It’s easy to dismiss smaller festivals, however I like to call Music on the Mothership (or MOM, abbreviated) near the alpine peaks of Taos, NM “the little festival that could.” Though the crowd appeared to have doubled in size from last year, it was still very manageable, and the lineup consistently blew my mind with their musical proficiency and transcendental interplay.
Many of the concert-goers and band members I spoke with found the “smallness” of the festival one of its key selling points. The vibe is intimate and friendly when compared to other festivals. The beer, at host brewery Taos Mesa, passes muster. Outside the venue a sprawl of service trucks and tents had grown into the campground since last year, offering late night / early morning food options, handmade clothing for the discerning tripper, even a mobile salon. Again this year, I chose the onsite camping option which, as it happens, I have mixed feelings about. The wind was nearly severe when I arrived and it took about an hour to pitch and anchor the weekend’s tent. It would not survive, but more on that later.
The first band I heard upon entering the amphitheater was Rising Appalachia, a welcome return from last year’s festival. This San Francisco combo sports exotic instruments and is well on their way to building a legion of fans. If the genre doesn’t already exist I will now create it in order to crown them as rulers, of “yoga folk.”
Tea Leaf Green, also from the bay area, was up next on the indoor stage. Looking at the lineup, this year’s MOM seemed to skew more toward jambands, which totally worked for me. TLG hasn’t released a new album since 2013’s In the Wake. While 5 years is not the longest gap between releases for a jamband, the exit of bass player Reed Mathis may have slowed them down a bit. They still boil over with delightful, warm, jaunty jams, but something seemed to be missing.
MOM has alternating stages – some outdoor, some indoor – so the music never really has to stop, as long as everyone shows up on time and the weather cooperates. There was a 37,000-acre fire blazing about 50 miles away, which made it difficult to arrive when you wanted to, if you came from the wrong direction. But for the first couple of days, problems were minimal, if you ignore the fact that the wind tore the rain cover away from the main stage on day one. Staff would spend all day Saturday mending the gigantic swatch of fabric.
The 11-piece wall of sound from Brooklyn known as Antibalas, still going strong after 20 years, closed out the big stage for the night, ripping through a solid set of positive, danceable, conscious Afrobeat music. Their hype-man knows how to work a crowd, and had us eating out of his hands: call-and-response, inviting dancers from the audience onstage, guest musicians, etc. Veering through different musical passages (some rather lengthy) and genres (funk, jazz, Cuban), and always with clockwork precision, even when going full-tilt polyrythmic, this was the band I had come to see, and I’m so glad I did. One of the lines from a song struck me enough to write it down: “Truth is golden and it shines forever.”
Having satisfied the boogie-monster inside me after a normal Fridays’ work and the promise of 2 more days of jam-packed bliss ahead, I retired to the tent and crashed. I’m sure the addition of an enormous, yurt-like tent to the campground within which music could continue into the wee hours seemed like a good idea at the time it was presented, in theory. In reality, since all the late-night acts were DJs fond of regularly dropping phat beats at bone-rattling volume, it was difficult to actually sleep through. The walls of my tent were thin, yes, and I should have brought earplugs. Ask anyone who knows, they’ll tell you I’m normally a championship sleeper. I was awakened by thunderous bass notes almost beyond the reach of human hearing throughout the night. The lighter sleepers among us (read: everybody) probably didn’t sleep at all. Another encounter which sparked the thought in my mind: maybe tent camping here wasn’t such a good idea. Lots of people camped in RVs – either ones they had brought with them, or at the permanent trailer hotel Luna Mystica, adjacent to the venue. They probably slept. The DJs finally stopped as the sun came up, and I finally managed to sleep a good stretch.
Early in the day on Saturday, probably a bit bleary-eyed and haggard, but feeling relatively good, I met a band called Moves Collective from Ocean Beach, CA. They were scheduled to play “late night” under the “Bedouin” tent in the campground, for so it was dubbed. I was overly happy to hear the organizers had decided to nix further late night DJing in favor of live bands, Although, they’re not necessarily any quieter, I thought. When late night Saturday came around, and I could no longer stand (due to fatigue, not intoxicants), I went to the tent, which still managed to stand against the seemingly incessant wind. I really wanted to stay up but, as it happens, I did hear parts of Moves Collective’s set on occasion, when awoken, and they sounded fantastic. If only I wasn’t getting to be such an old man, I thought to myself, I’d put on clothes and make my way down there. This was to be the last night anyone ever slept in this particular tent.
