2006-03-23 - 10:21 p.m.
I’ve been hearing for a long time that The String Cheese Incident’s annual festival at Hornings Hideout in Oregon is not to be missed so Mike, Grubb and I decided to head out to Hornings early and catch the whole festival. The other guys in the band were to fly out on Saturday, the day before our performance. Thank God we came early as you will all see a little later in this missive. Andy delivered us to the airport on time. Our Skycap’s name was Gilbert Slowly and a name has never been more appropriate as he seemed to have 2 speeds, slow and slower! We made it through security with little trouble and on to our plane (with my instrument!). We were met at the airport in Portland and taken to the festival site. It was just starting to wind up into gear. We hooked up with Joel and then went our separate ways to figure out our tent sites. I found my friend Doug Dirt from the Banana Slug String Band and he invited me up to camp with his group. It was a great spot. I got the lay of the land and then headed over to find my buddies in New Monsoon. They were setting up for their show on the mainstage. I got my rig up and sat in with them for a couple of smoking numbers. I love trading licks with Jeff Miller. We seem to egg each other on. We traverse the same musical space and it’s always great when we do it together.
This festival is quite unique. They set up theme camps like “Inspiration Camp”, and to tell the truth, I can’t remember any of the other names. It was that kind of festival. It was a psychedelic delight. One of the camps had a huge caterpillar set up with a big round mouth. It was right out of Alice In Wonderland! On Friday just as the sun set all straw gold, Jeff, Alex Anderson and I were walking down the hill to Alex’s camp to have a few drinks. You could plainly see the caterpillar crouched in the clearing just below us and to the right. The lights strung around the camp were just coming on in the fading light of day. Just then the iridescent beast blew a giant smoke ring out of it’s mouth that floated up towards us in slow motion; the ring turning slowly in on itself as it continued it’s slow motion journey towards the woods to our left. A trippy scene indeed!
The Cheese were great both Thursday and Friday. My only complaint was they were extremely LOUD. I continually left my earplugs in my tent and found I could not gain the stage any closer than 50 yards. I decided to make for my tent and lie down for a bit on the set break on Thursday. Whoops! Wrong move. I fell sound asleep and woke just in time to see the encore; a sick version of Billy Preston’s “Will It Go Round In Circles” complete with Kevin, Phil and another keyboardist sharing all of Kevin’s keyboard rig! I ran into Billy Nershi afterwards and he said, “Where were you man? We were looking for you to come and sit in.” Well... I was sort of asleep.
Friday I had my outlook changed. Friday was just a great day. The evening was even better and by the time Cheese had finished their set with a techno flourish the stars had come out in my mind and the night was about to go long.
I found myself walking along with Rajeev, the tabla player from New Monsoon. There were lights strung up around the lake behind the main stage reflecting on the waters surface. A soft breeze came up and the lights shimmered like stars in a watery galaxy. Raj said he knew where the party was going to happen. We kept walking up the hill until we came to a yurt like structure. We entered to find ourselves alone. It was pretty big, easily holding thirty or more people at a time. Seating was circular and in levels. The inside was stark white and lit purplish-blue with what appeared to me to be neon. We sat in solitude for about ten minutes and then within about two minutes the yurt was full of people! Raj leaned over to me and said, “We are magnets!” Let it be said much laughter and merriment were made punctuated with comic moments of craziness like crashing through the woods following Nershi to a place “I just had to see”. When we arrived in a clearing the light shone through the trees in such a delicate way, it made doily type patterns of the ferns on the forest floor. I swear one looked like a women dressed in Victorian clothes. After returning to the yurt I was gently persuaded to go fetch my fiddle to do a little playing. My good friend Brad Lyman showed up in a little buggy and off we went back down to the mainstage. On the way he gave me the dime tour of Hornings at night. I saw it all in it’s psychedelic glory. What an amazing place! When I got back to the yurt the party was still raging. I wasn’t in the greatest form but had fun jamming with Jeff Miller and others I can’t remember. I hit the sack around 5 AM. What a great, great day!
I woke early to get down to the Family Tent and play with the Banana Slug String Band. They do the most amazing show geared for kids. The little ones had a ball singing along with the songs about the Earth and the Sky, dirt and vegetables and what all else. Most of the songs had costume changes and elaborate intros. Great fun!
The rest of the boys were supposed to arrive that afternoon but I found out from Brad that one of them had missed the plane so they all missed the plane waiting for the tardy one. They wouldn’t make it in ‘till Sunday. Too bad because Saturday was pretty off the hook. All the music was good (including Arturo Sandoval playing with members of String Cheese because his band didn’t make it) but the most amazing part of it was the start of the Cheese’s second set. It started with the most amazing fire dancers I’ve ever seen. I missed the beginning of it cause I was up with some of Brad’s friends eating some of the most amazing food and drinking some really tasty home brew. After the fire dancers came one of the most surrealistic performance pieces I’ve ever witnessed. It started with what appeared to be black clouds floating around the dance space in front of the stage. Eventually what seemed like stars were floating inside the black clouds as they circled the dance space. In the center was a sort of pinkish, purplish blob with a hole in the center. People dressed in black came out holding lit orbs on long, curved sticks and orbited around the area and then split off into the audience. A large, floating amoeba looking thing, all lime green and glowing hovered closer and closer to the blob. When it reached the blob a smaller amoeba came out of the hole to meet it. At the same time arms appeared coming out of the blob; undulating like little tentacles and just then all the black clouds turned iridescent green, pink, orange and red. It was amazing! All the while the Cheese were wailing away with a wild ass trance groove thing that totally fit what was going on in front of them. Wild shit!
After the show Nershi and I crashed Scott Law’s set up at one of the theme camps. We had a blast! Scott Law is the shit man! Travis showed up and played bass! It was a stoned cold groove fest. The stage manager eventually kicked us off for a magician who turned out to be incredible. He started out twirling glow sticks and after a while they were levitating in front of him and then behind his back. He ended up pulling what seemed like fifty decks of cards out of his mouth, throwing them in a big pile on the stage. Holy shit, this festival is wild!
Sunday started with pancakes at the Happy Brigade camp. Umm good! The boys eventually arrived and we did a nice set. The members that weren’t there the whole weekend seemed a little on the outside looking in but we rocked. We did “Long Way To Go” with the String Cheese boys and I sat in on a few others. What a blast! The day ended with me sitting in with Billy, Jillian, Scott Law and Jeff Miller in a foreshadowing of the Honkytonk Homeslice shows latter in the year. I played about five tunes with them and then had to go get in position for an early flight. It was really one of the best times I’ve ever had at a festival. I’m so glad I went early and experienced all of it!
