LIVE: 2013 Equifunk Recap - Part 1
About halfway through Equifunk 2013, we came to the conclusion that it looks less a music festival and more like a commune. Every year in mid-August, about 1,300 people gather at Camp Equinunk in the beautiful wooded hills of northwest Pennsylvania. Some stay in the bunks, others in tents, others (including some of the performers) don’t sleep at all. There is constant music — and even on those rare occasions when there’s not music coming from the stages, it’s coming from the bunks, either out of speakers or a couple of folks with an acoustic guitar. There’s always someone to chat with, to the point that by the second day you feel as if you’ve met everyone. And, because the festival is all-inclusive (and we can’t overemphasize what an ingenious idea that is), there is always something to drink or eat. For a music fan, it’s as close as you’re going to get to paradise.
To be sure, the music is why most people attend, and this year the music was nothing short of incredible. Soulive with the Shady Horns and the legendary Maceo Parker headlined Saturday night, while John Medeski (Medeski, Martin, and Wood), Stanton Moore and Robert Mercurio (Galactic), Maceo Parker, Papa Mali, and Marco Benevento came together as the M&Ms for an extended set to headline Sunday night.
Yes, those were the headliners, and yes, they need to be mentioned with no small amount of exaltation. But so much more goes on at Equifunk than one band playing after another, culminating in a headliner; this is no ordinary festival (and not just because of the all-inclusive angle). The bands play with each other, mingle with the crowd, and, as you’ll see, occasionally combine the two and play with the crowd. While the big names and the incredible performances they delivered deserve reviews all their own, here are ten highlights – five today and five tomorrow - from a festival that continues to blow our doors off days after returning to civilization
More Stages = More Music
There’s never been a shortage of music at Equifunk, and with the addition of the new Sunday series (the festival used to end late Saturday night), there was already going to be more. Not content to stop there, festival organizers added another stage near a pool at another nearby camp. This made four stages total; the smaller “teepee stage,” the two pool stages, and the E-Rena stage, set up in the camp’s covered roller hockey rink.
While the two pool stages were about a ten-minute walk from each other, this addition meant that there was never a lack of music at the festival; it was invigorating to walk over the pedestrian bridge to the adjoining camp and hear amazing music coming from the woods and over the lake. Two bands stood out on the “other” pool stage: Broverdose, from Binghamton, plays a fun brand of psychedelic indie-pop and have musical talent that belies their fun, frat-boy personas. Highlights included a cover of Ween’s “Roses Are Free,” and a great story about drummer Brendan Dunn’s attempt to sleep outside the previous night. Also out of upstate New York, Mr. Breakdown played a soulful mix of funk, reggae, and rock that rocked the small pool stage. Those that stuck to the Equinunk side of camp missed out on some great music.
Local Boy Makes Good
Best known for his work with the Trey Anastasio Band and Lettuce, PG County native James Casey and his sax seemed to be omnipresent at the festival; every time you turned around he was jumping up on stage to jam with someone, whether it was the flat-out funk of the New Mastersounds, the Heavy Pets (on their funktastic jam “Help Me Help You”), or Nigel Hall, or with the impromptu super group Equifunk All-Stars (more on that below), Casey’s next-level horn playing was a constant source of excitement throughout the festival. You can see his chops for yourself when Lettuce rolls into the 9:30 Club on September 20.
The highlight for Casey himself, however, was being recognized by one of his idols. At one point he introduced himself to Maceo Parker, who said “oh yeah, I’ve heard of you.” “My mind exploded,” Casey told us. “You can’t tell me anything today, Maceo’s heard of me.”
“Who is that kid?”
There are always quite a few little ones running around at Equifunk, young folks with parents who want to introduce their kids to great music in a fun atmosphere. It’s rare, however, for a kid to jump up onstage, pick up a strange looking but incredible sounding hybrid of a guitar, and start tearing the place up with mind-blowing blues riffs. Yet it happened twice as 14 year-old Bobby Paltauf played his own set on Friday afternoon, then joined Papa Mali for a wonderfully dirty set of blues gospel on Sunday morning. (Mali referred to it as music for “our lady of the church of the morning after.”) Equifunk has musical prodigies of every stripe all over the camp for the entire weekend, but young Bobby Paltauf still managed to stand out.
Wake Up Sets
Playing an early morning set when you know most festival attendees have been up until the wee hours the night before is not an enviable task. Equifunk probably couldn’t have filled the leadoff roles better than with I’ll Be John Brown (Saturday) and the Frank Stalloners (Sunday). “I wish I could say we’re gonna bring it in easy,” said IBJB’s Jason Gambrell Saturday morning, “but we’re not gonna do that.” And no, they didn’t, ripping a gloriously fun, shitkicking set (despite bassist Jason Holt’s repeated pleas for someone in the audience to bring him beer – it was finally delivered in a plastic water bottle about halfway through the set). The band deftly mixed classic rock-infused alt country originals such as “Wrong” from their new EP of the same name, with great covers, including Crosby, Stills & Nash’s “Woodstock” and Tom Petty’s “Nightwatchman.”
The Frank Stalloners kicked off Sunday morning at about beer o’clock as vocalist Dan Phillips and his crew (including IBJB keyboardist Shoheen Owhady) sipped Modelo and woke the crowd up with their rowdy brand of blues. Phillips looks and sounds increasingly like Joe Cocker as he utilizes his gravelly voice and flails about like a madman. Covers of tunes like Hendrix’s “Crosstown Traffic” and the Dead’s “Mr. Charlie” were mixed with hilarious originals like “Hookers and Coke.” Both bands succeeded magnificently in rallying the crowds for another day of music.
Collaborations
It was the rare band at Equifunk that didn’t invite other bands to join them on stage for a song or two. Some of these collaborations – such as the M&Ms – were planned; others were totally (and wonderfully) spontaneous. Nigel Hall frequently sat in with other bands and added his incomparable singing voice to many a song. Even Maceo Parker himself found time to sit in with a few bands that probably weren’t on his original itinerary.
Straight up get down
Perhaps the highlight of all these collaborations came in the form of the Equifunk All Stars, a group of unparalleled musicians who had played the festival in the past. The group was supposed to consist of New Mastersounds’ Eddie Roberts (guitar) and Pete Shands (bass), Nigel Hall (keys), and Stanton Moore (drums) — an incredible enough unit on its own — but Mike Dillon and Joe Tatton joined in (on percussion and keys, respectively) leaving Simon Allen, that the only member of New Mastersounds NOT sitting in to watch enthusiastically from the crowd (and he was perhaps the most enthusiastic person there.) THEN the group added trombonist Carly Meyers from Mike Dillon’s band and guitarist Tash Neal from the London Souls. It was an unreal, once-in-a-lifetime gathering of magnificent talent, and they didn’t disappoint.
For that matter, no act disappointed at Equifunk – there wasn’t a weak link in the bunch, no band that made us say meh, I could have lived without that. Indeed, the music seemed to get better as the weekend went on. Tomorrow, we’ll tell you about five more of our favorite moments, including the seven-hour performance that kept us up all night.