Las Tortugas III | 10.30 – 11.02 | CA
By Team JamBase Nov 10, 2008 • 2:44 pm PST
Las Tortugas – Dance of the Dead III :: 10.30.08 – 11.02.08 :: Evergreen Lodge :: Groveland, CA
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Driving into the woods, one hits a place where cell phones cut out and most markers of the bullet fast 21st century world slip away. Pulling off the highway onto the rugged seven-mile back road that leads to Evergreen Lodge, one truly enters a different world, a pleasant sort of dislocation. Pulling up to the log adorned cabins, one feels they’ve arrived at a pastoral trading post for weirdoes and ramblers, long hairs and moonshiners. Despite being Federal land, one picks up on a delightful outsider-ness at Evergreen, and one quickly wonders why many haven’t picked up on this phenomenal gem amongst the tall trees. With clean, warm cabins with hot showers, a general store with long hours and good espresso drinks, a full bar and restaurant, a cozy fireplace warmed lounge with free long distance and Internet access, as well as three lovingly decorated, acoustically great, centrally located stages and easy pathways everywhere, it’s not hard to fall in love with the place.
As much as the music, the environment played a major factor in setting a self-contained mood, a shared community dedicated to good times accessed through sound waves, dance and a neighborly spirit that’d bring a grin to Andy Griffith’s face. Everywhere people tacked up Christmas lights and laid out Halloween decorations, offered sniffs of this and tastes of that to strangers, stuffed bellies into spandex and painted their faces. Even in the earliest hours of the festival, one sensed a collective rush to create a unified, electrified experience. The only thing I can compare it to is the elaborate setups one encounters at High Sierra, and frankly this felt better, perhaps because of its smaller size, indoor plumbing, real beds and other small but significant differences. While a new tradition, Las Tortugas has all the makings of an annual event that folks will mark on the calendar in permanent ink.
Thursday, 10.30.08
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Those needing a final shove needed only to plant themselves at The Mother Hips‘ main stage (The Terrapin Big Top Tent) christening set. Starting late due to Tim Bluhm‘s traffic woes, they showed no dust, no hesitation with a selection of comfortable favorites played with grit and Cheshire smiles. Every now and again I think they realize they’re an American rock great, and that surfaces in muscular, sensuous playing like this performance. I doubt they’d ever admit it consciously but something in their bodies takes over and they fly with the kind of rough boy grace one associates with early ’70s Stones, Bon Scott-era AC/DC or Muswell Hillbillies period Kinks. Starting with “Honeydew” and then swiftly into “Time Sick Son of a Grizzly Bear,” they had people dancing on the walkways, slipping high fives to plush paws and sharing smokes and slack jaws with passersby. As a longtime Hips devotee, it’s always a kick to watch first timers or the largely uninitiated get bowled over by this band. Everywhere my eye turned, I found people getting switched on, which in turn fueled the sets to come this evening and thereafter. Something within the intensity of this first night lit a flame that no band seemed anxious to extinguish. Thus, the performances from the start were marked with a driven focus, a need to go just a bit further than the norm, deliver something special to add to the specialness unfolding around them.
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Never one to offer audiences a breather, Monophonics, looking like they’d raided the Art Ensemble of Chicago’s closet and make-up drawer, funneled nasty strangeness into funky frames after the Hips. Monophonics have clearly studied up on their James Brown but don’t genuflect to any orthodoxy. Like the best funk units, they go by feel, and in Tuolumne Hall theirs was a sweaty, grabby sort of Braille read. One felt them, shining out from a central chakra, limbs illuminated with youth and raw gusto. In their eyes shined a single message: “I’m gonna get some.” How you define “some” may vary wildly but the sheer lust of their playing was undeniable and intensely palpable.
Back on the main stage, Hot Buttered Rum emerged in basketball gear to the Harlem Globetrotters theme, shuckin’ & jivin’ in all their buttermilk whiteness. Then, incongruously, the trill of flute reminiscent of Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks (which also echoed in the stunning, humidly permeating bass work of Bryan Horne). Beyond being a band built around strings, there’s no category that really suits them. Sure, the deliriously appropriate “Sweet Honey Fountain” that soon followed could be categorized bluegrass in the early sections, a descendent of Jimmie Rodgers and Bill Monroe, but the exploratory tail section has all the swoop of ’60s modal jazz, a child of Impulse Records Coltrane far more than mountain music. Even when they talked about “rambling” they did so with the swing of hot jazz instead of country. It is their contradictions and juxtapositions, including a drum kit that now sits onstage ready for occasional poundings as the spirit moves them, that define HBR. The set rolled with lock tight harmonies, electric banjo, graceful fingerpicking powered originals and smile bombs like the Grateful Dead’s “Tennessee Jed” (done in coked-up ’76 style) and The Beatles’ “I’ve Got A Feeling,” though this cover did make me feel for those sleeping in tents, exposed to the rains that stayed with us most of the festival. I poured whiskey into a tiny, drowned hood rat to heat her bones as HBR sang about wet dreams and good times.