Early in the lineup on Saturday was one of those bands I hadn’t heard of yet, but whose reputation with other musicians seemed to precede them. While setting up an interview with Tim Carbone of Railroad Earth — who was due to take the stage about sundown — our conversation was cut short when Tim hard-cranked his ears toward the stage and proclaimed, “Gotta catch me some Shooks!” The Shook Twins’ sound is immediately arresting: reverby, surfy, David Lynchian. One of my favorite things about festivals is getting turned on to bands I didn’t know I liked yet. Absolutely haunting vocals. Bad dirt folk.
I missed the opportunity to have a conversation with Tim at last year’s festival, and I vowed not to make that mistake again. So, at the expense of seeing more awesome music, I lurked, awaiting an opportunity to speak with him backstage. He was getting a massage. When I was able to catch his attention, we snuck out of the green room where it was quieter. The main question I wanted to ask was “What’s your advice to up-and-coming jambanders?” His response was classic and brief: “Find your own sound and stop copying the Grateful Dead.”
I laughed silently to myself when I realized what followed onstage: Joe Craven & the Sometimers playing wicked reinventions Grateful Dead songs. Joe was once a member of the David Grisman Quintet and had the opportunity to jam with the late, great Jerry Garcia on a number of occasions. His new album is a collection called Garcia Songbook and the familiar refrains are couched in radical re-workings of structure and melody. I was curious where the band’s name “The Sometimers” came from, so I asked Joe afterwards. With a mischievous glimmer in his eyes, he replied, “I just thought it sounded funny.” I got the impression he was the sort of guy who often displayed that glimmer.
I bumped into Cheese, badass drummer for Albuquerque jamband, Pherkad. He told me they were due to take the stage tomorrow, “…with an additional guitarist joining us. His name is John.” A short time later, I made friends with a nice couple backstage. They introduced themselves as Katy and John. They looked like your average festivarians, ready to get their groove on. John was wearing an especially groovy tie-dyed t-shirt. After a few tokes and an exchange of jamband philosophy (“the music goes where the music wants to go, because it’s music”), the name Kadlecik entered the conversation. I stopped, taking a moment to put two and two together. Holy smoke! I was talking to Dark Star Orchestra founder John Kadlecik. “I’m a musician-in-residence here this weekend. Sitting in with Melvin [Seals of JGB] tomorrow,” he said. Sparks went off in my brain. I asked, “Are you playing with Pherkad tomorrow as well?” He was. Oh my God, when Cheese said it was a guy named John sitting in with them, I never dreamed it would be Furthur guitarist John Kadlecik.
Railroad Earth took the big stage next. Though they hail from New Jersey many think of them as a Colorado band – possibly because they sound like a Colorado band (acoustic, jammy, earthy, no pun intended), or maybe just because they play there a lot. They were another return to the festival from last year, but it sounded like they’d acquired a new bass player who really filled out their sound. The deep bass countered their normal high-pitched strains and solidified things nicely. I couldn’t tell if the olde-timey / circus-dressed folks on stilts were employees of Railroad Earth, Inc., or just wildly enthusiastic (and athletic) fans of the band. Either way, they definitely made themselves part of the show.
Closing out Saturday on the big stage was one of my favorite bands: Infamous Stringdusters. They swapped time slots with Railroad Earth, but I didn’t get the chance to ask if their delay had anything to do with the fire detour. Delayed or not, they mustered up all their collective powers and tore through an elemental set. If a string band can shred, these guys are that band. Astute lovers of live music noticed a couple of Grateful Dead song teases and a Phish “First Tube” tease in-between the Stringdusters’ soaring originals. A couple of times banjo player Chris Pandolfi felt the urge to tell New Mexico how much they love playing for us. Normally bands will say that just to get the crowd hyped, but he seemed genuinely sincere. The New Mexico crowd obviously loved them right back. I’m surprised the energy generated in that biofeedback loop didn’t cause a storm to form above us. Or did it?
I awoke in the tent on Sunday morning, not to the New Mexico sun beating down on me, but to dark storm clouds and an amped up version of the wind which had plagued us all weekend. Thinking it wise to put the rainfly on before I began the morning ablutions, I got to it and realized this version of the wind was really several orders of magnitude greater than what I had arrived in. Nearby campers all seemed to be dismantling their setups. Surely, they’re not all bailing on day 3 just because it might rain? Or to get back in time for work on Monday? I stood there for what must have been a long time, evaluating what kind of damage my tent might incur if I left it up in this wind. _ It’s managed to withstand 2 days already, seems pretty solid. And it did take forever to nail it down in the first place._ One of the campers next to me asks, “Are you going to take your gear down too?” So, they were probably all taking their camps down and stowing them safely before the storm ripped them into a million pieces. I had seen tents go sailing a time or two already. Feeling like my luck had held so far, I decided to throw my cooler into the tent before I headed back to the festival. Surely, that will keep it anchored, despite the howling wind.
