by fil manley
posted March 14, 2008
Going to music festivals is definitely an adventure. As a Chattanoogan, I’m confronted by two sides of the same mindset, one of which is Chattanooga’s huge contingent of music lovers and festival goers, the other is the staid, suspicious contingent whose usual comment is “aren’t those things just about drugs?”
My answer is that music festivals are representative of people as a whole. They’re no more about drugs than our fair city is. We have drugs, we have addicts and we have a methadone clinic. Every problem under the sun lives right here, and music festivals are essentially small cities in their own right, with their own police, their own jails and their own rules. The difference is that at a music festival, you’re less likely to be homeless, hungry or ignored.
It’s true that you can find anything you want at them. They’re open air markets where people walk around hawking all kinds of stuff, including drugs. When Widespread Panic came to Chattanooga last year, I walked around in the open air market which follows their tour and I heard one guy loudly proclaiming that he had “hand-grenades, heroin and dirty needles” for sale. It occurred to me that he wasn’t selling hand grenades or dirty needles. Festival promoters don’t invite drugs; actually, they forbid them, just like Chattanooga, the buckle of the Bible belt, does.
This particular subject is on my mind because right before I went to Langerado, I attended an N.A. meeting. They say the first thing you have to do is admit you have a problem. I was going in support of a friend, but at the same time, I’m coming to terms with the fact that even casual use of alcohol or other things can become a problem in my own life and, at 41, I no longer have the privilege of careless youth.
I went to the show with three people who go to N.A. who have been clean for varying lengths of time. Given the parties that usually surround the music scene, this was a bit unusual and also something of a relief.
The clean and sober contingent at Langerado and at all the music festivals I’ve been to consists of the Narcotics Anonymous people, and a group who call themselves “Camp Traction.” They camp together, and their camp excludes all drugs and alcohol, thus the “Traction,” meaning, sans-slippage.
This was all brought into sharp focus for me when I met and talked with a girl at Langerado in her mid twenties. We fell into a conversation and she began to recount for me, the story of how she started doing heroin at age 16. By 18, she had left her home and was living on the streets. She is white, middle class, and by every definition of the word, gifted. Everything she had, family, friends, possessions, it all disappeared. She said that she loved the drug so much, that there was nothing she wouldn’t sacrifice on its behalf. She said that she knew she wanted to do heroin long before she ever tried it because of the way she saw it portrayed on television. She said, “I saw that, and I thought, I would like that, that would be just like me.” She lived that life for almost ten years. She slept hidden outdoors any place she could find a hole where people couldn’t find her and lived from fix to fix.
When I met her, she was clear eyed and seemed resolute about her sobriety. She’s pretty, but scarred, and though her eyes are clear, they also have a slightly haunted look. She told me that only one thing could and did bring her to a place where she no longer wanted the heroin… she became pregnant. Now she’s been sober for 18 months and has a little girl.
This was the frame of mind I was in when I stepped out of the car after 18 hours of driving and into the fire ants.
The festival was at the Big Cypress Seminole Indian Reservation in the Florida Everglades. We drove in, arriving at Alligator Alley after 16 hours in the car and then spent another two hours driving the final 7 miles in bumper to bumper traffic under fat, black thunder clouds, lightning and scattered rain. We spent those two hours staring out the windows into the canals, searching the water and the banks for alligators and finding four.
This year's Langerado, the sixth, took place from March the 6th, through March the 9th. It was headlined by R.E.M., The Beastie Boys, Phil Lesh and Friends, 311, Matisyahu, The Wailers, and included a list of almost a hundred other bands which included local favorites Perpetual Groove, That 1 Guy and the newly re-formed Blind Melon.
For me, there were two ghosts at Langerado. One was Bob Marley; the other was Shannon Hoon of Blind Melon. I set up an interview with Elan Attias beforehand. Elan is the white, Jewish singer who sings now with the Wailers in the spot once occupied by Bob Marley. Blind Melon was there, and they’re recording and writing again for the first time since lead singer Shannon Hoons death in ’95 of a cocaine overdose. My close proximity to these two bands at the same time in the same place put me in an unexpectedly introspective state of mind.
