Festival Diary | Jeff Lloyd of The Heavy Pets on AURA | Part Two
By Team JamBase Mar 17, 2015 • 12:00 pm PDT
We enlisted Jeff Lloyd of The Heavy Pets to document his AURA Music & Arts Festival 2015 experience for us. Head here to read Part One.
As Saturday continued on, I left the amphitheater and headed up the hill for what would be the first of two sets that weekend from The Main Squeeze. I was unprepared. What followed was perhaps the best set that I caught all weekend. A disclaimer: these are my friends –but I would claim so for nearly every musician at the fest. This was just that good. Vocalist Corey Frye led the band and audience to new spiritual heights with an ease that seems beyond his years while guitarist Max Newman took it even further with solos full of soul-wrenching tone and impeccable intent. Then came the peak of the whole weekend. A cover of R. Kelly’s “I Believe I Can Fly” had me levitating. I got to catch up with my pal and The Main Squeeze vocalist Corey Frye after the set.
“We played AURA a couple years ago, so to stand back and see so many people getting down with us was an unbelievable feeling,” Frye said. “We love this park and since they asked us to come back, we had to come do it. The bands are so close and everyone kind of knows each other. They are friends and they are playing multiple sets, so it’s like when that vibe is so tight it pushes out into the audience as well. Like everyone wants to just play for each other, and I think that comes off to the audience. They feel that energy and it’s just a great soulful weekend. It is spiritual.”
Arriving just 10 minutes before his set, our dear friend and keyboard wizard, Jimmy Dunstan, raced through the park with just enough time to hop on stage to rage with his THP boys in Spontaneous Underground. The spirited set justified the 50+ hours of travel he put into getting here and the guys were on fire. Blowing through a classic SPUN set, the keys phenom threw in too many teases to count. Roosevelt Collier, who built a rapport with Jim in the Jam Cruise Jam Room, was excited to flash his steel for yet another THP fam sit-in to close it out with a bang.
Next, I got to catch Papadosio’s second set of the weekend. The set featured their signature blend of visceral and earthy grooves highlighted by painstakingly detailed tone and sound and AV delights to an ecstatic and adulating audience. They sing damn good and utilized this more than I am used to. I mean, these guys used to compliment The Pets on our singing and say stuff about wishing they could –but the thing is –they CAN. I will forever be a fan and anxious to see what they do next. I love what these guys do as a band and equally so as people, and they are pushing boundaries not only musically but everywhere else. It is a delight to see them perform.
I made my way up the hill for a ripping, incendiary set of RAQ highlighted by a cover of “Simple Man,” while some of the rest of my bandmates headed down the hill for Mike Dillon’s first show at Spirit of Suwannee with his new lineup. “Mike Dillon’s set in the Music Hall was mind blowing,” [Heavy Pets drummer] Jamie Newitt said of the performance. “With legends Norwood Fisher of Fishbone on bass and Claude Coleman of Ween on drums, this super trio crushed it. The Shady Horns and Roosevelt sat in with them, and they went to outer space.”
I followed by catching a couple of long-anticipated sets by The Disco Biscuits. I got down to an incredible audio-visual dance party highlighted with ripping and edgy guitar work and a collection of tasty forwards and backwards and inverted tunes as only tDB can do. “House Dog Party Favor” saw the band flex many of their talents while reminding me with their ultra catchy hook that I was yet another city boy out of his mind again.
I sauntered down to the Music Hall to see my friend Tom Hamilton and Co. close down Saturday night with The American Babies. Members of The Disco Biscuits came by to play and threw down one of the best sets of the weekend. Although I’d met most of the musicians from AURA before, TDB guitarist Jon Gutwillig was on my short list. We bro’d down after the set and I realized we have much in common, including similar Northeast tonalities with sarcasm. “Barber” even taught me how to tie a proper man-bun. Good times.
Late Saturday night saw more great performances in the Silent Disco including our South Florida boys Bedside who stepped outside the silence with horn accompaniment consisting of Rob Smiley of Ketchy Shuby and Devon Hendricks of The Resolvers on saxes joining founding member Trace Barfield on trumpet. My Pet brother Jim Wuest also hopped in jamming on keys. Our own Tony D then closed the late night dance party with his OG grooves by trading his bass for the turntables to take us all the way home. I love people and I love music. But damn if I don’t LOVE people who love music.
Sunday, was a bit of a rude awakening with a glorious and smooth finish. After a long and debaucherous night, I woke around 1 p.m. for the first of two scheduled performances. The Pets’ acoustic trio played in the Vibe Tent at 1:30 p.m. and had an inspiring group of faithful fans and stragglers from the morning yoga session gift us the energy to blossom. Our early morning instrumental version of Jerry Garcia Band’s version, of The Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby” brought me right into the day. We played through some more of my favorite tunes, and I was once again reminded by this group, as I often am, how much I love to SING.
