In conjunction with the launch of our new festival site, we look back nine years to this feature.

It’s important to own land. Imagine what it must have been like, then, to me Sam McAllister, to wake up one fine Tennessee morning to a phone call from some yahoos down in the Delta in New Orleans saying they wanted to bring rock and roll to your 530 tidy acres of hayfields. Why, you’d had rock and roll before. They called it “Itchycoo Park.” Styx came. So did Mickey Dolenz of The Monkees. And 30,000 people. Or maybe it was 5,000. Nobody had been quite convincing in their estimates. But these fellas – calling themselves “Superfly,” whatever that meant – said they’d have, well, at least 50,000 people. Maybe more. They were convincing, too.

And you’d look out over your land, and try to imagine hat that looked like. Fifty thousand people is the size of a small city. What would they all be doing? These people were different. The Superfly folks were plainspoken about that. They would fly flags and sell grilled cheeses by the tub-full and babble in strange sub-dialects. But they’d camp and dance and smoke grass all the same, just as kids have been doing for decades. It was going to be called “Bonnaroo.” Itchycoo? Bonnaroo? Whatever. As long as they came. Yes, it’s important to own land, you’d again be sure of that.

Tent City prospered in 2001. All across the country, each summer, the roving metropolis had been established in fields, as kids fluttered like moths around the massive towers of light and sound and energy. In the east, it found form in the Gathering of the Vibes and Berkfest, in the Midwest at Hookahville, in the west at High Sierra and Mountain Aire. Ken Hays, the entrepreneurial Dead-head founder of Terrapin Tapes, who – beginning with 1996’s Deadhead Heaven – boot-strapped himself into a successful gig as a festival promoter, had seen 15,000bodies at his Gathering of the Vibes, had practically willed them out of the ether to dance. It was amazing, no doubt, but the boys at Superfly Presents thought there could be something more. “Those other events are really cool, small, more regional type things,” says co-founder Rick Farman, swiftly sweeping the once seemingly monumental crowds into a smaller box. “None of those events really brought the critical mass of talent together of all the bands that were either in, or somewhat related to, this scene. We wanted to make a big, national thing.”

That scene – call ‘em jamband kids, call ‘em Phishheads, call ‘em whatever – had been passing through New Orleans with regularity since 1996, when Phish played Jazzfest and initiated a hippie insurrection in the Crescent City. By the beginning of the next year, four college buddies – Farman, Jonathan Mayers, Kerry Black and Richard Goodstone – had begun booking shows under the moniker Superfly Presents, often centered around local favorites Galactic. By late 1998, they were promoting “Super-jams” – fresh configurations of funk and improve players. In 2000, they created Oysterhead, an all-star outfit consisting of Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio, Primus bassist Les Claypool and former Police drummer Stewart Copeland.

In between, they worked with a startlingly diverse roster of talent, ranging from indie darlings Modest Mouse to jazz legend McCoy Tyner to metal-rappers Insane Clown Posse. With contacts in place – finding a partner in the Nashville-based A.C. Entertainment, and whizbang financing from Dave Matthews Band manager and MusicToday.com mogul Coran Capshaw – the quartet announced Bonnaroo.

And, sure enough, in June 2002, some 70,000 kids roadtripped from all corners of the country to erect the grandest, sprawlingest, most fantabulous Tent City since the Phish festivals of yore. Lo, Bonnaroo was deemed a healthy babe. By autumn, souvenir live albums and DVDs had been pumped out and Superfly’s planning was well under way for the summer of 2003. There were others planning festivals, too. Ken Hays, for one. An unlucky man named Jeffery Hobgood, for another.

The summer of 2003 blossomed promisingly. Ne national festivals were announced (notably 10,000 Lakes in Michigan and Hobstock in Mississippi), and old promoters attempted to up their own ante (Hayes announced four Terrapin Presents events, including one, Summit on the Sound, which would unveil the pairing of Dead bassist Phil Lesh with fusion guitarist John Scofield and saxophonist Branford Marsalis). Superfly, meanwhile would creep northwards, with Bonnaroo NE, to be held in Riverhead, New York, near the tip of Long Island, with Dave Matthews, Bob Dylan and dozens of others.

