MANCHSTER, Tenn. (Bonnaroo festival Official Website) - When jam-rock music lost its only superstar act, Phish, to an indefinite hiatus almost two years ago, the genre's fans collectively wondered if there was anyone who would be able to take its place. Jammers are a picky cult, so not just any band would do; the pontificators worried about a fracturing of fans and a death of the nomadic "scene" that
Phish had inherited, though distantly, from the Grateful Dead.
The Bonnaroo festival in the rural town of Manchester, Tenn., from Friday (June 21) through Sunday's (June 23), proved that the jam-rock scene is not only alive and well, but that it's actually been growing in the years since Phish's passing. How else to explain 75,000 fans converging on a field to see 50-plus acts that tour regularly, often playing small clubs and theaters rather than enormo-domes and stadiums?
The possibility for collaboration was one strong pull, and, at times, it seemed like everyone who could be onstage was. During moe.'s frenetic late night set Saturday in the Ballroom, the band invited members of the Disco Biscuits, String Cheese Incident, and Umphree's McGee onstage with them; meanwhile, in the Theater, Galactic was playing with DJ Logic and Les Claypool.
Trey Anastasio |
The least-expected jam of the weekend came during String Cheese Incident's main stage Saturday set, when the band invited
Steve Winwood to share the stage for a song. Even the few radio-friendly acts on the bill got in on the action -- on Saturday afternoon,
Jack Johnson had
Ben Harper sit in for some of his set, with Harper adding tasteful arpeggio slide guitar to Johnson's lilting acoustic-reggae grooves.
Some of the best music of the weekend took place on the two smaller stages, where standout acts included pedal steel guitarist Robert Randolph and pianist-singer Norah Jones. Randolph has quickly ascended to club headliner status since he was discovered in a Louisiana church two years ago, and it's no wonder: his possessed playing left many unsuspecting passers-by speechless, and his Sunday morning music-as-religion gospel service had even non-believers screaming "Hallelujah!" Though Jones' mid-afternoon Sunday set was a bit more subdued, her affected voice and swift band enraptured the few hundred people who passed up a simultaneously timed nostalgia trip from ex-Dead members Phil Lesh and Bob Weir in her favor.
Widespread Panic |
In fact, by the time the headliners -- southern rockers
Widespread Panic on Friday and Saturday, and
Phish frontman Trey
Anastasio on Sunday -- got around to playing many in the crowd weren't as attentive. They were either exhausted from a full day of music and heading to bed, staking their position up front for a late night jam, or, on the final day, packing up their tents, and beating traffic out of the venue to get to work on Monday. So while a line was forming at the parking lot exit as
Anastasio played his old band's "Bathtub Gin" on an acoustic guitar, it was clear: the torch he previously held had been passed, and, along the way, a whole slew of other fires has been lit.