Meanwhile Jamie made his way over to the amphitheater to catch our up and coming friends TAUK. “TAUK’s Sunday set on the amphitheater stage rocked,” he said. “They built the perfect set to start the party off on Sunday. Great song arranging and high energy musical builds and breakdowns make this band so bad ass.”
We closed out our acoustic set as my friends from the Emily Carroll Ensemble began to coalesce backstage for my next set. The South Florida conglomerate loaded in and I traded my acoustic rig for my electric to perform Emily’s set of beautiful and haunting original tunes. We even funked it up for a bouncy cover of Tom Waits’ “Clap Hands.” Following the set I packed up my gear and headed down to the amphitheater to catch what is now an AURA tradition. The cover set.
A little backstory on AURA: This festival is the manifestation of a dream of Daryl Wolff and Cameron Ferguson, two of my best friends and favorite people. For three years running Daryl has dreamed up a tribute set -essentially picking one of his favorite bands to cover one of his favorite artists. Every year has been a home run, but this year was the grand-slam. He contacted The Main Squeeze to play a Michael Jackson tribute set. It was easily the most fun set of the weekend for me.
The band masterfully maneuvered and moonwalked through MJ staples, and deftly danced their way through Jackson 5 chart-toppers. With ease and control, they provided the audience the dance party of the weekend. I wanted to get a feel for how they absorbed such an undertaking. I got the privilege to sit and chat with guitarist Max Newman after. “When they told us about it, we said the only way we are going to do it, is if we go for it for real, for real ya know?,” Newman said. “The first thing was picking the tunes, which is hard to do. A few of them we already played like ‘Off the Wall,’ ‘PYT’…’Man in the Mirror’ was obvious. It became apparent early on that we wanted to do some medleys. We (originally) floated around ideas like going in a timeline even like starting Jacksons and then going into ‘Man in the Mirror’ was later so it wouldn’t have worked. Then we were like let’s just do some medleys so different band members took on a different medley. Jeremiah arranged the Jackson 5 medley. I arranged the ‘hits’ medley which was kind of a lot of the Thriller-era stuff, ‘Thriller,’ ‘Beat It,’ etc…”
At this point our conversation was interrupted by Corey offering Max some boiled peanuts which were available backstage, and we were all unsure of how to eat. Corey saw my cell phone recording and laughed and let me continue my “interview”…
“We got a lot of inspiration from watching his live stuff,” Newman continued. “Michael live was completely revolutionary, legendary, when you think about just on top of all the music all the theatrics, we couldn’t even touch that so we were just like alright, we are gonna focus on the music. It became apparent that we would need some help. The horns (Ryan Zoidis and Eric Bloom from Lettuce) came in the picture. They asked us, because they were artists at large, so that worked out perfectly. Isaac Teel (TAUK), we added like two days ago. He can really sing, and he is super tasteful. Then when we were in rehearsal, and Corey was doing ‘Don’t Stop ’til You Get Enough,’ we realized Jeremiah (Hunt of The Main Squeeze) could sing it too, and it was like — you’ve got the falsetto that is your shit! Then we hit up Jamar (Woods of The Fritz) to cover some of that bass stuff on that track, it all just came together. It was a lot of work. A lot of hard work.”
It paid off and was so worth it. They managed to play my favorite and the most fun set of the weekend. Separately. I can’t wait to see what is next from The Main Squeeze. After our convo in the confines of artist hospitality, we all made a beeline for the precision and mastery of Kung Fu. The ninjas had just flown in from San Francisco to play a raucous set of their other-worldy blend of soulful music and martial arts that we have all come to respect in awe. I carefully approached master guitarist Tim Palmieri after the set and asked him if he had picked up any hitchhiking vibes from the set in San Francisco at the Fillmore and brought them to AURA. “Mainly Hendrix, Zappa and Jerry Garcia,” Palmieri said. “And then I mixed my own shit in there -probably some Mahavishnu. I don’t know if Lenny Bruce came out. Maybe some Wavy Gravy.”
The weekend closed out with a set from Break Science Live Band that featured many members of Lettuce funking it out to an ecstatic and beaming AURA crowd grateful for such a gorgeous weekend with so many amazing memories. As a bonus, Roosevelt Collier had his own set in the Music Hall where most of us that were “working” the fest got to wind down and enjoy the master at work with an all-star cast.
It was a hell of a weekend in one of the greatest places on earth. I still like to think that introducing people to this park is one of the greatest privileges I get to experience. I asked my friend Ari Fink from Sirius Jam_ON for some final thoughts on the weekend.
“Wow. It’s magical. What can you say about this place?,” Fink said. “You really need to be here to experience it, especially on a 70 degree day, Florida Sunshine. There’s a river, there’s a lake, hanging trees that I’ve never seen before of various kinds. Just wandering around and soaking it all in. I haven’t heard one bad note of music the whole weekend.”
Next up for The Heavy Pets is four nights at Dunedin Brewery’s Spring Beer Jam in Florida.