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Knowing there’d be multiple chances to catch Blue Turtle, I hung on the porch outside The Tavern for Austin’s Wisebird. I rolled up to find piano and organ swirling along a chooglin’ boogie worthy of ol’ Lowell George and early Little Feat, all hips and dips and just a little bit bad. Dressed in camouflage fatigues, they played with the intensity of men who’d just arrived from being “in country,” a strength and meanness needed for survival pumped into exceedingly pure rock ‘n’ roll, driven by drummer-singer Dave Meservy, guitarist Will Webster and the blazingly great keys of Trevor Nealon. One could lazily say they sound like the Allman Brothers but more accurately they’re the children of Leon Russell and Freddie King, real blues and blood soaked barrooms surfacing in their heavy notes. A comely tweaker skipped past me and said, “Can you believe it’s just four guys making that fucking sound?” From the mouths of babes.
I’ll admit it, I’m kind of an ALO neophyte, and it’s only in the past year of that band’s near dormancy that I’ve really come to know the playing of guitarist Dan Lebowitz and bassist Steve Adams as they’ve gigged around the Bay Area. So, I wasn’t fully prepared for Lebo and Friends‘ late night set to be so freakin’ roadhouse tough. With Lebowitz way out front on electric, pedal steel and other guitars, one heard the DNA of Albert King, The Doors and Canned Heat throb in this band’s veins. Prodded with intense filigree by Feinstein on keys, they took a crosscut saw to rock ‘n’ roll, imbuing even the instrumentals with strong legs and a mildly ornery character. There’s sometimes a tendency towards melodic sugar in ALO and it was keen to watch Lebo drive the boys into gnarly territory, culminating in a mind-blowing sit-in by Tim and Nicki Bluhm on Neil Young’s “Down By The River.” This cover had all the floating corpses and aching sentiment of Young’s original delivered in a sweet ‘n’ sour way that rivaled Crazy Horse at their very best, Lebo and Tim Bluhm striking sparks as their guitars swung at one another, not so much seeking union as heartfelt sensation and release. Oh, Lebo did dabble in cheeriness, too, especially a great reading of Old Crow Medicine Show’s “Wagon Wheel.”
Continue reading for Friday’s coverage…
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Wash away my troubles, wash away my pain
With the rain in Shambala
Wash away my sorrow, wash away my shame
With the rain in Shambala
Ah, ooh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Everyone is helpful, everyone is kind
On the road to Shambala
Everyone is lucky, everyone is so kind
On the road to Shambala
There’s a naiveté I nurse that says we really could make the world an amazing place if we were just a little nicer to each other, a little more respectful, a little more wide open to joy and pleasure. Thanks to the work of many hands, Las Tortugas began and remained a place where one had the chance to live out this theory accompanied by a shifting, always stellar soundtrack. Beyond individual band/set descriptions it’s worth highlighting that this festival’s lineup was driven by a real love of music and people who play it well. While one act might not have been your cup of tea, there was no denying that everyone onstage could play their ass off and approached their craft with seriousness and pure talent. No one was booked because of a hit single, label pressure or any of the other myriad x-factors that often fuel festival programming. A strong bond of camaraderie already existed between many bands but it didn’t take long before the newcomers were being asked to sit-in. Call it a blanket of overlapping pleasures, and it felt great wrapped around our ears.
The bonding began early most days, while waiting in long lines for the breakfast buffet with the early risers and those still buzzing from the late night sets. The players mingled with the attendees, and conversations ranged from discussions of specific moments from the night before to Sarah Palin’s presidential worthiness to rambling, blissed out sighing over steaming coffee. The line between performer and spectator was generally blurry here. It also helped energy levels and general enthusiasm to start music on the full days at 4 p.m., which allowed the late night partiers to rest through daylight or gave the fully ambulatory time to hike, fish and otherwise enjoy being in such a lovely setting.
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Guitarmageddon oddly let HBR’s bounce slip a bit in their slow rise to hesher heaven. Led by Tea Leaf Green‘s six-stringer Josh Clark, this occasional band delights in tasty guitar solos and Camaro shakin’ anthems. This set included Curtis Mayfield’s “Freddy’s Dead,” Blue Oyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear The Reaper” and an absolutely monstrous assault on CSNY’s “Ohio” that bettered any version I’ve heard the original foursome pull out. Aided by a banging, watertight rhythm section and fellow guitarists Lebo and Sean Leahy, Clark ultimately turned things up to “11” and tapped that spine like we know he can.
