There are few mid-sized music festivals in the United States with the legacy, devoted fanbase, and magical ambience that match Northern California’s High Sierra Music Festival (HSMF). This year’s installment of the annual Fourth of July weekend gathering in Quincy, CA, proved once again why HSMF deserves such accolades.

My first visit to the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival (a.k.a. "Jazzfest") was sort of a happy accident. In 1988, I was a young 20-something Grateful Dead tourhead, and I heard rumors that Little Feat was going to play their first show since the death of Lowell George a decade earlier. The allure was heightened by the fact that the reformed band would play on a riverboat floating on the Mississippi in New Orleans.