Field Day, a mammoth camping event to be co-headlined by Beck and Radiohead, set for early June, and held at the same site as Bonnaroo NE, derailed first, when promoters were denied key permits they thought they had secured. Fingers were pointed at corporate concert giant Clear Channel, who many alleged used its hulking leverage to prevent the upstarts from cutting in on their business at Wantagh’s Jones Beach Amphitheatre.

“I think there was a political situation up there that just got stirred up by these festivals,” Farman sighs. "It made the environment in which to do one of these things really negative. From our perspective, we just felt like if we weren’t 100% sure that we could pull it off successfully and with the cooperation of the community, then we don’t want to put ourselves, the bands and the patrons into a situation that was potentially going to be difficult. Barely returned from Bonnaroo II, which had drawn 10,000 more than the previous year, the plug was pulled on Bonnaroo NE.

Down the Long Island Sound and up the Hudson River, Ken Hays wasn’t having much better luck. After the eighth annual Gathering of the Vibes – an eternity in Tent City years – Mother Nature took over. “The Summit on the Hudson [festival] was devastating for us,” Hays admits. "It rained two-and-a-half inches and a flood watch was in effect. We had gusty winds in the 40 mile-an-hour range. It was terrible weather in a beautiful location.

“Then we had two other festivals – Bridgeport Blues Festival at Seaside Park, and also Summit on the Sound – that were scheduled for later in the summer. We had to cancel those two festivals. Ticket sales were poor. We chose the wrong year to try to expand. We made some bad mistakes last summer, and we’re paying the consequences of them now. We’re still trying to move forward and bring music together and bring people together for great times.”

And in Carroll County, Mississippi, Hobstock, the brainchild of Jeffrey Hobgood and slated for mid-July, veritably incinerated under the Southern sun. Like Bonnaroo, Hobgood had assembled some of the jamband scene’s heaviest hitters: Widespread Panic, Medeski Martin and Wood, moe., Gov’t Mule and The Disco Biscuits. Hobstock, however, lacked the sheer eclecticism of Bonnaroo, whose bill also included hip-hop collective The Roots, guitar legend Neil Young, Okie-art-freaks-of-the-moment The Flaming Lips and dozens of others.

In mid-May, Hobstock began to disappear from the band’s posted itineraries. Hobgood told The Daily Mississippian that, by early June, he had only sold between 2,000 and 3,000 tickets. Then he went AWOL. Or something. In early August, Mississippi state Attorney General Mike Moore announced he was filing litigation against Hobgood for failing to provide refunds for tickets he did sell. As of January, litigation was still pending. “Some individuals have received refunds, but only those who were able to obtain charge-backs from their credit card companies,” said Special Assistant Attorney General Bridgette Williams. Hobgood’s attorney did not return a phone call as of press time.

“It’s very easy to look at Bonnaroo and say ‘That’s a good idea, let’s do that,” says Disco Biscuits’ bassist Mark Brownstein, who was scheduled to play Hobstock. ‘But what’s hard is to look at nothing and say ‘Let’s Do Bonnaroo.’ Bonnaroo made $12 or $13 million dollars [in 2002]. A lot of people thought, ‘Wow, that’s easy money, I could do that. Let me get Widespread Panic and The Disco Biscuits and moe. and Gov’t Mule.’"
“You didn’t need to have hindsight to see that last summer was going to knock a lot of promoters out of the game.People were getting greedy and setting themselves up for failures. It was a really tough summer for promoters.” It is still not entirely clear why Hobstock failed, though blaming the booking of the wrong bands during the wrong summer might be a start.

Was Bonnaroo the rock and roll Death Star that set its destructo beams on smaller fests? Maybe so and maybe not. “Last summer, there absolutely was oversaturation,” Ken Hays says. Combined with a sluggish economy, the best (and less-than-best)-laid plans evaporated in the worst way, amidst trails of litigation, cancelled permits and frustrated would-be revelers, trying to find a field in which to experience the Great Unlock.

