Local Spotlight - Barbarossa Brothers, American Opera, Kid Brother Collective & Sprout

It has been a good week or so of music. The holidays are always great for bringing musicians back to their home towns and special shows come from such things. First show I caught was of The Barbarossa Brothers. This band is a new sight in town featuring well established musicians in the local scene. Loren Kranz from The Ragbirds on drums and vocals, Ryan Fitzgerals of Sprout on bass, and Drew Pentkowski on guitar and vocals. I really enjoyed my time checking them out. They have kind of a Jerry Garcia Band sound especially in this song. Also check out the flickr photo-set I shot.





Second show of the weekend was one I was particularly excited about. Kid Brother Collective was a band I had not heard play in over ten years. They booked a few reunion shows to celebrate the re-release of their Highway Miles album on vinyl. American Opera also opened the show. The Flint Local 432 is a great venue with a lot of potential to continue helping out a lot of local music. I enjoyed checking the place out and meeting the organizers who keep the lights on. Here is a cool clip of Jon of American Opera talking about his history with Kid Brother Collective.

First a clip of American Opera. I have been waiting a while to get to shoot Jon play with my new camera. Love his music!



Getting to shoot Kid Brother Collective after being just a 16 year old at a hall show was an amazing feeling ten years later. They played mostly songs off of Highway Miles. I was a bigger fan of their first independent release with songs such as "Few and Far Between" and "The Small of Her Back". They did play "Ringfinger" which is one of my favorites by them but was also featured on Highway Miles. Here is a few clips.





Lastly I headed out to Whites one more time to see Sprout. Was a good way to end the weekend. Here is a goofy up-tempo version of one of my favorite songs of theirs.

Electric Forest Festival 2012 Review

Electric Forest 2012

I must say that the excitement before the festival this year was almost unmatched from years previous. Our excitement before Summercamp was nowhere near the level it was before Electric Forest. The line-up went a bit more towards the DJ side this year compared to 2011. It featured three nights of The String Cheese Incident, along with other headliners STS9, Thievery Corporation, and Bassnectar. There was an expanded lineup this year featuring about 25 additional artists than the previous. With the stellar time we had last year, meeting so many friends new and old, everyone could not wait to re-unite!

Getting there:

Getting to this local festival is always a breeze for me. The three hour drive is one of the most exciting middle of the night experiences I look forward to every year. My party departed Saginaw around Midnight with hopes to arrive sometime around 3am to Muskegon's brocery store.

This year we had a huge group of people. Over 100 people signed up ahead of time to meet up in the designated parking lot, and most everyone showed up. This was the biggest group of campers we have ever attempted to get in together all at once. I believe our caravan of over 50 cars departed from Muskegon around 5am and we entered the same crazy line of cars as every year. It is never a very organized operation and it became very apparent that keeping this amount of people together just might be impossible. After a very long 5-6 hour grueling period we all managed to get in and basically were split into 3 camps because we failed to make it happen. I ended up leading the largest group of people to a pretty distant camping spot compared to years previous. It made for a pretty decent walk from camp to the festival entrance. You can't make it perfect every year :-/. I ended up camping with a lot of new people and meeting them all was great!

The Festival:

As with every year, Madison House and Insomniac attempt to trump themselves. It was very hard to do that with the amazing job they did in 2011. Everyone had the utmost expectations this year.

First major upgrade was they moved the Tripolee stage to right where the festival entrance is. This move allowed for a bigger stage and the area overall could accommodate more people than the original Tripolee. I did not watch a single act there all weekend but I would say I enjoyed the move, while at the same time I miss being able to walk through the old Tripolee area in order to get to the Ranch stage. They funneled everyone a different way this time and it lead to a lot more bottle-necked traffic during peak times. They also added a Ferris wheel to the main entrance area. It seems all of the festivals are having the Ferris wheel come out.

Sherwood Forest:

As with every iteration of Sherwood Forest, Madison House puts the most effort into making sure they make it the best version ever! This year they removed the "Beatlejuice" looking pointy blow up stuff above your heads in the trees. They instead put a lot more effort into building structures and art work. They also hired a huge array of costumed performers that included people on stilts, jugglers, stage dancers, mimes, and just odd people for you to run into.

 There was an un-announced stage in the forest called the Salun. It was more an area than a stage. It featured a crashed spaceship dj stage that was almost always playing music. Inside of the Salun was crazy furniture, artwork, and some very creative odd things. I loved it!

Another cool new area was one called Einstein Moments. It incorporated all user integrated activities like a community painting, a crazy user run game, stuff to bang on to make music, and all sorts of hands on activities. The entire area was built to look like a locomotive and on the front had a ton of recycled percussion odds and ends to play with.




  Re-incarnation is a recurring area at Electric Forest that always changes each year, but also always keeps a few of it's original key elements. I believe they use the same materials found naturally around the ranch to create the area each year. One upgrade this year was 2 small buildings on a wooden platform featuring stairs you could walk up to get a birds eye perspective of the forest. This was never before something you could do and I really loved the view from up on top of the buildings.

As this is the fourth adaptation Sherwood Forest has seen, it is hard to say whether I like one version more than any other. Every single time I step foot into this magical place, I am immediately overwhelmed with it's amazement time and time again. The odd characters in the forest and the Salun were definitely my favorite additions this year! I really look forward and hope to be able to come back again! Here is a few good shots:

The Music:

Of all four festival's I planned to attend this year, Electric Forest had my weakest preferred lineup, but my overall favorite festival grounds. It was hard to walk in not knowing if I would really be able to enjoy the music while knowing I love the place. Three nights of the The String Cheese Incident was about the only thing I was specifically looking forward to. (How could any Rothbury veteran not?) With that said, I did not shoot very much performance footage all weekend, but I have a few nuggets for you all.

I did very much enjoy the music that was new to me and some of the energy that could be put forth at some of these intense shows, but I mainly came for the headliners, SCI, Bassnectar, Thievery Corporation, and STS9.

String Cheese Incident -

As always I love cheese and getting to see them 3 nights in a row is always worth the ticket price alone. I caught a clip during the day of their first song and one of my favorites Rosie.



Here is my unededit raw footage from one of the craziest moments of their night two set. They had performers in giant balls, on stages, carrying flags, on stilts, and just craziness occuring! Had such a good time shooting as media with a real camera this year! Learned so much!



Last footage I am sharing from SCI is just this close fan persepctive. It shows just how beautiful the lighting and stage setup really was for the main stage. Amazing!



Bassnectar - As much as I enjoyed the set last year, I was nowhere near ready for the amount of people that would be at this show. This is by far the most people I have ever witnessed at the Ranch area and I would have to say, that if Electric Forest expects crowds this big next year, they are going to need a bigger stage. There were people all the way back to the vendors and on all the walking paths. The show was awesome and some of the craziest energy I have ever witnessed, but a bit of a zoo at the same time. Here is another raw clip




Synopsys -

Overall Electric Forest 2012 was an amazing festival. Madison House and Insomniac Events put in a lot of work to make this the best overall experience possible. The production quality was unmatched compared to any other event I went to. No matter what happens next, this ever evolving festival will always be my home. Rotbury is and always will be my favorite festival venue. I hope to be back next year again to experience whatever madness they can come up with :-)


Lastly, check out my highlight video I put together with all of my video footage! It features many of my favorite moments of 2012.





Thanks for all the support ~ Pun