The Disco Biscuits’ Bisco Inferno Weekend started early with an impromptu set on Pearl Street in Boulder on Thursday and continued until Sunday when Jon Gutwillig played a rare acoustic show at the Fox. In between, the Biscuits delivered six varied sets, a few of which were picked by fans as part of the Planet Anthem pre-order. To whet your appetite for our coming Inferno coverage, here’s a look at the Home Again encore from Red Rocks…
If anyone was worried that there wouldn’t be any surprises in store from Furthur at the Furthur Festival, those fears were quickly allayed on Friday night when the band was augmented by many of their friends during a wild all-star set. Approximately 10,000 campers made it out to Mountain Aire for the three-day festival featuring Bob Weir and Phil Lesh’s latest project.
Over the course of Furthur’s six sets on Saturday and Sunday the group performed six classic Grateful Dead albums from front to back, giving long-forgotten tunes such as Sage & Spirit, Sunrise and What’s Become of Baby rare stage time. That’s It For The Other One was given the full treatment with each of its sections from Anthem of the Sun recreated as was the complete Terrapin Station suite. The group wasn’t only looking back at what the Dead accomplished, they also looked forward by debuting a new song with lyrics by Robert Hunter as part of Saturday’s encore.
The summer festival season kicked off in earnest this past weekend with moe., Umphrey’s and friends throwing down at Summer Camp, the Biscuits invading Colorado, Furthur headlining a three-day fest and the indie world coming together at The Gorge for Sasquatch! We’ll have more detailed accounts of Bisco Inferno and Summer Camp later this week, but for now we wanted to start recapping the major moments from Memorial Day Weekend.
At Summer Camp in Chillicothe, IL, moe. peppered their sets with the debut of five originals and plenty of guest spots throughout the weekend. Ivan Neville, Danny Barnes and Brendan Bayliss all sat in at one time or another during moe.’s six sets and Zappa Plays Zappa was the latest participant in moe.’s full band segue tradition on Sunday. Umphrey’s also welcomed plenty of friends to the stage all weekend including pedal steel guitarist Mike Rackey, Brainchild’s Roy Ponce and Jesse Clayton of The Macpodz. Mad Dog’s Dirty Little Secret horn section – featuring trumpeter Jennifer Hartswick, saxophonist Chris Neal, trombonist Brent Sanders and trumpeter Mike “Mad Dog” Mavridoglou – joined the band at various points during Saturday’s sets.
Never ones to miss an opportunity for a sit-in, Gov’t Mule brought out Chuck Garvey for a cover of Traffic’s Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys, Al Schnier for a take on Loser by the Grateful Dead as well as Danny Barnes and Jeff Austin for the Stones’ ballad Wild Horses. Other guest spot highlights were G Love on harmonica with The Avett Brothers for The Fall and Jake Cinninger making the rounds by sitting in with both Dumpstaphunk and The Macpodz.
READ ON for a batch of Summer Camp Festival setlists…
Iconic rocker Neil Young kicked off his Twisted Road Tour at the Palace Theatre in Albany on Tuesday night in and opened by dusting off the classic My My, Hey
The first annual Hangout Beach Music and Arts Festival has come to a close in Gulf Shores, AL after a tumultuous final day that saw the fairgrounds evacuated for two
The more time I spend with Widespread Panic’s forthcoming Dirty Side Down, the more it sounds to me like the most comfortable album Panic’s recorded in a decade. If it’s taken this long for Panic to finish a document that feels lovingly stitched together, not “assembled,” and truest to their live mojo, so be it –- for me, it’s taken almost as long for Panic the live band to be as reliable as they once were.
No, it’s not that I haven’t had epic, soul-nourishing Widespread experiences in the post-Houser era of the band, it’s just that it’s taken a long time to be able to depend on them again. Catching the band early in the tour in mid-April, the second of two nights in the capital’s lovely Warner Theater, was affirmative. To JB, Jimmy, JoJo, Dave, Sunny and Todd: I’m buying.
It was a haphazard show with some marvelous moments – part of Panic’s appeal, oddly, are the groovy, ragged edges that contrast the fiery peaks and soulful zeniths – and it was enough to keep me convinced. It’s not a “the band is back” type of feeling, either; Panic never went away and recovered pretty quickly, all told, from a personnel tragedy that would have derailed, or at least neutered, a lesser band. It’s more that I’m not convinced Panic’s best days are in the rearview mirror. They have miles to go, mountains to climb. Nearly 25 years in, that’s pretty impressive.
READ ON for more from Chad on WSP in Washington D.C….
After a nineteen month lay off, aggro-jammers RAQ returned to the scene last Friday night in front of a capacity crowd at the Bowery Ballroom in New York City with
The first annual UMBowl lived up to the hype this past Saturday night as Umphrey’s McGee gave the fans what they wanted over the course of four “quarters” at the intimate Lincoln Hall in Chicago. There were bust outs galore, debuts and reworked versions of old classics as well as plenty of mash-ups. Quarter one featured the band on acoustic performing songs that were voted on by attendees and webcast viewers including the first-ever live version of the Safety In Numbers cut The Weight Around, the first-ever acoustic take on Hurt Bird Bath and a completely out of left field cover of Interstate Love Song by the Stone Temple Pilots.
A Humorous Video Introduced Each Quarter
For the second quarter, the Chicago-based sextet improvised on themes provided by fans through text messages. Before the first round of improv keyboardist Joel Cummins asked fans to text in mashup ideas and the attendees and webcast viewers responded with a number of good ideas including Bathtub Gin & Juice, Ocean Billie Jean and Cemetery Walk This Way. The second category given by Cummins was “Numbers, Colors and Shapes” and the final one was “Make Us Laugh” which led to such texts as The Folk Prince of Bel-Air and Reggae Titties and Beer.
Quarter three was an all-request electric set that saw the band dust off Muff II: The Revenge for the first time since 2002 and Muffburger Sandwich for the first time since 2005. Other treats included a dub version of Wife Soup and a funk-laden Der Bluten Kat sandwich with a Girlfriend Is Better filling.
READ ON for more on UMBowl and an extremely detailed setlist…
Longtime HT faves My Morning Jacket spent most of 2009 off the road and out of the studio, so we were extremely curious to see what they’d play upon their
What better way to celebrate 4/20 than catching Phish 3D at one of the screenings across the country? Ever since DaveO filled us in on the plans to shoot Phish’s Festival 8 extravaganza in 3D, we’ve been gearing up for tonight. For a taste of what you can expect, here’s a minute-long clip of Suzy Greenberg from Phish 3D featuring Sharon Jones…
The Suzy Video Was Pulled From YouTube, This Is The Trailer
For those who aren’t adverse to spoilers, we’ve got a setlist from the film and a few thoughts. READ ON after the jump for setlist spoilers…