Tent city is wherever the Heads go. It is a destination, and it can take shape in a pasture in Tennessee, a hotel in Albany, or a street in New Orleans. It is a place that one can escape to with increasing regularity. There are big events seasonally: at Jazz fest in April, Bonnaroo in June, major Halloween gigs in October and the requisite New Year’s blow-outs in December. And that’s not to mention a coterie of other magnet-like attractions: String Cheese Incident’s annual mid-winter ski bum pilgrimages, Phish’s legendary summer outings and the like, plus various bands’ forays to Las Vegas and Europe and other exotic locales.

What it all adds up to is a new sub-industry: jamband tourism. It’s become an outright circuit, replete with its own house band, Particle, who have carved a nook for themselves riding on the ever-widening side-flaps of Tent City, priding themselves in playing after-Phish parties and last-band-standing late-night sets at festivals. If there was a slump in summer festivals, it’s possible that the capital was simply spreading elsewhere.

This is one explanation: the scene has spread far and wide. The irony of this explanation, though, is that – given both geographical breadth and free-market chaos – is is nigh impossible to verify that that interest is only spreading and not merely dissipating. Mounds of evidence can be piled high for either argument.

Pessimists might point to half-empty concert fields or the fact that that shows by even the biggest bands, such as Phish and The Dead haven’t been selling out in the same frenzied rushes they once did. “The bubble had to burst some time,” they’d say, shaking their heads. “Couldn’t expand forever.” They might even argue that, given an overbooked circuit, the quality of of the music itself is declining – too many blues-rock bands masquerading as experimental, too many older musicians bolstering new albums by hiring the freshest guns and hitting the summer circuit as “legends” trying to win over the kids, too many hippie funk bands with lame-o names finally sinking into an indistinguishably grooving mass. But it’s hard to prove the absence of something, talent or revenue. Just ask the record industry.

The optimists – generally the ones benefiting from the situation and pleased as punch too produce pie charts to prove it – can happily point to evidence, though, such as the currently thriving existence of Madison House Travel, a full-service travel agency founded by Lisa Pomerantz and un under String Cheese Incident’s vast organizational umbrella. Pomerantz, who frequently traveled to see music, filled a niche she saw.

Madison House offers packages to fans, such as “the Swiss Cheese Incident,” which “combines four days of skiing in the magnificent Jungfrau region of Interlaken, Swizerland with two full-blown shows. No worries if you don’t ski…relax and enjoy all that the Swiss Alps offer.” Indeed. If you like String Cheese Incident its mighty appealing, and with Madison House booking ski rentals, rooms and airfare at the click of a mouse, it’s all breathtakingly simple, Madison House also books customized yours for fans.

While festivals struggle, Madison House flourishes. If, as the platitude goes, it’s about the journey and not the destination, then Madison House is happy to capitalize. “In the age of travel agencies closing left and right, we’ve been having trouble managing our growth, which is such a lucky position to be in,” says Pomerantz, astonished. “Our trouble has been finding employees!”

In January, Madison House offered an unprecedented destination: Jam Cruise, a pair of four-day voyages from Fort Lauderdale to the pearly sands of the Bahamas and Key West. “Its sort of hard to put into words what happened on that boat,” Brownstein exults, who played four sets with his band, in between soaking up the sun. “The idea of having a festival going on in international waters… it’s beyond anything I could possibly imagine.”

Brownstein can imagine quite a bit As an acknowledgement of the implicit tourism among jambands, The Disco Biscuits have increasingly taken to naming their concerts: Bisco Inferno, Bisco Knights, The Tussey 500, The Banana Ball. “We’ve found that its been extremely helpful to brand events and to make something bigger out of these particular nights. When we do these events, these destination shows, we’ll hire DJs, hire other bands, have something else going on that’s maybe a visual thing. We make many mini-festivals, essentially.”

