In the real world, Memorial Day is synonymous with the beginnings of summer. The weather is getting warm, schools are getting ready to let students out, and a tinge of excitement fills the air. In the jam world, Memorial Day weekend is synonymous with one of the finer music festivals offered: Summer Camp in Chillicothe, IL. This year proved one of the better outings as all the hype and the stellar lineup lived up to a tremendously awesome weekend.
With the sun dipping in the sky, many S’campers made the various treks from car to camping spot in order to get settled. With Floodwood’s set, which focused on “Workingman’s Beauty” Grateful Dead covers, the festival kicked off on the right foot. With Dead 50 right around the corner, Summer Camp helped amp up the event by hosting one Dead-themed band each day. The bluegrass-Americana five-piece, which features moe.’s drummer Vinnie Amico and guitarist Al Schnier, played early 70s Dead tunes flawlessly. Of course they incorporated a twangier-sound to the songs, yet they still harkened back to the very melodic sound of the Dead during that era. It was a fun set, especially when Amico abandoned the drum set in order to lend vocals to “Casey Jones.” Schnier meanwhile went behind the kit and laid down the beat. Pulling the ol’ switcheroo, Floodwood nailed the classics.
En route to another location, the music of Aqueous continued to draw fans into the fold. This is a band that really shreds it! Besides seeing your favorite acts, the festival is a great introduction to new, up-and-coming bands.
On the bill for the official Thursday night pre-party in The Red Barn was Dopapod and Turbo Suit & Friends. Dopapod was as funky as ever, keeping the crowd moving throughout the set. They played a great “Trapper Keeper” that was well received by all. As quickly as they started, their set came to an end.
Just outside, at the Campfire Stage, the Nth Power was playing. It was the perfect opportunity to catch a breath of fresh air between the two late nights. The Nth Power’s sound was quite different from the danceable electronic music from inside the barn. It was soulful, moving, and full of energy. The piercing sound of the bongos echoed throughout the campfire nearby.
Back inside, Turbo Suit and Friends put on a great show. Unsurprisingly the “friends” were guitar player Marcus Rezak from Digital Tape Machine, Umphrey’s McGee’s Joel Cummins on keys and Andy Farag on percussion, and Natalie Cressman on the trombone. She added vocals as well as trombone on a couple tracks, reprising her role on the band’s most recent album. They played their staple cover, Triple Wide, which was extended and featured a nice Orch Theme tease/jam mixed in. Eventually the friends exited the stage, leaving only the three members of Turbo Suit to close out the set.
Around noon the next day, Oteil Burbridge & Roosevelt Collier played a set by the VIP tent. They featured some great musicianship despite the fact that Oteil claimed that the band was “a little rough around the edges.” On the other side of the campground the Nth Power was playing. They played another outstanding set, which featured a great jam on what is normally a boring social media plug. Trying to get people to receive mobile updates, I’ll never forget the numbers “3-0-3-2-1! 3-0-3-2-1!” All you have to do is text LOVE to that number and you’re part of the Nth Power family. They played a song out of the message that ended up being a fun surprise to their set.
The next couple of hours were filled with all genres of music. Wisconsin bluegrass Horseshoes & Hand Grenades played an energetic set including their tune “Beers, Bongs, and Bloodies.” Digital Tape Machine kept the afternoon rolling with a solid afternoon set, and The Werks delivered one of their many performances in the VIP tent.
Friday evening couldn’t have had a better line up. Keller Williams’ Grateful Grass tore through a blistering set of Dead tunes that scorched the crowd. The entire set was one big highlight, although there were some salient points. “Shakedown Street” had a mean violin solo where Jerry normally rips. Perhaps the most memorable portion of the show came in “Cold Rain and Snow,” when the musicians stopped playing their instruments and harmonized in singing to the guitar part of the song; it was a special moment.
After Grateful Grass, Umphrey’s began their first of three sets of the night. It was a good set, but one that was going to be easily overshadowed by the sets that followed afterwards. Godboner meets Gene Ween, the collaboration between Umphrey’s McGee and Ween’s front man, was the second UM set. The bizarre numbers, like “Spinal Meningitis” and “Baby Bitch,” were really getting the crowd moving.