The storm clouds circled the mesa for hours, threatening to unleash nature’s drenching wrath upon us for having so much fun. Indoor bands were bumped so that outdoor bands at least had a stage to play on. The morning was devoted to Joe Craven and the Sometimers conducting an improvisational workshop. Presuming we’d seen their masterful feats the day before, Joe started talking about reworking songs in unusual ways. Unlike some teachers though, Joe and the band were actually able to demonstrate what they were teaching, how to improvise, extrapolate and make the songs your own, even if they aren’t. I’m still ruminating over something Joe said about “correctness vs. clarity,” and maybe that was the whole crux of the matter for him. It seemed he could have well carried on indefinitely, but the day of outdoor bands playing inside was about to begin.
Pherkad came on, with special guest John Kadlecik, and he readily demonstrated his supernatural ability to fit in wherever the music wanted him to. This band gets better every time I see them, and having Kadlecik in the mix certainly didn’t hurt.
We spent much of day 3 inside the brewery, occasionally glancing over our collective shoulder to see what the storm was doing. The venue had replaced the newly-mended rain cover above the stage, but would it survive another bout with New Mexico wind?
Also playing on Sunday, inside rather than outside, was a band I hadn’t heard from in a while: Assembly of Dust. Now, in the way-out-west, things are more spread out. As a result, we don’t have the vibrant jamband circuit you enjoy in the northeast. This was the first time I’d had the opportunity to see them live, though I’d enjoyed many of their recordings over the years. This band was formed from the ashes of another band I liked, called Strangefolk, and is still led by Strangefolk’s Reid Genauer, though some of the members have changed. Wikipedia tells me they’ve got the very talented Jason Crosby with them now. While their songs come off as appealing down-to-earth folk rock in the studio, live is another story; each song bloomed into a full-fledged pleasure garden. It was like having my ears dipped in honey.
Word came down that they had decided to set up Melvin Seals and JGB in the so-called Bedouin tent out in the campground. I finally get to experience the after-hours tent, albeit before-hours and during a storm of biblical proportions. How they managed to cram all that gear and those people into that tent, I can only presume some wizarding intervention. Melvin seemed to have difficulty with the Hammond they had provided in the tent, but the rest of the band, including guest John Kadlecik, began the show as they probably often would, with “Cats Under the Stars,” followed by “Lay Down Sally.” We were so psyched that Melvin actually got to play despite the raging storm, we didn’t notice he was having difficulty with the instrument until he stopped the show and requested an organ transplant. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried wrestling a Hammond B-3 off one stage, through a campground and into an enormous, yurt-like tent, but it didn’t look easy, even if it had been good weather, which it wasn’t. The remainder of the show proceeded smoothly and Melvin smiled as he got the train back on track.
The sun was about to set, and I couldn’t handle the stress of keeping my tent worries at bay, so I hiked back to my camp to see what damage, if any, had been done. After all it had withstood the weather all weekend, and I was half convinced nothing would be wrong. As I approached and couldn’t see the tent, my heart sank. The wind had managed to rip it loose from its moorings and apparently snapped a couple of poles but, because I had the prescience to put the cooler in it, at least it was still flapping in the vicinity in which it was left. Flattened and muddy, but still generally there. I balled it up, giving myself a nice mud bath in the process, and stuffed it in the back of the car. Well, it’s either sleep in the car tonight, or head back to Santa Fe after moe.. I wonder if moe. is still going to play, or if the storm has kept them away? Aside from Antibalas, moe. was the band I was most excited about this weekend. They hadn’t played New Mexico in a long time and I would have been crushed if they had to cancel due to weather.
Trudging back to the venue, the sunset showed the clouds finally beginning to clear. Maybe they still have those yummy molé tacos for sale on the patio. I need to get something in me before I pass out. For those who don’t know, moe. recently went on a hiatus while bass player Rob Derhak dealt with “The Big C.” When they first took the stage, I worried that they were too rusty from the break. But, more likely, they were just trying to adjust their hands and their instruments to the chilly wind which still ripped through our bones. It wasn’t long before they righted themselves and roared through a setlist like no other. Guests from bands which were possibly bumped earlier sat in and played acoustic instruments louder and faster than they’d ever dared play them before. There was even an absolutely mad vibes solo. I breathed a sigh of relief and started taking notes. Moe. still shredded and all was right with the world.
My tent may not have survived, but I did, filled to the brim with the kind of satisfied happiness that only the right kind of music can bring. Driving back to Santa Fe, I found myself looking forward to a long summer of great live music. I will return to this venue and to this festival, though I’m seriously contemplating whether I can afford a solid camper to do it in next time.
