and also that I'd had the time of my life over the past four days. When I got home, the first thing I did was reset my countdown clock to July 2, 2009.

A Rothbury Recap - Part III: Day 2

"Let's detoxify so we can retoxify..."

And so began Day 2, in a massive yoga class on the grass under the Tripolee Domes. It was a fairly advanced group, and very willing to exert a surprising amount of effort at 10:00am on the day following many road (and acid) trips. I haven't gone into crow pose in years, and my travel-weary body and involuntary groans made me feel geriatric next to the spry hippies that so easily levitated themselves onto their hands.

Feeling physically and mentally ready for the day, there was only one place to go: shopping. The campgrounds and venue were riddled with art booths, clothing shops, smoke shops, glass art, food stands, incense makers, and various other hippie-wares. I got myself a fresh bandana, and then it was on to our next stop: the main stage.

Friday was a day spent at The Odeum, enjoying some of the biggest acts that Rothbury had to offer (so was pretty much every other day). The Wailers kicked it off for us, and what I thought would be a big thrill ended up generating about as much energy as a speech by John McCain (ZING!). Don't get me wrong...it was fun to see Marley's band up there, playing his songs and channeling his art, and they did so just as well as they ever have. "I Shot the Sheriff" sounded as timeless as it is, and the crowd reacted very favorably to the Wailer's Marley-filled set. But the performance reeked of The Police at Bonnaroo 2007, full of call-and-response time wasters and other audience participation exercises that are targeted primarily toward either a) the front row or b) everyone over the age of 50.

We left after The Wailers’ set to go see Sam Beam (of Iron and Wine), who was playing on the smaller main stage at the Ranch Arena. He was stoned...very stoned. His complex play was a little sloppy, and he stumbled over his words a few times; but he took his mess-ups in stride, casually joking with the crowd about his altered mental state and putting on a jovial yet emotional solo acoustic set. I'm not sure why he was booked without the rest of Iron and Wine, but coming off of the sensational The Shepherd's Dog, I'd like to see them do some full-band performances at future festivals. While Sam Beam is inarguably the driving force behind the band, and his songs were charmingly intimate during the solo set, they lacked all of the umph that makes them so memorable and riveting on the album and in most live shows.

Before Beam was able to finish his set, we ran back to The Odeum just in time to see Snoop Dogg, aka Snoop Doggie Dog, aka Snoopaloop, take the stage via a gleaming white motorcycle. He looked -- and I would have expected nothing less -- absolutely obscene in long black shorts, a white t-shirt, and roughly six tons of chains and rings (aka "bling"). His MC was screaming things like "Biotch" and "Can I get a Hell yea?" at the top of his lungs, and continued to do so on the last beat of every song during the performance. From "Gin and juice" to "Nuthin' but a G Thang" to "Drop it Like It's Hot," the hits just kept on coming. Now, I could easily go on a rant about how they all sounded EXACTLY THE SAME (which they did) or about how ridiculous it is to have a grown man yell "BIOTCH" (which was amplified further by an echo effect) to end every song. But I'm not going to. What I am going to rant about is the fact that on at least eight separate occasions, Snoop Dogg and his MC referred to the Rothbury crowd as East Lansing – as in "Wussup, East Lansing?!" or "How ya'll doin, East Lansing?" or "Yo, East Lansing, it's 4:20...who wants to see Snoop light this huge blunt and smoke it in front of ya'll?" (We all did, of course.) There was no evidence that Snoop and his posse had any clue where they were. The festival, called the Rothbury Festival, located in Rothbury, Michigan, is over 100 miles away from East Lansing, where Snoop 'n Crew were scheduled to play later in the week. There's no better way to lose the respect of a crowd than to hilariously and continually refer to them as a place that they're not in. Luckily, everyone was just as high as Snoop, so no one seemed to mind.

The most glaring aspect of Snoop's performance, aside from his complete lack of geographical sensibility, was the overabundance of white people at the Rothbury Festival. From on stage, Snoop must have been completely disoriented as to his whereabouts because of the glare from all the sunscreened, sweaty, hippie-dancing white people...so that should accurately explain his East Lansing confusion.

In a day of headliner after headliner, the next up was one that I looked forward to seeing for only one reason: so I could confirm my already staunchly held beliefs that they are the most overrated band since Nickelback. I am talking about none other than hard-rock-jammers 311. I have never understood what is at all enjoyable or redeeming about 311 and, aside from the mildly pleasant "Amber" (which fans tell me is like the ever-irritating "Crash" to their Dave Matthews Band), I'd honestly rather puncture my eardrums beyond repair than listen to a single note. And a single note is about all I needed. We stayed for two songs before retreating to the shade of the forest around the Ranch Arena to hear Jon Fishman (of Phish) play with Yonder Mountain String Band.

