Golden West

The first details have come out about the new environmentally themed Gaia Festival, which will debut August 5-7, 2011, at Black Oak Ranch near Laytonville CA in northern Mendocino County. The festival announcement lists world-class music as one of its facets, but it is also about sustainable living, social and environmental activism, alternative energy, healing arts, theater and more.

The event is being organized by Back Roads Productions, the outfit that produces the Kate Wolf Memorial Music Festival on the same site every June. Another festival with an environmental theme, Earthdance, has also run on the site each September but will be moving after this year's event September 17-19.

It had been said that Earthdance was relocating because it had outgrown the site. However, Gaia has the potential to draw as many or more attendees as Earthdance, especially once it becomes well established after a couple of years.

For two big city rock festivals entering their third year in business and still seeking a sustainable business model, 2010 was a time to tinker with the formula. Outside Lands in San Francisco cut back from three days to two. Mile High outside Denver programmed for a slightly older audience.

And they both moved their dates, Mile High pushing back by a month and Outside Lands moving ahead by two weeks —and both landing on the same weekend of August 14-15.

The festivals also share a fairly similar musical formula, mixing jam and alternative rock with a sprinkling of folk, blues, and world genres. Six acts—Amos Lee, Bassnectar, Damian Marley & Nas, Mayer Hawthorne & The Country, My Morning Jacket, and Phoenix— are booked at both festivals, playing Saturday in one city and Sunday in the other.

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For me, Steve Earle provided the anchor for the festival weekend, mixing in new and old songs and connecting with the audience about his personal life and political views.

Unlike at some other festivals where his outspokenness isn’t universally appreciated, he held the generally lefty Kate Wolf crowd in the palm of his hand from his opening nod to left-wing heroes in “Christmas in Washington,” to his anti-war and pro-immigtation songs to his support for the rebirth of New Orleans.

But he was also intensely personal when he speaking of his family life with wife Allison Moorer and their new baby, John Henry Earle. He performed a song from way back, “Goodnight Little Rock and Roller,” written for his first son Justin Townes Earle, now a successful singer-songwriter in his own right. He admitted his failings as a father and husband in his earlier marriages but claims to be a changed man today.

Fifteen years is a long time in festival years. But for the Kate Wolf Memorial Music Festival, held the last weekend in June on Black Oak Ranch in Laytonville CA, you get the idea that they are just warming up.

If there was an overall theme to the 2010 Kate Wolf Memorial Music Festival, maybe it had to do with gracefully aging. John McCutcheon, known in part for his children’s songs, says he is now writing about grandparenting. Stacey Earle contributed her wistful mother’s perspective. Stevie Coyle summed it up in his song about geezer rock: “The only rockin’ I’m doing is in this here chair,” he sang.

The sentiment applied equally to an audience segment that is graying, but that is also supplemented by a strong youth infusion. That’s why I say gracefully. Old hands continue to turn out in large numbers to camp in the field or along the river. The low chairs are getting harder to get out of, but what the hell? The experience of this festival is so fine that I heard precious little complaining about the heat or any other hardships from the old-timers.

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