Festivals

It's the end of summer. Labor Day weekend – arguably one of the best times of the year to be a Chicago resident. The de facto end to summer is a time that Chicagoans tend to embrace, as a sort of reminder that we do have a bit of time before the tundra-like conditions of winder arrive mere months (or, gulp, weeks) from now. It makes perfect sense, then, to use this time to hold an eclectic music festival that hosts bands and artists ranging from funk to EDM and from rock to hip-hop.

There is a small unincorporated lil “town” called Hoxeyville in the northern Michigan mitten and once a year the population exponentially grows when they open the gates to one of my all time favorite fests.  The drive north winds through quick moving clouds and green rolling fields that inspire but not quite as much as the dashing downbeat and the humbling hugs that abound at Hoxeyville.

So many years after the disbandment of Grateful Dead that in turn relocated tens of thousands of devoted tour followers to various other acts and bigger life purposes, folks still crave that familiar feeling that kept them on tour. It didn’t only come from the music that Garcia and the gang connected with so many people through, but the sense of community and thriving weirdness that expanded continuously over decades of different intersections.

While one could marvel at the amount of choices in music festival concepts that now exist, one effortlessly rules over them all. Last year David Frey and Peter Shapiro took their extensive collective promotion experience in creating the ultimate festival concept. A festival where the main driving force is the necessity of collaboration.