The last of these events, at which the band simply decked themselves in yellow and ordered six tons of bananas for the occasion, received mixed reviews. “Some people thought it was great, some people thought it was dumb. But it was something,” Brownstein asserts. “Believe it or not, something as silly as The Banana Ball drew nearly twice as many people as we had drawn into that theater the previous time we had played there on that particular night of the week.”

Annabel Lukins, an organizer of Jam Cruise, compares jamband fans’ journeys to travelers moving towards Mecca. If that holds, then it is a Mecca that must be collectively urged into existence. All of the parts must align, and the mirage given body via the massed power of dreaming and money and wanting. If a festival fails for lack of ticket sales, the point of collapse is a peculiar one: the failure of the communal spirit. For whatever reason, Bonnaroo captured the imagination. Hobstock didn’t.

Travel has long been one o the key factors in the Rubik’s Cube of the jamband scene, one element in an endless twist towards the right combination that will unlock the elusive magic. Traveling to Switzerland to see the String Cheese Incident could be fun, but it could be a right drag. Shouldering through a half-mile of sweaty bodies to catch a distant glimpse of a bassist’s bobbing head isn’t fun for everyone. Often, the less factors involved, the greater the joy.

Ken Hays thinks so. For the ninth Gathering of the Vibes, he strives for intimacy. “We’ve been working over the past couple years the bring that back to the forefront.” Compared to Bonnaroo, the Gathering and many smaller, band-centered festivals – such as moe.‘s moe.down and Max Creek’s Camp Creek – are lovely picnics in the woods.

Is calling it “intimacy” just a way to make good of a bad situation? In Rob Reiner’s classic metal mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap, band manager Ian Faith is asked if the fact that Tap is booked into smaller halls then their last tour means that interest is dwindling. “No, no,” he insists. "Their appeal is just becoming more selective. "

But maybe that explanation isn’t all bullshit. Ekoostik hookah, for example, were but a blip on the sidestage at Bonnarroo ‘03, as they remain in most of the country. But in their native Ohio, however, they are Mecca. Their twice-annual, ten-year running Hookahville regularly draws between 6,000 and 12,000 fans, and claims as its motto “no hassles or bad attitudes.” While it may be laidback hot air, it’s at least common sense, and a friendly acknowledgement that bigger isn’t always better.

“I think it’s great,” hookah keyboardist Dave Katz shrugs when asked what he thinks of Bonnaroo. “Hey, what’re you gonna do when it’s the biggest and the best?” he says, sounding as if he genuinely doesn’t care if Bonnaroo draws people away from his own band’s events.

Hookah has come full circle, too, from a party at Katz’s house, to events at the Buckeye Lake Amphitheatre, and back to their own relative backyard. The band is going into the second year of a five-year lease on the Frontier Ranch, their new home in Kirkersville, Ohio, 20 miles from Columbus. “Hopefully, there’ll be an option to buy sometime in the future,” Katz says, and so Tent City may start to lay down its stakes.

After all, it’s important to own land. It’s one thing to lease it out. It’s entirely another to work it yourself. Perhaps you can imagine what it must be like to wake to a call from a big-shot rock promoter. But imagine, then, if you didn’t get that call. Why, you could sit back on your porch that night and look up at the stars and contemplate the universe and whatnot.

Maybe, you might ponder, everybody is right – that the scene is simultaneously expanding and contracting. Perhaps there are less people going to see more bands. But you might look out on your fine lush grass and do some simple calculations: if your band had 500 fans, and those 500 fans went to a barbecue, why, right here, and had a magical time, well, what would be wrong with that? No packing supplies to brave 15 hours of traffic, no holding your nose and scrunching your eyes in war zone port-o-lets.

“Who cares what they’re doing in Tennessee?” you might even philosophize to no one in particular. You’d sit back and look at the lawn – from grassroots to “grassroots” and back again – just a nation of kids hanging out and making music. Magic is magic right, right? That’s the hippie way.