The purple team is battling the orange team in tetherball as the green team and the yellow teams vie for victory in volleyball; all trying to come out victorious while not spilling beers, bloody mary’s and other various cocktails. The tug-of-war is next and the scavenger hunt across the festival grounds disperses the rainbow-colored competitors in a race to the finish. Other team members are deeply engrossed in competitive chess matches for the glory of their squad. The annual spelling bee is not to be forgotten, nor the games of band trivia or band member imitations, with the band, themselves, present to judge the winners! Where are we? This must be Camp Bisco.
The Disco Biscuits multi-dimensional festival has become a staple of the summer music scene over the last nine years, and one that sets itself apart from the many repetitive festivals that often litter the summertime musical landscape. The aforementioned contests define the annual fan-organized “Color War” that is ultra-hyped online and takes place during the each day of each Camp Bisco, harkening fans back to their youth at summer day camp with childhood adventures—all with a distinctly Bisco twist and within earshot of the main stage. The fan experience is a driving force behind how the Biscuits festival is organized and set up. Drawing bands and electronic artists from all over the country and the world, Camp Bisco has become a showcase for innovative musical acts, both organic and electronic, as it has evolved over the better part of a decade.
Performers at Camp are most often hand selected by the members of The Disco Biscuits with the goal of bringing music that has influenced their own development to the ears of their fans. What started as an independent concept of fusing the rock festival with all-night rave, Camp Bisco has come a long way since its 1999 inception in Cherrytree, PA., when the late-night section of the festival featured local DJs playing to a largely empty field. With the progression of each passing year, the Biscuits have added more and more musical elements, more stages, and more decorative and design features and to grow the festival to the place it is at today. After the first three festivals, the Biscuits began to work with Meat Camp Productions to continue to put on one of the most unique mid-range music festivals today.
.jpg)
Camp Bisco routinely features artists that can’t be found on the many (or any) other jam-indie-rock festivals around the country each summer. Younger Brother, The Egg, Shpongle, 2020 Soundsystem, MSTRKRFT, Snoop Dogg, and Dubwar NYC are some of this year’s participants that you won’t be finding on other more mainstream American festivals. With a increasing number of fans arriving , and having returned to the private Indian Lookout Country Club run by bikers (and no police) in Pattersonville, NY, Camp Bisco seems to be only growing stronger with the passing of each calendar.
Glide had a chance to catch up with Marc Brownstein (bass) and Aron Magner (keyboards) of The Disco Biscuits over the weekend to discuss their festival, its progression, and their intent to give their fans exactly what they want.
What was the original intent of Camp Bisco? What were you guys going for when you started the festival back in 1999?
MB: One of the things about Camp Bisco was that is was one of the first festivals we knew of that was doing late night shows. [In conventional festivals] bands would play, and then one o’clock would roll around and it was curfew and that was it. A rave started at midnight and went till noon, and a festival started at 2 pm and went until midnight, so we figured we could take the regular rock festival and combine it with the rave element and then we could have a party that basically stopped for four hours so that everyone could go rest. So we got a bunch of DJs at the first Camp Bisco, like DJ Wally, Reid Speed, drum and bass DJs from New York. Then we had DJ Mauricio playing Shpongle and Hallucinogen, he was our psychedelic trance guy, and that was the genesis of that idea. And then of course late night parties at festivals became ubiquitous; every festival has late nights now.
AM: The original goal of the festival was also the original goal of the band, which was to play music that we like to play. That’s kind of what the festival is as well, we wanted to put together a festival that we wanted to go to. A festival where we hand selected the bands and put together a distinctive vibe and a distinctive energy that makes Camp Bisco stand out from the rest of the festivals…I think there is something to be said for the mid-range festival, it definitely feels as though the band and the fans are in attendance of the same thing—which is this massive party. You feel that the most on Jam Cruise, where the lines between bands and fans are so blurred that there really is no backstage. We obviously have a backstage at Camp, but we’re also out there raging to Snoop Dogg just like the rest of the 7,500 people. We are out there raging to MSTRKRFT even though its during our set break. So there’s definitely some sort of connection that all of us are feeling there, and I think that definitely translates that this is the festival that we want to attend. Luckily we don’t have to pay admission prices to attend it!
