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Photo Essay on Gathering of the Vibes:
On the Lam in The Temporary Utopia

by Carol A. Wade

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This past June, I got back on my own booted bandwagon, and re- accustomed myself to the unquenchable glee of hurtling along without knowledge. By that, I don't mean some kind of pre-industrial, Kon-Tiki boatload of shameless, heedless booty-wiggling. There are many consummately mechanical things about "road traveling" (more popularly known as "touring", or seeing as many concerts by way of asphalt, air, foot or otherwise, as are within the gumption, and the budget, not necessarily in that order). In this day and age, the whole experience still retains an odd balance between Back- To-The-Caves, and Super Techno Freakout. People toting cell phones chirp lazily, crusty as all get-out and head to toe in corduroy, faces consumed behind wild mazes of hippie hair. Wandering amidst colorful and respectfully shabby tent cities, you hear the rich warbling of kids' newest live acquisitions on portable boom boxes. And right next door, there's the drum circle.

"I think this is the first road trip I'm gonna go on where a portion of the road actually not gonna be road, but water," I told my old-school road buddy and fellow JamBands.com scooper, Jesse Jarnow. Actually, were in his cozy gold Volvo sedan on a portion of the road, the one leading to the ferry to Bridgeport. He then told me about falling asleep on a train in Europe last Summer on Phish tour, and waking up on a boat. Apparently, the train had somehow gotten inside. Jesse bumped into a guy from that very strange, very dense European tour, on the ferry ride to the Gathering. I felt as though I were being transported to some island of revelation, but I had no privilege of knowing what the New World held in store.

Jesse and I got to the waterside park in Bridgeport, CT, where The Gathering of the Vibes was held this year. The first Gathering I attended was hilarious fun. Ken Hays' Terrapin Tapes (the top choice for recording materials for the taper community, and an astronomically growing enterprise fueling the improv music metaverse) were still getting it together back then, creating a green, cozy wormhole of sonic experience, up in the Hudson Valley in NY. Two years later, it's all become an eyeful of change that's hard to ingest. I wondered how I've changed, how the bands have changed, how the world now views the possibilities of the kind of music being created in the improv realm, as opposed to two years ago, when a lot of the "big bands" were still just clambering up the fence to playing bigger shows.

This Gathering was a noticeably more elaborate affair, we realized, from the outset. Hundreds upon hundreds of cars arced in front of us, as we bantered like children out joyriding, on the way into the venue. Poking our heads out the window, we heard, unfortunately, a meandering tautness; strains of Providence's The Slip, wafted towards the stranded multitudes in their car on Friday evening, sunset embracing the coast. A logistical polevault, Ken Hays, in his golf cart, and hundreds of other crew members (see: The Charming Beeb, a few pix down) scurried about, trying to keep things together. For the most part, it was smoothly and unobtrusively run, the incredible amount of concertgoers notwithstanding.

With detours for passes at will call, and the enormous snake of vehicles awaiting parking, by the time Jess and I got in, it was night. Pitching tent in the dark by a tree, we had settled in just in time to kick it down with jaunty fusion stylings of Deep Banana Blackout. Just the name of a sort of party band two years back, Deep Banana are busting out, and melded their flexible funk with the otherworldly rap-warbling of Dean Bowman from the Screaming Headless Torsos, and the illuminated Michael Ray from the Cosmik Krewe.

We wandered around backstage after the Deep Banana set. It was then that I knew that I, as a "journalist", would be semi-cursed with having the unfortunate insight of the insider the whole time I was there. With nothing to do most of the time but vacillate between wandering the grounds with the rest of the kids, then breaking through the fourth wall to examine the gears of the mechanism, I started feeling a little vague. I mean...it wasn't a *bad* feeling. Uneasy.

