Mike Gordon and Marco Benevento Welcome Sam Cohen, Karina Rykman, Dave Dreiwitz And More at Follow the Arrow Festival
On Saturday, June 29, Marco Benevento brought the return of his widely acclaimed Follow the Arrow Festival, which annually calls a litany of jam figureheads to upstate New York for a celebration of the scene’s music and culture. Staging at a new venue of Woodstock, N.Y.’s Bearsville Theater, the third annual Arrow festival kept the tradition thriving with a vast array of thrills and surprises, adorning an already top-tier lineup with some incredible special guests.
To kick off this year’s program, Benevento took the stage with his Benevento Family Band, banding together alongside his relatives for warm-hearted outset to the day’s festivities. The show went on with a helping of genre-bending psychedelic-soul from the expansive Ghost Funk Orchestra and a rare U.S. set from longtime Zam-rock innovators W.I.T.C.H., who primed the stage for Marco’s return.
In his stirring solo set, the festival founder welcomed the first surprise sit-ins of the evening. For a cover of Donovan’s “Hurdy Gurdy Man,” Benevento called on Joe Russo’s Almost Dead bandmate Dave Dreiwitz and Apollo Sunshine’s Sam Cohen, with whom the artist collaborated in 2012 on The Complete Last Waltz. Later in his set, Benevento issued “Right Here at Home,” which featured more support from Cohen and a sit-in from Burnell Pines, who has previously joined Marco for the song and offered a similar surprise guest spot for the inaugural Follow The Arrow in 2022.
Following a performance from the legendary Brazillian psych-punk pioneers Os Mutantes, Benevento mounted the stage for a third and final set, this time headlining alongside Mike Gordon. Together, the longtime friends and duo-made-in-heaven issued a 10-track set packed with guests. After opening with Phish classic “Mike’s Song” and merging Benevento’s “The Real Morning Party” into Gordon’s “Tilting,” the pair called Cohen back to the stage to add guitar to Vince Gill’s “If I Die.” From the set’s midpoint, the sit-ins kept flowing, with the Ghost Funk Orchestra horns joining for Benny Goodman’s “Breakfast Feud” and Chris Corsico joining on the drums for the final three tracks of the set. Magic ensured when Karina Rykman hopped on for “Hit or Miss” and Katie and Christina Benevento returned for the set closer of “Give It to Me.”
After the set proper, Benevento and Gordon closed out Follow the Arrow 2024 with “Sharing The Night Together,” featuring Cohen, Rykman and the whole Benevento Family Band. Learn more about the long-anticipated duo performance, Follow the Arrow Festival and the path that brought the artists to the stage in last week’s interview with Benevento and Gordon on jambands.com.
Read on for the complete setlist for the Gordon and Benevento duo.
Mike Gordon and Marco Benevento
Follow The Arrow Festival
Bearsville Theater – Woodstock, N.Y.
6/29/24
Set I: Mike’s Song, The Real Morning Party -> Tilting, Atari, If I Die+, Breakfast Feud^, Escape Horse*, Hit or Miss~, Give It to Me #
Encore: Sharing the Night Together
Notes:
+ Sam Cohen on guitar
^ Ghost Funk Orchestra horns
* Chris Corsico on drums
~ Chris Corsico on drums and Karina Rykman on bass
# Chris Corsico on drums, KT Benevento and Christine Benevento on vocals
Setlist via phish.net