Meanwhile, Trampled by Turtles were jamming out at the Moonshine Stage. Their set included an awesome cover of the Pixies’ “Where Is My Mind?” with a soaring violin part in the spot where the vocals normally open the track.
Papadosio followed on the Starshine Stage, just before Godboner ended. Papadosio’s set only consisted of five songs: Direction, You and Yourself, Improbability Blotter, Curve, and Advocate of Change. It was a rather old school set, with only “Direction” being semi-recent, and even that song is already three years old. Given an hour long set with only five songs, each of the songs stretched past the 10 minute mark and included some incredible improvisation.
Umphrey’s followed with their third and final set of the night. It began with an extended “Bridgeless” that was anything but standard. A funky “Booth Love” as well as a solid “Phil’s Farm” followed, but without a doubt the highlight of the set was “Utopian Fir.” During the crazy time signature introduction, they segued into the “Back in Black” guitar riff seamlessly. It was insane how they nailed such a transition from a strange introduction to such a well-known guitar riff, much to the enjoyment of the Umphreaks that packed the field. Later in the song they had a monster jam and was one of the highlights of the weekend for UM.
Keeping things moving, Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe played a solid set that got downright funky. The funk continued during STS9’s set at the Sunshine Stage. One of the most fruitful collaborations of the festival went down that night, as Victor Wooten came out and played alongside former student Alana Rocklin during a dirty “Gobnugget.” In fact, the two had a bass duel on stage. As they played together, mentor and student, everyone realized what a special moment was unfolding. As Wooten was leaving the stage, he and Rocklin embraced each other only as a humble mentor and a grateful student could do.
Watch Victor Wooten’s Sit-In With STS9 Here
To end the night Future Rock did a set of Daft Punk music and dubbed the set Daft Rock. Keeping the dancing going at 2am is never an easy task, but they had no problem doing so.
Saturday proved to be equally as exciting as Friday. Victor Wooten kicked off the day’s music in the Soulshine Tent. It was a very interesting and unique experience. Wooten obviously played bass, laying down loops and then going over them with strange, exotic, and beautiful bass lines; perhaps more entertaining than the low-pitched notes were the words spoken. He began sharing his thoughts on anything and everything. Poignantly he described what was wrong with our system of learning a musical instrument. Just listening to him speak about music so passionately and with such natural, gifted authority was worth the time. He also talked of different green initiatives to make our planet a better place.
American Babies played a great daytime set at the Campfire Stage as the sun shone brightly high in the sky. They played “They Sing Old Time Religion” that was jammed into “Red Eyes.” As they have done before, they covered “New Speedway Boogie.” In the middle of the song, frontman Tom Hamilton stopped, commented on how one man in the front was doing a good job of sharing a sack of wine, and then proceeded to take a big ol’ swig of the sack himself. After tasting the succulent (or not so succulent) bagged wine, he then continued with the tune. It was a fun moment for the relatively small crowd to see.
Next up was TAUK. They played a late afternoon set at the Campfire Stage to a very large crowd. The group fused a lot of different genres into their own music: rock, progressive alternative, and funk to name the main influences. They rocked hard and didn’t let up steam. They were all talented, but their drummer was almost hypnotic. His methodical, robotic, and powerful drumming captivated me and kept a solid beat on which their music was based. They played a spot-on cover of Nirvana’s “In Bloom”; even Dave Grohl would have been impressed.
With TAUK ending, I sprinted through the forest to catch Joe Russo’s Almost Dead. They were playing a version of “Slipknot!” that was dark and brooding. The JRAD set, the third featured Dead set of the weekend, was filled with segues in and out of the classics. The improvisatory highlight was without a doubt the 15+ minute “Throwing Stones.” Just… wow.
After their set, it was off to the Sunshine Stage for a good portion of the rest of the night with the NEW DEAL and Umphrey’s playing two sets.The NEW DEAL, who does not play as much as they should, did not disappoint. They tore through their electronic jams and didn’t leave too much music unexplored.