The second installment of The Mother Hips was more focused, more psychedelic, more obscure, more a lot of things. I wouldn’t call it better but surely a denser offering that put their left foot in our ass and kicked us out a “Third Floor Story” that unleashed light in the main tent. There was something so solid, so enduringly right about each note played, each song offered up. Words fail even as the feeling remains, but in many ways the Hips showed everyone how this rock thing should be done in every fundamental way.
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Blue Turtle Seduction, often a bit overshadowed by better known acts at their own festival, offered up a stunning main stage set that put them shoulder to shoulder with anyone here. Charging out with a pleasantly snarky bit of sing-song rhyming about misconceptions, they found growl and brisling tension inside their folk-punk-funk sound. Electric guitarist Jay Seals poured molten heat into the proceedings, keeping things from ever shifting far from a hard rockin’ vibe, pushing in voice and instrument inspired covers like The Ramones’ “I Wanna Be Sedated,” Billy Idol’s “Rebel Yell” (given heady, crowd pleasing skank in its set closing spot) and a truly amazing run through Joe Strummer’s “Get Down Moses,” which had a Krautrock space excursion devoid of any dub sleepiness, all prickly and cosmic and downright cool. And this band is cool in their own quiet, largely unheralded way. Blue Turtle proved they are a magnificent party band for smart kids with unbound tastes, mashing sock hop dancers with hip-hop flavors, power chord monsters with bohemian drinking tunes. They inspired a need to raise a glass in good cheer, a yo-ho-ho that fit the general celebratory mood well. And their own wide-rangedness was indicative of the general genre bursting of the fest lineup; these are not bands that take well to constrictions and keep finding new ways to expand rather than solidify any boundaries.
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Having freaked it pretty good in my ’70s Elvis jumpsuit at Izabella’s set, I felt the flame in my jack-o-lantern fizzle out. For me, Halloween was over and the distant sounds of giddy folks at the late night sets from Tea Leaf Green and Monophonics rocked me to sleep, secure others would dance in a new dawn whilst I snuggled beneath the covers, saturated with happy sounds and weary in the best of ways.
Continue reading for Saturday’s coverage…
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Perhaps juiced by On The One, Melvin Seals’ JGB played tough and soulful. Already armed with the nostalgia power of the Dead/Garcia catalog, they expanded past their usual pleasure buttons (of which there are many) to mine the organ chomp of Lonnie Smith and blues that brought one back to Topanga Canyon in the early ’70s – gently psychedelic but still full of bite. Everyone in this group sings and plays with such natural oomph that when taken together it’s like a tonic for whatever ails you. Dancing till my hair was damp, surrounded by smiling faces, I knew (and yes, I’m aware it’s a cliché) that somewhere Jerry was smiling at how what he’d begun was evolving and continuing to delight Mother Earth’s children.
In keeping with the night’s “Naughty By Nature” theme, Wisebird performed in Tuolumne Hall wearing just underwear, dog tags and shoes. Lean, hairy honkies all, they strutted with the same toughness they had in their fatigues a few nights earlier but this time made room for some primo slow burners worthy of early Black Crowes. Dave Meservy has a rough croon akin to young Robert Palmer, lesser-known U.K. soul-blues-rock great Frankie Miller or even Ronnie Van Zant in “Simple Man” mode. Thus, it was the ballads that tore you up this time, even though they got folks reelin’ and rockin’, too. Playing in front of a backdrop of an arched back black cat set against a full moon (just one of the many thoughtful, lovely decorations around Las Tortugas this year; again, the work of many invisible hands that produced a fantastically layered experience), Wisebird mingled Chuck Berry with T Bone Walker, Savoy Brown with the Crowes, producing a tight shuffle that was never self-indulgent or stiff. This is rock ‘n’ roll you feel in your bones and I left this festival a genuine fan of what this Austin band does.
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Over at Tuolumne at the same time, Underground Orchestra had stilled the room to such a level that I wondered if they were actually playing. What I soon discovered was one of the finest cover executions of the weekend, namely a nice chunk of Pink Floyd’s Animals bookended (of course) by the solo acoustic guitar of “Pigs On The Wing.” Like some slow rolling railcar, Underground Orchestra found their place within the iconic material, furrowing out sunshine with a lightness of touch that truly impressed. It was something akin to hearing Dickey Betts jam with Gilmour, Waters, et al. Next to me, a Kermit puppet that I’d partied with the previous night sported a Yoda costume and bobbed his head as stonily as the rest of us in the room. After a few days one acclimated to the sight of human-banana hybrids, Muppets, Wonder Woman, bizarro Uncle Sams, Mae West look-alikes and more, more, more. It became one’s norm and made me sigh a little upon leaving that the world outside Evergreen Lodge wasn’t quite as colorful or loose.