Bluegrass is a strange animal. There's something very eerily Confederate about a banjo and washboard, though there's also something pleasant and provincial. At a festival, it is decidedly the most versatile music, as it is both danceable and kick-backable. It was so kick-backable, in fact, that we fell asleep in the grass after a while and soon decided to move our slumberous party back to the tent for a nap and some home-grilled veggies (it was an added incentive that the in-venue meals were a baseball-stadium-minimum of $7).

We ate and slept for a bit longer than we'd planned, and got back in time to catch the end of Widespread Panic's first set (the perfect appetite whetter), the middle of Of Montreal's overlapping set (indie-rockers to whom I didn't pay enough attention due to my anticipation of the next set), and the entirety of Widespread Panic's second glorious performance of the night.

I'd never seen WP before they closed out Bonnaroo last year, and I was so exhausted by then that it was all I could do to stay awake long enough to make it to their show, let alone actually pay attention. This time it was different. It was night 2, it was July 4, it was set 2, and we were fresh off a nap. If you've never listened to Widespread Panic, that's OK, but if you've never seen them perform you're really missing out. As proof of the incredible show, I offer the following anecdote:

I don't dance. Ever. I'll bob my head and tap my feet, but I'll never get the arms involved, and I'll never EVER turn or spin or cause myself to move in such a way as to risk losing my balance. But from 10:30pm - midnight on July 4, 2008 I could not stop dancing (yes, hippie-dancing, but still!). And I wasn't shy about it either. It started out innocently enough: I looked to my left, saw a beautiful lady, and started to dance with her. We laughed, and my urge to gyrate briefly subsided. Then, as I reached down to pick up the glowstick that had just hit me in the back of the head and position it snugly between my fingers, I began to stir once again. This time it wasn’t with a girl, but with the music. I've never had that urge, and over the course of the next two days I would try to recreate it often, and fail each time. But for 90 minutes on the anniversary of the day our country was born, I learned that sometimes you just need to let go of your inhibitions, grab a couple of glowsticks, and do what feels good. No drug can compare to the euphoria that I felt just swaying and turning and flailing to the music.

That being said, Widespread Panic gets my award for Best Band of the Festival. Everyone expected it, as they're true veterans of the festival circuit, but the performance exceeded my hopes even having already experienced them. Something special happened out on the field of The Odeum that night, and the collective joy and excitement of the thousands in attendance was celebrated in the only way possible: at the exact moment that Widespread panic hit their final note, the sky over the main stage exploded with midnight fireworks. There's nothing Americans love more than getting together to listen to music, eat a lot, litter, do drugs, and blow shit up high in the sky. And baby, we had it all!

After the fireworks, Rob Garza (drum machine) and Eric Hilton (processing and effects), the leaders of Thievery Corporation, took to the Sherwood Court stage in front of what appeared to be the largest crowd that any band had yet seen. The atmosphere was electric, and we were rammed right into the middle of it all. I made a point of noting how many different genres of world music Thievery evoked during their massive set, and when I looked at my notepad after the show, I'd written the following: India, Brazil, Middle East, Reggae, Rap, Latin, Hip-Hop and Japan/China. But their genres more generally encompass jazz, dub, and a mix of classical sounds from the styles and nations mentioned above. In describing the borderless global bliss of a Thievery Corporation show, I defer to my own expertise on the subject. This time around, they were playing to a crowd at least ten-times the size of the 9:30 club, and they came into Rothbury as a dark horse for “Best Performance.” The buzz the next day said it all. Thievery put on THE surprise performance of the festival, pleasing clubbers and jammers and Sherwood Forest dwellers alike. The bass was soul-piercingly loud in a way that made my heart beat along with it, and the glowsticks, which were flying high by the thousands, let me know that my fellow Rothburians felt the same way. Most impressive was TC's lineup on stage, which consisted of (in addition to Garza and Hilton) two percussionists (one on bongos and accessories, and one on congas), a sitarist/guitarist pulling double duty, a bassist, and alternating singers: one for Middle Eastern pieces, one for Hindi pieces, one for Brazilian and other Latin pieces, and two groups of three rappers and Rastas for -- you guessed it! -- rap and reggae. Oh and there was a belly dancer for good measure.

We were transfixed from start to finish, and when the show was over at 2:00am, though the dance parties would rage on into the morning, there was nothing for us to do but go to bed, in the hopes that Day 3 would provide us with even a fraction of the awe-inspiring music that did Day 2.