Umphrey’s followed on the same stage and got a little help from tND’s Jamie Shields. He helped them jam out “Higgins” as he traversed the keys with Cummins. It was a solid collaboration on a song that has produced some of the best jams. The second set was even more exploratory with heavy hitters “Wappy Sprayberry,” “Divisions,” and “Bright Lights Big City.” Ironically, the best part of the second was the five minutes that followed all the heavy hitters, as Andy Farag, also known as MC Pumpernickel, came to the front of the stage to rap “Regulate.” The crowd went wild as they started to play the song… to say it was a treat would be a real understatement.
The other festival headliner, moe., followed Umphrey’s with a 12:20am set. Being on the Moonshine Stage, moe. was able to utilize the tree line at the back of the field by painting them with lights and lasers as they played their psychedelic rock. It wasn’t just psychedelic, but it was also rock-n-roll at its finest. And silly too. moe. covered Focus’s “Hocus Pocus” including nailing the nonsensical yodeling featured in the song. Their set was a great way to end the night.
The last day of a festival always brings something special, and like past years this Summer Camp had a deluge of pouring rain that defined the afternoon. Around noon the clouds finally broke wide open and torrential rainfall ensued. For about 30 minutes it was pouring rain, and pouring hard. Nobody was safe from the rain and ensuing mud. During this brief but powerful storm, many tents and poorly-fashioned canopies imploded, many from the weight of the pooling rainwater.
What followed was genuinely awesome. About two minutes after the rain stopped, everyone there started cheering loudly. Hootin’ and hollerin’, whistling, clapping, whooping, singing joyously, everyone picked their favorite way show their appreciation to the weather gods. It was probably the loudest I heard a crowd get the entire weekend.
So with rain out of the way and mud everywhere, Summer Camp forged on. Following the rainfall, moe. played a special set with Bruce Hornsby that was the fourth and final Dead act of the weekend. Although not playing together the entire set, Bruce flowed well with moe. and did justice to tunes like “Sugaree” and “Help>Slip>Frank’s.” Even after moe. ended, Bruce returned with his own band, Bruce Hornsby and the Noisemakers, for a set at the Moonshine Stage. The highlight was a roaring “White Wheeled Limousine.”
From there I headed to the VIP tent to catch Twiddle play a set. It was fun and full of energy and good jams. Their reggae influences soaked the entire set. Opening with a fun Syncopated Healing, they never relented. The highlight of the set might have been when they jammed a “Billie Jean” tease and then segued into “Apples.” They ended their set with a soulful “Be There.”
Later that day the big name came out for a greatest hits set. Steve Miller Band, arguably one of the biggest draws of the entire festival, played hit after hit for ninety minutes. All it took was one look out into the expansive crowd to see how popular they were. Playing hits like “Fly Like an Eagle,” and “The Joker,” there couldn’t have been too many people that were unfamiliar with their music.
Another big draw, Widespread Panic, played the final two sets on the Sunshine Stage. Despite the dark clouds and pessimistic weather forecasts, the weather stayed dry for everyone to enjoy their two sets. The music by Panic was excellent, and their song selection was certainly not very typical. The first set included a jam to open the show as well as a rarer “Who Do You Belong To?” The second set came out just as strong with classics like “Rebirtha,” “Dyin’ Man,” and “Fishwater.” They encored with a short but energetic “Imitation Leather Shoes.”
After Panic, the last bluegrass act of the fest went on, Greensky Bluegrass. They played a blistering set filled with originals as well as covers such as Pink Floyd’s “Time” and Phish’s “Tweeprise,” both of which were well-received by the crowd. GSBG was not as fortunate as Panic, and again the heavens opened and the rain fell quite hard and fast, soaking (again) everyone at the fest. The rain had barely stopped when easily the most memorable part of their set, and quite possibly the entire weekend, happened right before GSBG was to finish. As they were ending their set, the Vibe Tent, only a little further than maybe a football field away, started cranking out wompy electronic tunes. As they began their last song, dobro player Anders Beck stepped up to the microphone and yelled, “These are musical instruments, and we are playing real music!!!” The crowd erupted in cheers and applause for the musicians of Greensky Bluegrass as they ended their set.
Summer Camp was amazing. Great times were had by all, and after 15 years of annually hosting this festival, they sure know how throw a massive party. The music was incredible and the environment was ripe for fun. See you in Chillicothe again next year!