Blue Turtle Seduction encapsulated the general largeness of the night in one of the most passionate, baldly emotional sets I’ve ever witnessed by them. Whatever was stoking their engine on Saturday, it produced an incredible intensity, especially in Jay Seals and mandolin/violin player Christian Zupancic, who both played with the clarity and flow of early Carlos Santana. And swept up in their onrush, the rest of the band dug out something deep and real from within, and then offered it to us without hesitation. The tunes were jam heavy, expansive and adventurous. One felt taken elsewhere if they surrendered to their music. Ritual as much as concert, this set stands as one of their best and a fine sign that one should never put too fine a point on any expectations with this band.
The rest of the night for me is a fine blur produced by ALO and Tea Leaf Green, who played back-to-back sets on the main stage. While it may seem a cop out to speak of these performances in generalities, sometimes one has to just to let the music take them, and each band, in their own way, expertly mixed top flight songwriting with unbelievably high musicianship and a willingness to go wherever each tune opened up to. Both groups were in best form and anxious to jam in the finest ways; picking up on newly revealed pockets within the familiar, teasing out all the goodness within their compositions and then finding themselves surprised at fresh avenues opening up in the moment. Parsing such live experiences is an exercise for critics and I, like most gathered at this festival, am a music lover of the first order. TLG and ALO gave us two barrels of the good stuff right in the kisser, potent audio buckshot that pierced us, knocked us back and reminded us why both bands have such apostolic followings. Well done, guys.
Continue reading for Sunday’s coverage…
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If some of what I’ve related seems too idyllic, too good to be true, well, it isn’t. I’m just reporting what I found at this emerging festival. If they can keep the scale close to this year (around a 1000 folks all-in with crew, bands, guests, ticket holders), if they just refine what they’ve already laid out, then this is gonna be a total keeper. Put even more bluntly, if I could do only one festival each year then I’d choose Las Tortugas, which embodies everything that first drew me to the jam scene (diversity, open-mindedness, high level musicianship and song craft, a hippie-like spirit) and none of the elements that currently repel me (insular groupies, rejection of new musical forms, non-critical fanship, a seeming need to crap on anything unfamiliar or just not to one’s taste). Being amongst Tortugans, I felt at home-on-the-road in ways that reminded me of my first forays onto the touring highway with the Grateful Dead and Black Crowes. Our people, the ones that vibrate on our own strange frequency, don’t always live next door, and we must seek them on the byways and hollers of this land. Over this Halloween weekend I felt positively buried in my sort of folks and I’ll gladly dive into their bosom again a year hence.
My parting musical dose came courtesy of a mostly solo set by Tea Leaf’s Trevor Garrod. Announcing that he “slept through Sunday” because he’d found God on Saturday night, Garrod in his pure, unique voice sliced a little hole in the sky and let us glad hand the Lord, picked up by his honey tone and ten fingered piano attack. Bright originals full of pretty birds eating all the ugly bugs mingled with well-chosen covers like a plaintive reading of John Lennon’s “Instant Karma.” Garrod is a different animal outside TLG, one where the gnarled Randy Newman within him emerges from his young frame. Aided in spots by a number of friends including Lebo and charming gal singer Lael, Garrod was the ideal send off towards the real world, bits of dreams and prayers and love songs to pull from my pockets as bumps and hardships emerged in my path. Like everything that’d preceded him, it was almost too nice but I suppose it’s alright to be so blessed once in a while.
As I walked towards my car I heard Tistrya welcome everyone to the church of music, and then found myself grounded for a couple songs that unfurled with such country rock touched loveliness that I could not take a step. Music for music’s sake. Music for the people’s sake. Music for the sheer fucking joy, pleasure and beauty of it. That’s what Las Tortugas – Dance of the Dead is about. What more could you ask of a festival?
Continue reading for more images of Las Tortugas – Dance of the Dead…
 Paul Hoaglin – The Mother Hips | |
 Allie Kral – Cornmeal | |
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 Steve Adams – ALO, Big Light | |
 Zach Gill – ALO | |
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 Delta Nove | |
 Trevor Garrod – Tea Leaf Green | |
 Trevor Garrod & friend | |
 Shani | |
 Monophonics | |
 Monophonics | |
 Melvin Seals & JGB | |
 Jesse Molloy – On The One | |
 Tim Bluhm – The Mother Hips | |
 The Mother Hips | |
 Greg Loiacono & Paul Hoaglin – The Mother Hips | |
 John Hofer – The Mother Hips | |
 Aaron Redner – Hot Buttered Rum | |
 Hot Buttered Rum | |
 Erik Yates – Hot Buttered Rum | |
 Cornmeal | |
 Guitarmageddon | |
 Josh Clark – Tea Leaf Green, Guitarmageddon | |
 Josh Clark & Steve Adams | |
 Jay Seals – Blue Turtle Seduction | |
 Dennis Cook – your Tugas scribe and JamBase’s Associate Editor | |
 Josh Clark and friend | |
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