Music and mud mix at Lanesboro groove-fest (6/12-6/14/98)

by Seth Rogovoy

(LANESBORO, Mass., June 15, 1998) -- Yes, there was rain and there was mud -- far more of either than anyone could have reasonably anticipated. But in spite of the adverse weather conditions, which turned the gorgeous hillside at Steele's Family Farm into a gloppy, muddy mess this past weekend, there was also plenty of good music at the three-day Berkshire Mountain Music Festival.

The original plan was to have performances on two outdoor stages running simultaneously, with acoustic-based, nighttime entertainment to be held inside a circus-style, big-top tent. While most of the second-stage acts were cancelled, the original plan proved fortuitous, as the covered tent provided shelter from the storm and quickly became ground-zero for most of the festival.

The operative term for the preponderance of the music performed over the weekend is "groove," the loosely-organic, roots-based style that grafts an improvisational approach borrowed from jazz -- and sometimes jazz-based music itself -- onto funk-derived rhythms to create a very jazzy, ecstatic, danceable kind of jam-based rock music.

The musical style pioneered by the Grateful Dead was the touchstone for most of that heard over the weekend, with occasional nods to like- minded, seminal jam-bands such as the Allman Brothers and Santana, or their more contemporary brethren in Phish. What set the best bands apart was what made them unique -- the way in which they strayed from the Grateful Dead's formula in order to carve out new paths of their own.

This was accomplished in a variety of ways. Some bands emphasized a particular style of roots music, giving its mix a unique flavor. Others veered to the left or the right of the Dead in terms of jazz or funk -- imagine an axis with the Grateful Dead in the center, with bands to one side upping the funk factor to the endpoint where one finds the Meters, the funk pioneers who closed the festival on Sunday night, and to the other side with bands drawing more on jazz traditions, where one would find the Charlie Hunters or The Slips who were heard from over the course of the weekend. They all mixed and matched, of course, and some veered from one side of the axis to the other. The overall effect remained one of groove throughout.

Take for example Donna the Buffalo, the upstate New York outfit that performed on Friday evening. The sextet variously recalled Jefferson Airplane and 10,000 Maniacs with its blend of psychedelic folk-rock. It took a while for the group to catch fire, but once it established its groove its particular brand of Cajun- and country-influenced rock -- colored by fiddles, accordions and bluegrass-derived harmonies -- made a distinctive impression.

Contemporary New Orleans funk outfit Galactic headlined on Friday night, with its update of classic '60s-style soul-jazz, with saxophones and a vintage Wurlitzer organ occasionally steering the music into the jazz-rock fusion territory of Miles Davis.

On Saturday afternoon, the Tony Furtado Band showed another way to groove. Furtado is a virtuoso banjoist and slide-guitarist, and he built his innovative jazz-rock fusion improvisations upon a basis of bluegrass and folk music, mixing Bill Monroe melodies and Irish dance tunes into his set.

Jam-rock band Jiggle the Handle, which is bound for several dates on this summer's big-profile H.O.R.D.E. tour, stuck close to the center of the Grateful Dead/Santana axis. The quartet, featuring bass, drums, guitar and organ, pumped out a big sound, weaving crescendoes into its exploratory space jams.

This reviewer missed Los Lobos's headlining set on Saturday evening -- one of the only performances to take place on the main stage -- but the group reportedly acknowledged the nature of the festival by covering several Grateful Dead songs and extending its own Mexican folk- and roots-based compositions with instrumental jams.

On Sunday, Charlie Hunter and Pound for Pound brought the focus back toward jazz with its cool, classy vibe. Hunter fronts his trio playing an eight-string guitar which handles both bass, lead and rhythm chores. Accompanied by drums and vibraphone, Hunter directed his set through a terrain expansive enough to include samba and Steve Miller's classic-rock tune, "Fly Like an Eagle."

The set by The Slip exemplified the improvisational nature of much of the music and the festival as a whole. When it was time to go on, the trio was missing its guitarist, but this merely provided the bassist and drummer with a chance to experiment with that unique duet situation. After a few songs, the keyboardist from the band Schleigho joined the duo for some more dreamy, jazzy improvisations. The Slip's guitarist finally showed in the middle of one spacey jam and strapped on his axe mid-song to bring the number to an emotional climax.

With several hundred fans still on hand on Sunday evening, keyboardist Art Neville prefaced the concluding set of the festival by The Meters by saying, "We're used to flying F-16s, tonight we're flying a Cessna," referring to the conditions, technical and otherwise, under which the band performed. Not that it mattered one iota to the crowd, which was as crucial to the event's ultimate success as were the performers. With The Meters bringing down the curtain with its own funk-fueled groove, the final tribute went out to those festivalgoers who turned what could have been a wholesale disaster into a peaceful, communal, if terribly muddy groove-fest.

[This review originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on June 16, 1998. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 1998. All rights reserved.]