J: And have to be treated much differently too. Mike, what were you doing for the acoustic set?

M: I pretty much do a lot more rim shot stuff and play quieter. I’ll have the full set, but I’ll probably have some bamboo sticks called hot rods, or wire brushes. I’ll also have some hand drums and shakers.

A: Well here’s the thing, the acoustic set is the last thing that happens at Rootwire. It’s the last thing that happened last year and basically all of our friends came up. Everybody was sitting down, it was magical, we couldn’t believe it. We had the whole tent set up and for some reason everyone decided to sit down. It was a long weekend, everyone was just dead and there were just hundreds and hundreds of people all sitting down, we were like, “This is just too cool.”

B: It was really cool. Everybody needed it.

A: It didn’t last long though, maybe by three songs in everyone was up and dancing again. But it was like that little section of, “Has this ever happened before?” You know what I mean? It was just magical.

S: This year is gonna be really funny because I get to play some of the songs I grew up listening to by Papadosio and I get to play some of the songs on guitar for the first time and I haven’t played in four years. (laughter)

A: Yeah, we’re bringing back some olds ones. Then we got the day and the night set back to back. The day set were trying to focus more on our prog. stuff, like our sing-songy like story-telling songs and as the night comes more of the dance oriented and psychedelic oriented music. We try to take people through the whole gamut in one night of the electric stuff we do.

R: We’re trying to do everything.

A: Also, at the same time we’re not trying to take away from the spotlight of the bands we’re trying to introduce to the people. We could easily do six electric sets during the week, but I feel like it’s almost self-serving to do that kind of thing. There’s so much music out there that people don’t know.

B: I wanna go see some music, too.

R: These are all our close friends and up and coming bands.

A: That was really the whole point of Rootwire. We could get some investment money together and get some big bands and have a guaranteed big show, but we rather try to introduce these new things.

J: With the biggest Rootwire yet, what are your expectations for this blend of music, art, and spirituality?

A: The workrite of Rootwire was to come inspire and be inspired. Once again, if you’re there and you see someone painting a portrait to a show and you haven’t done that before, or you haven’t even seen that maybe, and you see that and you’re like, “Oh, I could do that.” We have what some people may consider shamanistic healer type people; apparently there are some here [at the Big Up]. I have a Cherokee guy coming to build a bunch of teepees just like they have here. I’m really excited to see that kind of aspect come into play because, here, at a festival setting, people feel like they don’t have to be anything, they can just be themselves. So say you felt like you wanted to be part of a meditation, you can do that. You can be free of the day-to-day judgment and get into it and meet people of like-mind and talk to them about that kind of thing. That’s kind of what Rootwire does, same idea. You wanna make art? You don’t have to feel weird about it. You have an opportunity to access other people and have reciprocity with those people.

S: Also, like at Electric Forest, the forest was so sweet. It was awesome, but I feel like at Rootwire, what I would like to see happen, not to pick on Electric Forest, is instead of only being able to look, but not touch, you can just create.

M: Make a sculpture of the stuff you find in the woods. It happened last year. Way out in the very back, I hadn’t even been out there really, maybe once. I think the third day came around and the owner of place was like, “Ya’ll see all them sculptures? Them hippies all made them out in the woods.” I’m like “What you talkin’ bout, Bill?” and we went out there and they had made some crazy stacked rocks and a whole little area. Stuff like that.

A: So we have like five installation artists an installation crew coming. We have the Human Mandala Project which is really cool. One of my friends, Josh, basically climbs up scaffolding and takes pictures of people laying in these geometric forms and things like that. It’s kind of like you’re on the roller coaster and you get your picture taken. It’s progressing forward with all these new artistic outlets that I feel like if people could learn how to not repress those things we could be a healthier people and that’s what we’re trying to do.

J: So how big of a role do you play in planning Rootwire?

A: Last year it was blood, sweat, and tears. We got about five hours of sleep the whole weekend.

M: The whole week, just setting up like crazy, everything.

A: We don’t roll it on a limo and play our set. I camped in my tent, which had a puddle in it.

R: All my friends were there so I camped right in the thick of it, ya know, everyone is keeping you up. Let alone, we didn’t have a lot of volunteers last year, so I was doing the front gate after our set on Saturday.

S: I set up the giant PA.

J: Hard work pays off, right?

M: Absolutely, we figured out how to get volunteers this year, let’s put it that way.

R: It will be a little bit less work, but we’ll probably still end up having to work the gate. (laughter)

S: I’ll be there. That’s what I’m most excited about. Being there and setting it up.

R: It’s so cool to see it come up. Especially the stage.

M: We tried to start it off right last year by making a nice production level just so people can walk away with like, “Whoa, they did it really awesome the first year” and we’ll try to keep that happening every year; making it look really awesome and creating that experience that people take home with them and tell everyone about.

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