I interviewed Elan, and it seems that he must be a strong person to stand comfortably in his shoes, enduring the ceaseless questions about a man who can never really be replaced and who’s been dead for 27 years. Bob Marley wasn’t just a man, he was a prophet to many, and a prophet who spoke with a clear voice about things the children and grand children of slaves had wanted to speak of but didn’t quite know how to say.
How do you stand in that spot? I don’t think you do. I think you walk up on the stage realizing that the ghost of that man will always be there with you, so you always leave a little space for him.
The Wailers are working on new material now for the first time in a long time, and talking with their publicist, it occurred to me that this is a band whose been stuck in that shadow for years. The vacuum left behind by Bob Marley may never be filled, but at the same time, maybe it’s time to let that chemistry live in the past, and create something new. I hope Elan can do that. His voice is exceptional and he seems to have a genuine desire to do something with weight and I applaud him for trying.
Blind Melon is in a similar circumstance. Their presence at this festival was poignant, given the overdose death of their original singer, Shannon Hoon, in 1995. At the height of their popularity, this band was loved almost literally to death. Their little girl in the bee costume became a cultural icon overnight. Many of their fans were rocked at not only the sudden death of Shannon, but the almost immediate dissolution of the rest of the band.
I did a video taped interview of founding member and bassist Brad Smith, when they performed at Rhythm and Brews last night and it will be posted here on the Chattanoogan in a few days. In the interview, we talked at length about Shannon’s death, what led to it and where the band is now. I also video taped their entire show and that will be available for viewing on YouTube.
Their new singer, Travis Warren, is trying to do for Blind Melon what Elan Attias is trying to do for the Wailers… start again. Warren has a strong and resounding voice. He sometimes sounds so much like Shannon that if you’re not looking at the stage, you don’t know it’s not him. I think Warren was a good choice, but no matter what happens, I’m glad that they’re playing again.
The rest of the festival was almost literally a rollercoaster ride for me. The beautiful property where the show was held was simply a fantastic place to have a music festival. It’s mostly pasture, and fire ants live there like you wouldn’t believe. I saw ant beds as big as a full sized mattress. The undergrowth is full of plants with spines and thorns, alligators live in the water, and the weather was punctuated by severe lightning storms with wind gusts that felt like 50 miles per hour.
Rather than making the festival less fun for me, the adversity seemed to make the music that much better. I have one small luxury I carry with me to festivals, which is a compost toilet. Essentially, it’s a toilet in a tent. It’s not that I have a problem with what I like to call the “Blue Water Lagoon” or the porta-potties. I just don’t like to walk a city block in the mornings to enjoy my morning constitutional.
On the second day, a group of Australians ran over the support lines for our toilet tent with their SUV, and when we came back to camp it was upside down. I cleaned it up… Someone has to do the dirty work, but between red ants, spiny plants, upside down toilets and the lightning coming down around us, let’s just say “Long Strange Trip” was playing on a loop tape in my mind.
Thursday night, I saw PGroove put on a characteristically fantastic show. They and Dark Star Orchestra capped off the night, playing until 2 am.
Friday, I had my interview with Elan Attias and was lucky to have the opportunity to shoot photos from the stage as the Wailers played. I had set that up in advance, but didn’t know that Reggae icon Matisyahu was going to be singing a song with them. He showed up to share in “No Woman No Cry.”
Matisyahu is a phenomenon unto himself. When I first saw him play at Bonnaroo in 2006, his music struck me with its sincerity and unusual nature. He brought his infant son out onto the stage that year, held him in his arms with the pounding bass all around and the small boy wearing ear protection like an airport lineman. Matisyahu is an observant Jew who practices and sings of his faith in a way which no other Jewish performer, to my knowledge, ever has. His mixture of reggae, rock and traditional Jewish story telling is fantastic.
