Bear Creek Music Festival: Part I
Part I: The sun sets on festival season
Summer and festival season go hand-in-hand, yet there are a few exceptions to the rule out there. One of them is Florida's Bear Creek Music Festival, taking place each year in mid-November, as the rest of the country hunkers down for winter. The gorgeous sunny days of upper 70's give way to chilly nights, yet for music fans who want one last stand outside, there's no better place to be. This year's installment was Umphrey's 3rd time visiting the idyllic site known as Spirit of Suwanee Music Park. Bear Creek made this it's home in 2007, our first year performing at the festival, and hasn't looked back since. This year we ended our fall tour here, and what better place to do it than with so many of our friends both on stage and off. We arrived on Thursday morning alongside many of the fans who were just showing up as well. After tossing the football around with Ryan, Andy and promoter Paul Levine, we got down to the sounds of the London Souls, Toubab Krewe and the Macpodz as things got underway. It was also a beautiful day for some washers, which is an outdoor game of skill similar to bags that we carry around the bus for our competitive urges. While Ryan and Kevin took an afternoon canoe trip on the Spanish moss-laden river, I made a few last minute honeymoon plans online from my bunk and rested up for the first of our two shows, a late night two set performance. After a little rest, I meandered around the site trying to find our "backstage," a cabin in the camping area. The site has some really nice basic cabins, and for this event, we were given a space to shower and rehearse. Unfortunately, the hot water heaters don't last very long when there are 12 guys showering, and as I was pretty far down the line, got a very brief and extremely cold post-sundown rinse in. Robbie couldn't help but laugh as he heard my terse and frustrated reactions from the other room where he was giving his socks the old last day of tour hand wash. I was freezing, but clean. I'll take it.
After dinner, some very good catering, Don and I got the last of the practice keyboard rig over to the space for us to set up for rehearsal. We planned on giving our Tears for Fears / Michael Jackson mashup of Everybody Wants to Rule the World and The Way You Make Me Feel a few run throughs before dusting it off again. Brendan's setlist featured some strong original tunes and a few rarities for the kids, including Bad Poker, with references to North Florida's Molly Hatchet and Mobile, Alabama, just down I-10 from Live Oak. The Ringo > Much Obliged > Ringo segment was probably my favorite section of the night as the deep grooves kept the fans warm and dancing. I should mention that both of our sets this year were under a large Bonnaroo-style tent, which was about 15-20 degrees warmer than the outside temp at the times of our performances. As the keyboard player who relies on having dexterity in the hands, it was a welcome stage for us. We chose Shine On You Crazy Diamond to close the first set, and it went off as well as we had hoped. As a long-ish and adventurous 2nd set was about to come to a close, I launched into the opening notes of Cemetery Walk II before the rest of the band could walk off the stage. There aren't too many songs that I start, so having that one to throw out there one last time on fall tour was a blast. I had a feeling that everyone wanted a little more dance party, and we threw down before finishing it with some solo piano work. Closing with one of our oldies but goodies, All in Time, we left the stage feeling good about rocking the opening night of the festival. We looked around for some late night action, but ended up back on the bus where we could hang out without seeing our breath. I told you it got cold down there!
Head over to umlive.net and download the Bad Poker for free and check out a few more of the highlights while you're there. Part II coming soon.
-Joel