The throttle of such an "event" can careen very skillfully through the labyrinth of one's ideas about what the "popular state" of improv music is today. Reproduction, repetition, cycles and psynchronization are at the very base of the music, it's evolution, its drive. But the size of the Gathering sometimes just made me feel like I was supposed to be having a more carefree time. Instead, I was bemoaning the queasy separation between The Crew and the "Audience". It's something that bothers me often, in all settings: clubs, indoor and outdoor events, etc. I guess in the beginning of getting into the real nuts and lugs of it all, one is wont to feel such a split, especially with myself being much more fond of slogging it up with my fellow peeps down the front. But actually, Jesse and I hadn't planned to be there long.

In a most ridiculous and foolhardy gesture of early summer derring-do, I had concocted the notion of taking in a night and a day of the Gathering, concluding with The Disco Biscuits short morning set on Saturday, then quaffing vitriol and driving like gangbusters almost 10 hours west to Cherrytree, PA. I'd talked him into it, we freaked on it, calculated mileage. There, we planned to see at least two more hours of Bisco (if not more, till the wee sprinkles of dawn) at a smaller festival called The Sshh (Summer Solstice Hemp Happening).

Members of the Biscuits showed up as we dawdled about, lingering meekly in the Press tent, scamming free SOBE (SOBE, the enhanced fruit-beverage company, also sponsored of the Gathering), beer, and feeling like we were gonna get tossed out on our ears any second. It turned out that not only had their van broken down, but they needed a ride to the Sshh the next afternoon. Humbly, we offered seating in the Volvo d'Or. They accepted. The fourth wall liquefied, I dreamed of a music world without boundaries, again navel-gazing at the idea of The World Band... man.

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The tent was a sauna sweatbox toaster-oven. I crept out, crampy and miserable, at around 9 AM the next morning. Still nervous about "getting caught" (like ditching Economics class out in front of the pizza store in the eleventh grade), Jesse and I got some breakfast and shuffled around, feeding our energy and mobilizing for the day ahead. The morning's eye-opening highlight were the sweet, yet grappling, and complex atmospheric weavings of The Big Wu, populated by our own Jeff Waful, another JamBands.com All-Star.

Finely pumped and the vehicle ready to go just short of idling, backstage on a knoll near some dumpsters, I looked around, peering in the pre-noon and already 80-something day, from underneath the brim of my obscenely garish fuschia sun hat. I'm allergic to sunscreen, so I bought the cheap thing at a dollar store, for $2.59 (that's not a dollar, I know...don't ask).

The Biscuits hit the stage at about ten minutes to Noon. The sun halted, took a brief glance around, shivered, then began to soar right to the peak of the sky. The had hung like a stilled breeze as I baked in the tent in the earlier hours of that day, and now, in the middle of the longest day of the year, The Disco Biscuits prepared to tear a hole in the stratosphere, then proceed on the longest trip they'd take in a while.

"That night she asked the very moon, was this her fate to be? At lunch she met the flying man whose airships crossed the sea..."

- "The Very Moon", The Disco Biscuits

With spills and delicate strobes of light, watery strums and splashes, The Disco Biscuits pried eight hands between a crease in the noontime sky, and began, in a frenzied calypso shuffle, to reveal the story of Leora, the lanky arranged mistress of one miserly Manilla, and her valiant search for rescue by a gaily arrayed airship, piloted by her true love, Corrinado. "The Very Moon", is gorgeously arranged in true Bisco style, sliding Sam Altman's facile and filigreed rhythms under unrelentingly draped, racy bass bends and burbling by be-visored Marc "Brown Bond Powder" Brownstein, and the slinky, intermingling midrange meanderings of Aron Magner and Jon "Barber" Gutwillig on keyboards and guitar, respectively. One song out of The Hot Air Balloon, the incredible rock opera unveiled by the Biscuits this past New Year's Eve, "Very Moon" was a perfect opener for their set, which ambled through four songs and an hour and a half of galactic jams, concluding with "Above the Waves", another HAB offering, and the spacious and questing "Magellan".