How has Camp Bisco evolved from its first incarnation to now, Camp Bisco VII?
MB: One of the things that is obvious, is that over the years the festival has grown to the point where we could put a lot of money into the talent, but the basic concept is the same. Instead of having Mauricio playing Shpongle and Hallucinogen, we bring Shpongle and Hallucinogen. [It has allowed us to have] top notch DJs from all over the world and great jam bands—I think it has also developed to have a hip-hop element. We’ve done that three years in a row now—we had The Roots, Slick Rick, and now Snoop Dogg—so it’s almost turning into more of a mainstream music festival than it is just a small jam band festival with some DJs.
How did giving up total independence and joining forces with Meat Camp Productions for CB IV change the festival? Do you think it has become more of a typical “cross-genre” festival?
MB: Well, I think that for us it just made sense to go in that direction to make the festival grow and continue to grow, especially in a year where festivals are getting smaller. In order to take a festival like Camp Bisco and make it bigger, one of two things has to happen—the Biscuits need to blow up huge or we need to start bringing in huge acts. So one of the ideas we had was to every year bring in one or two bands that are bigger than us—let Snoop headline on his day and take a back seat and that’s one of the ways that we were able to keep this festival growing in a time where gas prices have shot through the roof and people don’t feel like traveling to every single festival like it was five years ago when you could get a gallon of gas for $1.39.
But we are also committed to taking the 10,000 kids who want to see The Disco Biscuits the most and giving them a unique experience every year that they are going to walk away with and say, “Wow that was unbelievable!” [A band like] moe. is focusing [their festival] “moe.down” on moe.—three sets a night, every night, its just really about fans coming and seeing moe. Camp Bisco is about us having the opportunity to introduce Biscuits fans to music that we love and the music that influenced us. Having Younger Brother a few years ago and Shpongle, Hallucinogen in Dub and Ott play, just bringing that whole element of United Kingdom psychedelic trance into the festival was an opportunity to introduce this music to our fans. And obviously getting someone like DJ Shadow or MSTRKRFT, getting these electronic acts that are blowing up in the states and all over the world is just creating a new experience for people that they cant get anywhere else. Just having Snoop there last night made it feel like, “Where are we?” That’s the vibe I had, “This is Camp Bisco?” I mean three years ago, Thursday night was Moshi Moshi (Magner and former drummer Sam Altman) and Quagmire Swim Team, and this year it was Biscuits and Snoop Dogg.
AM: If you’re going to take a festival and do it right and grow it like we have now, and do the prospective bigger numbers we’d like to do in years to come, you’ve gotta’ bring in some outside help. There are too many things to think about to do it ourselves. We’ve always have some form of some outside help, even from year one when Tim Walther was very pivotal in putting the thing together because he was able to pay attention to details we wouldn’t normally think about, whether that’s the amount of port-o-pottys, or the number of fences and gates. We are definitely involved in picking out the bands and getting the vibe going, but its nice to have someone who has experience working with us and working with Camp Bisco. That’s what’s so great about working with Meat Camp, we’ve been through this. We’ve been through the same growing pains together. It’s not our first rodeo, so we are able to continue to improve it every year.
.jpg)
Do you feel that adding “bigger” acts has affected the festival and the draw of Camp Bisco?
MB: I think it affects it a lot. Two years ago we had Thievery Corporation and The Roots and had a huge festival. Then last year we went with the jam bands with Umphrey’s McGee and Sector Nine and the draw came down a little. We made the decision last year that maybe the festival will grow if we pay a little more attention to feeding the fans really what they want. [We thought] they’re jam band fans so lets give ‘em jam bands. Well, I think what we found out is that’s not really what they want. They’re jam band fans and they’re biscuit fans, but really what they want is to look at the festival and say, “Wow, that’s different than every other festival where you can see Umphrey’s and Sector Nine,” with all due respect, my two favorite jam bands, but you can see them anywhere all over the country at every festival for the last seven years.
Snoop has played one—Rothbury, and then Camp Bisco. This is his second major festival in our scene ever, so that’s what’s so cool about getting him. The same with Thievery—Camp Bisco was their introduction to the jam band scene. I think what we are finding out is that the crazier more unique and more off the cuff that the bands are—maybe you’re not bringing Snoop fans, but you’re bringing more Biscuit fans. If 8-10,000 people show up that’s like a third of how many people visit our page on MySpace, so there are Biscuit fans all over the country that aren’t here. The key is what can we do to get them all to be at Camp Bisco?