As a practicing Jew, Matisyahu observes “Shabbos” or the Sabbath. This means that from sunset Friday night until sunset on Saturday night, they don’t use any technology, don’t do any work and they dedicate this time to God, prayer and family. Matisyahu, or “Matis” as they call him, set up a 1600 square foot “Shabbos tent” at Langerado, and opened it up to anyone and everyone, sharing his faith, prayers, observances and food.
Being a curious person and a person of faith, I’m fascinated by any religion, but especially the Jewish religion. I delicately call myself a Christian, but only because it’s so incredibly hard to live a “Christ-like” life and because most of the people I know who do call themselves Christians spend more time judging other people than they do living the life. Most of what I knew of Judaism comes from media, mainly television, and I was excited at the prospect of spending some time with a group of Jews who openly practice their faith, and who are willing to talk about it.
When Matisyahu walked off of the stage after singing with the Wailers, I cautiously approached him and asked if it would be OK for me to shoot video of the Shabbos event. His presence is different than I expected it to be. He’s much more serious and thoughtful in person than I would have expected. I guess if I had to stereotype him as something, stereotyping him as a “happy-go-lucky-reggae-singer” isn’t bad.
He’s quiet and seems to choose his words carefully. He doesn’t smile often and when he does, it’s the briefest flicker. Given the joyous singing and worship I heard in the Shabbos tent, I’m sure that it’s not always this way, but he seems like a driven man with a deep purpose which he protects and cultivates.
He gave me permission to shoot video at the Shabbos tent after Sundown. I wound up doing it, but before that I had Friday night’s music still ahead of me.
Friday, I finished my photo shoot for the Wailers and then spent the afternoon bouncing from stage to stage; band to band, sampling each of them and trying not to let the stress of all that I had been through to get there overwhelm me. Sam Bush was great and it was the first time I had heard him. Other great shows on Friday included Brett Dennen, Matt Pond, G Love, Sierra Leones Refugee All-stars, and finally, an off the chain show by 311, which flowed into late night with Umphreys McGee, Bass Nectar, STS9 and a fantastic performance by a Phish tribute band called Phix. The Beastie Boys were Friday night’s headliner; I listened to them from camp while I figured out how to repair the damage done by the Australians. Let the war between Australia and Tennessee begin.
I listened to my share of late night music then began to wander back toward camp as the sky began to press down darkly, the wind picked up and lightning began to pound the ground off in the distance, and sometimes not so distantly.
Sound Tribe Sector 9 quit playing not so long after the rain started, and someone said they quit because of the lightning. Halfway back to the camp, I heard them start up again. Walking back to camp, the rain picked up and I began to get wet. I’m not afraid of much, but when you find yourself walking in the middle of a perfectly flat swamp in a lightning storm, looking for camp in the dark, let’s just say it makes you think. There was nothing I could do about it, so I plastered a stupid grin on my face, said a prayer and joined my voice with thousands of others, yelling out gleefully every time lightning struck the ground around us. It seems like everyone felt the closeness of the lightning and that we were all were glad to be out in it, if for no other reason than that it beats being at home watching television.
I got lost. The darkness was, well, dark. The rain was whipping sideways, and I stumbled through a city block of tents, suppressing a growing sense of panic before I saw the familiar outline of my own tent. I crawled in and a few minutes later the rain really came down. The wind thundered that night and the rain pounded down so hard on the tent that I thought it was going to come through the fly. I laid there on my back in my tent, in the swamp, with the light on listening to the sound of the rain pounding down. I watched as the wind repeatedly pulled my rain fly up toward the sky on its elastic anchors.
I lay there for hours with my eyes open, listening, and finally fell asleep near dawn, mostly dry, with a smile on my face and a feeling of intense gratitude.
Next. Langerado Part 2, Matisyahu, Shabbos, And other stuff, coming soon, / Also, coming soon, a video taped interview with Brad Smith of Blind Melon.
fm@helpforhumans.org
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Guitar box
Photograph by fil manley
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