Rothbury

The pleasures of destination festivals are two-fold: the joys of reckless abandon against a background of incredible music. The Rothbury Music Festival, in its second year, proved to have both. Neo-hippies of all ages cluttered their minds with substances and treated their ears to shredding guitar solos. While performances by headlining acts such as the Dead, String Cheese Incident, Bob Dylan and his band, the Black Crowes, Willie Nelson and friends, and Gov’t Mule were enough to draw the hordes, it was the efficiency and beauty of the festival that shone through.

The Double JJ Ranch, previously an untouched gem of land among the woods of western Michigan, was treasured by both artists and fans alike. The Sherwood Forest, a lazy hammock-sporting “redwoods wannabee” by day and psilocybin-user’s dream by night, provided a respite from the strain of walking the expansive property for fans. The artists, too, reveled in the natural beauty of the setting. “The sight in itself is just a gem,” Keller Williams said a day after performing on the festival’s opening day with over half the members of the String Cheese Incident. “It’s real fine.”

Sitting slumped in a chair, reading a newspaper before his band’s gig, Craig Finn of the Hold Steady took time to gather his thoughts before going onstage where his band—including eccentric keyboardist Franz Nicolay of twirled mustache—added a quirky touch on numbers from the band’s acclaimed 2008 release Stay Positive. “ You get out there and play and try to impress or sell yourself to people,” Finn explained. “This one, with a little more time (75 minute set), we can stretch out.”

Brian Rosenworcel, drummer for Guster, who played the Ranch stage before Finn’s band, rubbed his eyes 20 minutes after waking up. “I didn’t realize we were moving back to East Coast time,” the comedic drummer explained a few hours before Guster paired its vocal harmonies and tight guitar licks into an hour-long set. Orthodox Jewish reggae star Matisyahu, sporting a black overcoat with a red and white baseball cap and backed by Dub Trio, played “One Day” from his forthcoming album, Light (due August 25), after which he “tucked in his beard” and roamed the grounds of the festival “incognito while checking out the scene.” Ani DiFranco belted out the breezy “Whose Side Are You On?” to the diverse crowd an hour earlier.

Matisyahu

The String Cheese Incident and the Dead played to massive crowds at the Odeum main stage on Friday and Saturday night respectively. Cheese guitarist Michael Kang told fans, “we’re gonna have as much fun as humanly possible” before blasting through loopy renditions of “Desert Dawn” “Joyful Sound” and “Texas.” The Dead, playing on the 4th, gave new life to classics like “Eyes of the World” and “Franklin’s Tower” with guitarist Warren Haynes (Gov’t Mule, Allman Brothers Band) proving why he has become the go-to fill-in ax man on the jam scene. Bob Dylan and his band closed out the festival with a 90-minute, 17-song set. Introduced as “the man who changed music,” Dylan, sporting a classic skinny black suit with white lapels, played his electric guitar for the first two numbers before setting himself down at his keyboard. Classics like “Tangled up in Blue,” “Highway 61 Revisited” and “Like a Rolling Stone” glistened with Dylan’s grizzly growl; no longer in tune, but an experience nonetheless.

As the crowd thinned out toward the campgrounds, I remembered the words Rosenworcel of Guster spoke to me earlier, and realized the perfection of his unintentional metaphor for a music festival: the transcending power of music, with the potent power of the crowd’s intoxication. “We’re gonna meet Willie [Nelson] later today. I really wanna hear his voice,” Rosenworcel said.  “And of course, he supposedly has notorious pot.”