You wonder how things can seem so right, and yet go so wrong. An incompatible trailer hitch, much gear-hauling, heated finger wavering, scuttling about, conniptions, and about forty minutes later, The Biscuits had come to the realization that even if we all hit the road immediately (at what had swiftly become almost 2:00 PM), we wouldn't make it to Cherrytree till Midnight, and with the fastest-possible load-in, they'd go on at 1 AM, able to play an hour, and not much of a shade more, after the local curfew. Dejected, we all stood around rubbing our necks in the swelter and kicking at the sun-parched grass. My hopes of swirling under a midnight sky, to similar tones as mentioned above, dissolved into the rift in the sky. The rift, though, remembered to wink before it closed...I got my midnight dance, the next weekend at the smaller, incredibly-realized Melstock, also in PA (Mechanicsburg).

Sam had vanished (being courted for sponsorship, it turned out, by a djembe company, and being granted a complementary drum), along with Brownie, while Barber and Magner looked irate and antsy. Various hardcore Biscoteers hovered around, at the ready for drudge tasks like notifying the troops back home. Many of whom, they soon bleakly realized, had already embarked on the long trip, unknowing of the events which had unfolded. The whole thing smacked dully like a flat basketball, a dim reminder of things like the All Good Festival lighting rig disaster. I got in the car to root through things morosely, then discovered that the electric windows wouldn't go back up after I rolled them down. Later, Jesse asked around, discoverering that even amidst disaster, the Bisco Barber (who promptly remedied the situation) was the top car mechanic around. Jon, Jesse and I loped over the grass towards the press tent, remarking on the Gold Volvo's prime possible use as Eastern Bloc Mafia wheels. But let's hope the windows don't crap out then...

It took me a while to remember that all was not lost. It turned out that by way of the circumstances, achieveing the as-yet-unmentioned Phase Three of our already insane trip: heading *back* to The Gathering of the Vibes the morning *after* Sshh, in an attempt to make it back to see moe. play in CT on Sunday night, had quickly changed into an inevitability rather than a possibility. Duh, I thought. There were also the other bands, I mused somewhat hopefully to myself, then aloud to Jesse, who concurred, sharing my frowny angst. With such stanched hopes, it was still pretty difficult adjusting to the loss of the road-trip, the delightfully eye-cracking drive, any two members of the boundary-busting Biscuits personnel splitting sides and circumloquting for upwards of seven hours from the backseat. I got a valuable lesson in the workings of the cruel machine of expectation. Exhausted, we wandered the gleeful humps of Tent City, bleary-eyed and heavy with deflated anticipations, examining various locales of the little hippie metropolis, and finally drifting into sleep to the strains of Strangefolk's newly nuanced, wholesomely hard-jamming styles.

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Bright and early the next hazy Sunday AM, I decided I was going to try to make the most of both the fact that I was (sort of?) on vacation, but also in the unique position of existing as both tourist and native amidst Terrapin's self-proclaimed Temporary Utopia. First thing, the Harlem Gospel Choir greeted the day. Early afternoon presented the laid-back swanky funk-jazz of Percy Hill, whose keyboardist, Dean, sat in with moe. later in the evening.

Also, the terse grooves of Vermont's viperHouse (who, I suppose, were blessed with guileless transit from The Sshh themselves the night before), rang out and rumbled with ferocity. I took the time to reflect on things I was enjoying, but so too, honestly, the stuff I was not digging all too much. I resigned mostly to the backstage area after a while, however, quite rock-star broke, and unable to resist the constantly replenished food-and-beerstuffs, and wanting to sniff around for, you know... VIBE... in the place reserved just for the Vibe Merchants' hanging out needs.

I caught a rare snap of the very definiton of Low End In Jam Rock Today: Derhak and Brownstein (Rob and Brownie, holy heck...the bass thrummers of moe. and the Biscuits!) yucked at me for sheepishly creeping up to somewhat shudderingly capture two of my bottom-booming heroes. I become somewhat encouraged by the thought that, by virtue of my predilections, I'm able to gnaw away at the unfortunate walls between creator and consumer. Even after flopping around with moe. for the past five years, I'm still in awe of them, to a degree, as makers of truly fine, powerfully inventive music. But when I let go the hoopla, and intrigue, I remember they're just like me, music lovers, geeks, people with jobs and hobbies and friends, and responsibilties to merely survive their demanding, self-imposed lives. All this, they must do, as well as manage the undying (often obsessive) love of ever-growing throngs of admirers.

