Back home after a little excurison to Plateville, Wisconsin to play a show and submerge ourselves deeply in the funky authenticity of Freak Fest. We motored up in a big old rented Mountaineer (it would be an ideal vehicle for a little band on the road, if only it ran on bio-fuels, or solar power, or human excrement!), loaded to the gills with instruments, people (the Lovely Carla, Sara the bass player, her metal band boyfriend Markus, and me, your humble tour guide), a cooler full of ginger beer, bread rolls, cheese of various kinds, and a bag full of cds (Neil Young, Pelican, White Stripes, Byork, Cat Power, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Green Day, Jim White).
Plateville is about a 4 hour drive from Chicago. We drove up early on Friday and arrived in Plateville mid-afternoon. Freak Fest is held on a 400 acre farm (feed corn and soybeans) in the rolling, verdant fields of the heartland. It seems Wisconsin is endless tracts of corn and soybeans, dotted with taverns and cemetaries and well, from the first to last, I guess, that about covers it.
To get to Freak Fest you have to find a little dirt road just past the river and take it down a ways, past the fork in the road and then finally, inevitably, you find yourself in a little clearing, one side is the river with big shady trees and the other is endless rows of corn. It's a little idylic place, and right there in middle of that little field is a state of the art rock & roll stage setup with a big generator and amps and lights and drum kits and everything a band needs to make some noise.
Did I mention the freaks? These are our people. It was not a big crowd, most assuredly less than 100 freaky souls all camped out in various tent configurations. Men, women, children dogs. You know how sometimes you don't feel like you belong anywhere? The Lovely Carla and I get this feeling all the time. Almost like we weren't made for this ole world. But as soon as we got out of the Mountaineer we were surrounded by cool and mellow and well, not so much freaky but just "lit up," people who seemed to have no other agenda except to play and listen to music, to enjoy good food, good booze, (maybe a little hooch too), to camp and frolic in the river and dry out in the shade, to dance under the moon, to watch a big old campfire blaze away into the blinking black night.
It was bloody beautiful. What a great place for our band to make it's debut. We kicked off the fest at 6:00 p.m. and played a fairly tight set of original music. It was a great success especially since the four of us had never played out in public together before! It was great to hear the full band with sara on bass and sanjay on drums, the lovley Carla singing her heart out and me whaling away on my guitar. It was very satisfying indeed!
Then we got to sit back and enjoy the music. It came out in all varieties. There were two other bands after us on Friday. Dan Whitaker and the Shinebenders closed the evening with two full sets of rollicking good country tunes. Those dudes are so tight! There's nothing like the sweet, twangy sound of a pedal steel guitar wafting through lines of corn!
Now the Lovely Carla and I didn't actually camp (we are such citified pussies!). We stayed at a hotel nearby, so we decamped after the Shinebenders. We slept in late, fortified ourselves with veggie burgers and coffee and came back for a full afternoon of music on Saturday. What a total gas! Dare I say it, I loved every band on the bill. From Grateful Dead covers to absolute chaotic noise and everything in between. These are the bands that we saw, each were great in their own freaky way: Birth Defectors, Daddy Burger Swag, Grun Tu Molani. It was hard leaving, but we needed to be home with our little birdies (they were stuck in their cage - which for us birds of a feather is a little tug of heartache) so we split about 8:00 p.m. Saturday night. Freak Fest was still going strong...wow, what a cool event. The ride back was smooth, uneventful, I fortified myself with some rocket fuel coffee and cranked the cd player up loud!
I definitely want to make Freak Fest a new summer tradition...
There's something we are all looking for, some kind of realness, a beautiful authenticity. No bullshit. A positive vibe. Well I'm here to testify brothers and sisters THAT IS FREAK FEST!