I’m searching for phrases to describe Phases of the Moon Music & Art Festival.  It began as a dark side of the moon, but that was just a phase.  As an audience, our hackles were already up, howling at the moon before the weekend ever arrived.  Through no fault of the Phases organizers, RatDog had to cancel their appearance.  Bobby Weir’s lightening is lazy.

Silver Wrapper and Purple Hat Productions have added new artists to the lineup for the second annual Suwannee Hulaween including electronic producers, Shpongle (Simon Posford DJ set) & Emancipator, legendary rock guitarist The Dean Ween Group, Suwannee Bluegrass Surprise, Kung Fu, Thievery Corporations’ Rob Garza DJ set, Nashville'

From the beginnings of the large scale festival, dating back to gargantuan events such as the 1969 Woodstock Music & Arts Festival or the Watkins Glen Summer Jam of 1973, it was apparent that hosting tens of thousands and creating a safe environment with proper amenities and resources was a challenge that needed some trial and error to perfect. Over the years music and the way we listen to it has come a long way. And so have the festival concepts that we enjoy contemporary.

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. From there build the festival with the most top of the line (and no doubt expensive for promoters) stage setup, sound equipment, vendor variety, local food proprietors, extensive craft beer selection.

Today, The String Cheese Incident announced the first leg of their national headline tour.  They will be playing several dates this fall and winter beginning November 4, 2014 in Washington DC.  The second leg of the tour will be announced soon.

If achieving a balance in diversity is a music festival’s key to success, then Dave Frey and Peter Shapiro have truly created the most dynamically integrated festival experience of all time. The Lockn’ Music Festival isn’t another colossal gathering from bandwagon fans there to see a couple of big name headliners mixed in with who-else-knows.