AM: Well, Snoop is on a totally different plane [than previous larger artists]. I don’t want to say that Snoop legitimizes the festival, but to a lot of media out there he does. This is because a lot of these bands fly underneath the radar, obviously Biscuits included—but even some of the bands with bigger exposure—MSTRKRFT, for instance, is pretty big in certain scenes, but as far as the world as a whole, nobody knows who MSTRKRFT is. Everybody and their mother know who Snoop is, and it legitimizes us to the bigger world. I’m not necessarily saying that is the way I see Camp Bisco going, getting big-sized bands and growing it into a corporate festival where it doesn’t even make sense anymore because there are so many huge bands. I feel like a lot of the big-dog [festivals] do that and it gets kind of confusing. But keeping one or two big name acts to kick off the festival and to put it on the map is really what we’re doing. And Snoop just worked perfectly because he is a big name act that everybody loves. It’s pretty easy to get a big name act and pay top dollar for it, but it would only pertain to a certain few [fans].
Do you think you found Camp Bisco a home with Indian Lookout Country Club? How has coming to this site affected the vibe of the festival?
MB: We were really nervous about it before last year and then everything was so great, and now I can’t imagine what more we would want. The site is gorgeous, the field is perfect, there are showers, and there are bathrooms. The bikers who run it are so cool. There are no cops, which is nice [for everyone]. There’s a little pond and a gazebo—upstate NY is a beautiful place, and its great to be able to have a site that is run by people who know that all we’re trying to do is have a good time and throw a good party for our fans. They just let us do it, and without any kind of outside interference-its just a great experience.
AM: I think so. There’s something about me, maybe it’s because I live a nomadic life style that makes me want to move around. I’m always looking to check out what else is out there, possibly in search of something better or cooler—or to find out that what you have is actually kind of perfect in the first place. ILCC is the perfect place for us—it gives us room to grow the festival, which it clearly needs to do. I’m very tapped in to everything that’s going on, I like to experience the festival as a fan would experience it so that I know how to make the festival better. There is still a learning curve and there are still bigger and better things we can do. What I’m noticing is that in the afternoon- three stages split the festival up into three. Also, in the afternoon, people want to sleep and get ready. So what this festival needs is another 5000 people, so if a couple thousand people want to sleep in the afternoon, or just go back to their tents and chill for the big festivities of the evening, the place is still vibrant, and all three stages are raging in the way that the headliners rage the main stage at night. The point of saying this is that ILCC gives us the ability to do that. We certainly have room to grow, there are more fields out there that we can fit camping in, there are more fields for parking, and there are more fields for stages if we want. There are even more fields for something that we haven’t really thought of yet. So we definitely have the opportunity to grow. We’re not gonna’ be capped at another 500 people, we definitely have the ability to fit another 10,000 in there.
Do you have favorite memories from Camp Biscos past—a favorite show or a favorite Camp?
MB: I will remember something unique about every single one. I remember at Camp Bisco III hitting the peak of “Crickets” and “Basis” all at the same time and thinking to myself, “Wow, that was really, really good!” I think so far the clearest memory and possibly one of the highlights of Camp Bisco happened last night watching thousands and thousands of Biscuits fans singing the words to “Gin and Juice” at the same time with the grand daddy of hip-hop, Snoop Dogg, and Uncle Junebug making the craziest moves ever up there—I don’t think I’ll ever forget that. But musical highlights from all of them would be mostly Biscuits, except for the Hallucinogen in Dub set last year which was a huge highlight and the Younger Brother late-night at Camp Bisco IV where they played right through sunrise. The great thing is when we get to play and then come off stage and watch people who we love. So the Hallucinogen in Dub, that first Younger Brother show, and Snoop were three of the biggest highlights of all the years.
AM: I definitely remember a whole bunch of inflatable puppies [tossed into and batted around the crowd] at Camp Bisco II: The Attack of the Puppy Beast—that was the tagline to the festival. There are so many great memories over the years it’s hard to pick out just one, but it seems that now the puppy beast has grown up and has turned into Snoop Dogg.
All photos by Andy Hill
