Ten Takeaways from the 2016 LOCKN' Festival

Photo by @jtolg

My Morning Jacket Crushed It
The best set of the weekend belonged to My Morning Jacket.  It was all about love, sweet love.  That Steam Engine was maybe the best thing I have ever heard.  All that set was lacking was a cover of "Love TKO" by Teddy Pendergrass.  Next time, Yim Yames, next time.

My Love for Ween was Rekindled!
To the surprise of Ween fans nowhere, Ween's Thursday headlining slot quickly went deep and dark.  The elemental notes coming out of Deaner's guitar that night were the work of a master.  Friday's set contained even more Ween songs.  Behold...the Boognish.

Phish Was Disappointing
The king of jambands was not a personal highlight of the Lockn' festival.  I loved every minute of My Morning Jacket and Ween, but Phish just didn't hit me in the same way.  Phish could have sprinkled their sets with more weird songs like Weigh, Guy Forget, Glide, Manteca, Mock Song, Lengthwise, Fikus, et cetera.  Phish might have also been better off conforming to the standard festival formula of one long set that starts immediately after the previous band.

Is Vulfpeck Some Kind of Joke...Band?
I only saw Vulfpeck's Thursday set but it was awful, right?  Two thumbs down.  I will say, that upon the 10th listen, it does start to be less awful.  Wait, why do I keep listening to their stupid set!!!???

Twiddle Rhymes with Did Ill
OK I get it.  You sound like a jamband heavily influenced by Phish who also likes to throw in the occasional reggae groove into every single one of your songs.  Your lyrics are uplifting in a way that should be more ironic than it is.  You've got a cool looking guitar (not a Languedoc) and a cool hat and Page hangs out in your trailor (note: trailer is spelled trailer).  Mr. Twiddle, you've been around for ten years so none of these observations are new, I'm sure.  Yeah I'd probably go see you guys again if you came through town on tour, but I might also double dip and go see Vulfpeck too.  That's your competition right now.

JRAD is the Best Thing Going in the Grateful Dead World

Aside from whatever Phil Lesh continues to do, which is bound to be good, JRAD is the best thing happening in Grateful Dead music right now.  Maybe Brown-Eyed Women doesn't always need to go Type II, but I'll take that over a manlike sexpot playing generic blues licks in a nostalgia act or a post John K DSO.  The way that JRAD toys with these songs through fearless full band improvisation is what makes it so endlessly entertaining.

Bringing Water, Food and a Pop-Up Shower Saved The Day

Our campsite was literally a mile walk to the stage.  No joke.  It was probably almost a half-mile to the nearest porta-potty and still farther to the closest water spigot.  Not exactly convenient.  Friday was the hottest day I have ever spent entirely outside.  The mission that day was to stay alive.  My drink of choice was a Coors Light - on ice!  Fortunately we had plenty of water and food and I had brought a pop-up shower for, well, showering by virtue of a DIY pump sprayer.  The shower proved to have at least 1 other important use.

Photo by Vickey Higgins Goff

Some People Can Dance For Hours In the Hot Sun and Still Rage Late Night (Not Me)

The intense heat crippled my interest in making more than one trip per day back and forth to the stage.  This meant that I missed a lot of the bands that played before Ween on Friday, including Turkuaz and Charles Bradley, but energy had to be conserved.  On Saturday I finally made it down for the whole day of music and found a shady spot to take it all in.  There, from the comfort of a low-profile chair, I could witness crazies dancing in the mid-day sun for hours on end.  My apologies to those mofos if they were still on their feet for MMJ. I had saved my energy so I could let loose a little bit by the end of the day on Saturday.

How You Feeling Out There?
Thanks for asking Michael Franti, I mean Galactic.  If you really want to know...I feel like I have a dangerously high core body temperature and an altered mental state or behavior.  I've been sweating excessively for days, have flushed skin, a rapid heart rate, a headache, and I feel kind of dizzy, as if I'm car sick but I haven't been in a car for over 48 hours.  It's 3:30 in the afternoon in August in Virginia and the heat index is above one hundred degrees.  If you really want me to get up and dance right now then you don't have my best interest at heart.  I feel bad for you Galactic for even being on that stage.  It's the best I can do to put my hands together.  I suppose I could make some noise.

That's Only Nine
Go listen to 12 Golden Country Greats.  Actually there is a ten.  I made a LOCKN' music mix for listening at the campsite and for some reason it called for vintage rhythm and blues and soul, such as the Staple Singers, Aretha Franklin, Allen Toussaint and more.  So it's had an unexpected impact on my future music listening.  Hitting the record stores tomorrow to search out more of this.

Who Else Can They Get For LOCKN'?

