July 2009

The last two years for percussionist Jason Hann have been a roller coaster of musical endeavors.  His main project, the wildly popular String Cheese Incident, decided it was time to take an extended hiatus from performing due to some artistic conflicts within the group.  From the break, Hann and fellow Cheese drummer Michael Travis formed a dynamic jam-tronica duo called

The seventh annual 10,000 Lakes Festival opened yesterday to a large crowd that seemed small. This was partly due to the fact that the Main Stage had two acts running against the Saloon Stage (called the Vitamin Water Syn Saloon Stage this year). The Field Stage and Barn Stages were dark until 11:30 pm. This meant that the focus of last night’s audience was on the Main Stage acts: Gomez and Widespread Panic. Unfortunately, this drew some of the crowd away from the acts up the hill at the Saloon.

The group that has for more than 13 years brought you Quixote’s True Blue, Sancho’s Broken Arrow, Cervantes’ Masterpiece Ballroom, Dulcinea’s 100th Monkey and Owsley’s Golden Road, is making their foray into the festival business with Dancin’ In The Streets, which is set for Aug. 7, 8 and 9.

Borrowing a thought from another Grateful Web writer, I’d say that you can tell a lot about a festival by how it handles its second year.  No festival is ever perfect, and the first year is definitely the experimental year.  In the second year, you get to see how the festival responds to the demands placed upon it by its patrons.  Do things get better or worse, smoother or more of a hassle?  Last weekend, July 18th and 19th, I boogied on down to the second annual Mile High Music Festival just outside Denver, Colorado.  Having rocked