Although pessimism, to a degree, overwhelmed me then, looking back, The Gathering of the Vibes falls into my ever-cushiony inability to regard as wholly negative, for very long, anything that stands as a testimonial attempt at creating an atmosphere of outlaw solidarity amidst the factions and camps of jambands of the moment. The Vibes has grown a little weak on the "outlaw" aspect with age. The aforementioned necessity for increased separation, especially with bands like moe.'s immense rise in notoriety in the past few years, in my view, can naturally affect the psychic ease which flows between crowd and bands. Smaller festivals could be the way to go: Melstock, which occurred a week later, could be the group show example to follow, if not only for small-but-exploding bands: organized jointly by the independent Newmarket Productions and a generous Biscuits fan, Jason Melham, at his parents' rural PA farm, the festival was a laid-back, mellow and exceptionally magical meeting of the minds.

Despite my musings, though, and despite some really patently de rigeur, "new age", hug-and-grok-your-brother kind of murmuring from the festival's resident shaman late Sunday afternoon, I was reminded of the humorous affiliations that have, good or bad, come from being a jamband pusher for years. The fourth wall is being shoved a little, not just by me, but by Jesse, and others we've come to know, like moe.-taper-cum-Terrapin-Backstage-Bike-Bigwig, Mark "Beeb" Lutzker (below, left), and yet another stinking, hellacious JamBands.com contributor, Tony "Our Drunkcle" Oliviera (right). The old pals are shown here, showing each other the Universe's Multitudes of Love.

Certainly no pre-fab affair, despite flashes of characteristic stiffness amongst the festival personnel, the number of ambitious weirdoes out in the masses was unendingly surreal, surprising, and usually very humorous.

During sets by Max Creek and the high-quality Dead tribute band, Zen Tricksters, we scanned the crowd.

Johnny Dwork is the erstwhile editor of the quarterly Dead press morsel, Dupree's Diamond News, the creator of subsequent-and-burgeoning regional jamband newspaper, In Da Groove, and world-renowned competitive flying disk champion (who'da thunk it?). Here, he demonstrates an attempt to control the elements.

So, the end, I sucked up my chagrin for the most part, and enjoyed the day for what it was: a serendipitous romp through my minefield of expectations when it comes to serving up live music to my own hungry orifices. Whatever shortcomings I experienced in The Gathering of the Vibes, and its often cloying claims of temporary utopiahood, there is a time when it would all disappear. Approaching the stage, moving towards the thick front of the crowd, is where and when, strangely, the veil of the ephemeral, uncapturable and unrecordable, constant Utopia of freely lingering, self-exploring musicians and their craft, is lifted. The temporary turns constant, hands once filled with beers and babies and equipment now cradle and prod at instruments.

moe. took the stage at twilight, and whipped up two hours of thrilling turns of the jam, which sometimes seem, by now, almost expertly predictable, in my mind. The fresh, festival-ready addition of Nate Wilson from Percy Hill on keyboards, and the totally bold and interesting guest-spinning by DJ Logic (not to mention the perpetually wise re-addition of old drummer, Jim Loughlin, on percussion counter to drummer Vinnie Amico's sturdy propulsion) stood to fire the moe. penchant for willing impressionistic voyages into the creative unknowns...

And so it went...vastly exhausted and sunbaked, Jesse and I hopped in the Hungarian Mob Mobile and hit the interstate right after moe.'s set. Our duty to experience and facility done, it was time to leave Utopia for the workaday realities of life in the World beyond Life for Music. I sat back the next afternoon in the bucolic Jarnow home in Northport, New York, sleepily lounging, and sampling aural delicacies like Phish's new, by mail-order-only CD, "The Siket Disc," and various other timbral offerings new and old. It was then that I thought about how there are no boundaries between sound waves, and how music, like the breeze, spirituals, and sunlight will always somehow manage to filter through fences.

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Carol A. Wade thanks you if you've read this far...drop her a line with comments, queries and complaints, at caw39@columbia.edu.