Phish, Ween and My Morning Jacket.  Independently, these are probably my top 3 active, performing rock bands, and they are all playing this August at Lockn', a music festival in Virginia that takes place about 90 minutes from where I live.  I've never been to Lockn' before but I have to go now.  Is Yim Yames going to sit in with Ween on Homo Rainbow?  One can hope.

Even if they don't add any other performers it would be enough for me, but the website says "More Artists To Be Announced".  I wonder who those could be?  What other artists would be a good fit for that festival and also be on the top of my personal list the way those big 3 are?  Since I'm 3 for 3 already, maybe I'm not that far off base, so I might as well think of some more preferable add-ons to the lineup.

I'm not clamoring for Dead and Co., or Ratdog, or Bisco, or Widespread or String Cheese (or any of your token classic rockers that Lockn' alumni might be bummed about missing), and I'm no longer into the bluegrass-tinged acts that show up at places like this.  My tastes run a little different than the typical jamband route, despite the fact that the 3 headliners happen to be tailor made for me.  What I would dig is the inclusion of Camper Van Beethoven or The Meat Puppets...a couple of out there, underground 1980's bands that don't normally play festivals like this but who could sneak in on the Ween vibe.

Someone who would pair well with My Morning Jacket is John Prine.  The singing mailman ain't that jammy, but his songs come from a deceptively counter cultural perspective.  This wrinkly living legend would definitely charm the crowd and be a nice break from your standard everyday funk grooves.

Tortoise could play late night after Phish and melt the faces of anyone brave enough to listen; and Marc Ribot and the Young Philadelphians featuring Mary Halvorson would hoist a heaping helping of noise in the guise of classic soul.  But I doubt either of those are gonna happen.

More within the realm of possibility are modern rockers like Dr. Dog or Dawes.  Even though I like both of these bands, I'm not sure how excited I would be to see them in that setting.  What would get everyone off - and still be a great addition to the lineup - would be a Talking Heads reunion.  Talk about a ground score.  That would really light things up.  Or how about Tom Waits?  He would add a different type of trippyness to the happenings.

Lockn' could go really, really big and court the likes of Springsteen, U2, Pearl Jam and the Stones, but that might be getting too far removed and mainstream.  Let Bonnaroo do stuff like that.  Or they could go more grassroots in the vein of Floyd Fest, Shakori Hills and Red Wing Roots.  No, I happen to like them right where they are this year - with a finger on the pulse of bands with a certain throbbing psychedelic sensibility who still bring the heat rather than a nostalgic shuffle beat.  So hey, what about Prince?!

Dawes "All Your Favorite Bands" and My Morning Jacket "The Waterfall"

Dawes and My Morning Jacket continue to be two of the best rock bands around right now, both in concert and on record.  My Morning Jacket has held that status for over ten years - at least since 2004's It Still Moves, with Dawes joining those ranks more recently, albeit instantly, circa 2009 with the arrival of their first album North Hills.

Both of these bands have new albums out:  My Morning Jacket's The Waterfall was released May 4, while Dawes' new album All Your Favorite Bands came out today, June 2.  I've had more time to digest The Waterfall and I can say that it might be the best album of My Morning Jacket's career.  Their previous album Circuital was a bit of a dud, in my opinion, causing me to lose some interest in MMJ's trajectory.  But The Waterfall has brought them back.  It's hooky, diverse, soulful and quirky, but not in a way that feels forced.

The Waterfall is more compact than some previous MMJ albums, but no less magical.  They manage to express the trippy vibe of Stinson Beach, California (where the album was recorded) with hints of a Kentucky accent that's been lying dormant for a while.  Many different genres are intermingled in a way that manages to not be derivative.  It's safe to say that The Waterfall could be My Morning Jacket's masterpiece, usurping 2006's divine Z for that title.

By contrast, the new Dawes album All Your Favorite Bands is not quite as career-defining.  It does sound A LOT like Dawes though, which is a good thing.  The songs are mostly solid and will help add some variety to their live show, but when you start to look for songs to add to the Dawes "best of" only 3 or maybe 4 songs might make that cut: The catchy title track "All Your Favorite Bands", the rocker "I Can't Think About It Now", the groovy yet radio-friendly "Right On Time" and the album closing ballad, the stunning "Now That It's Too Late, Maria".

When I heard that David Rawlings had produced the album and that they focused on playing live in the studio, I was expecting/hoping for more of a Jerry Garcia Band type of looseness to be present.  This never really shows up until the last song, the aforementioned "Now That It's Too Late, Maria".  There are some econo-jams, the song "Somewhere Along the Way" comes to mind, but it's not quite as open-ended as one might want.  The same Taylor Goldsmith lyrical stylings are there, the same chorus reliant songs are there, the same solid musicianship.  Does all that sameness stir up the same excitement as previous batches of songs?  Maybe it still needs to grow on me.  Sink in more.  Dawes is like that.  It takes time for their songs to gain identities.  But that fadeout on "Somewhere Along the Way" is not cool.