The String Cheese Incident and moe. Set Off Suwannee Hulaween 2025
The String Cheese Incident at Suwannee Hulaween 2024, photo by Aaron Bradley
On Thursday, Oct. 30, fans swarmed Live Oak, Fla.’s Spirit of the Suwannee Music Park for the return of Suwannee Hulaween. The 12th annual iteration of the beloved four-day Halloweekend bash began with performances from some of the biggest names in jam, electronic dance music and all the styles in between, including two-set performances from returning favorites The String Cheese Incident and moe.
The first day of Hulaween commenced with showings from the festival’s stacked undercard, with The Heavy Pets, DOMii and Colton Bowlin opening up the Hallows, Amphitheatre and Spirit Lake stages. At 4 p.m., The String Cheese Incident stepped onto the Meadow main stage for an early staging and commenced their first frame with the three-decade live staples “Dudley’s Kitchen” and “Little Hands.”
The progressive bluegrass pathbreakers looked back on their long history with Suwannee by reviving the “Live Oak Jam,” then meticulously merged into their well-traveled cover of Bill Monroe’s “Walls of Time.” After the 2025 debut “Carnival,’ which is quickly emerging as a live favorite, the band wrapped their first set with an explosive, improvisatory medley of “Outside and Inside,” The Allman Brothers Band’s “Jessica” and “Rollover.”
SCI returned to the spotlight for the second of their six sets at this year’s festival with the tried and true entries “Texas” and “Black Clouds,” then cut deeper into their catalog with “Solution.” The sextet stuck with their more recent material through a sprawling take on “The Big Reveal,” then tore off into the 20-year jam vehicle “Bumpin’ Reel.” To wrap up their first day at Hulaween, The String Cheese Incident lit up a deftly segued pairing of “Search” and “Colliding,” the final track from their 2014 album “Song In My Head.”
In the wake of the sole main stage performance of the day, Thursday’s festivities continued around the festival grounds with music from Jade Cicada, It’s Murph and a collaboration between The Infamous Stringdusters and Sierra Hull. As dusk settled over the horizon, moe. appeared on the Spirit Lake stage and set off their show with the No Guts, No Glory classic “Mar De Ma.” The classic jam mainstays offered up more early-era gems with a pairing of “Captain America” and “Waiting for the Punchline,” followed by their cover of Ghosts of Jupiter’s “Yellow Tigers,” which was the setlist’s only inclusion from their recent 10th studio album, Circle of Giants.
moe. bolted through the end of their first frame by stitching “Buster” into a two-part treatment of four, then took a half-hour set break before gunning into the No Doy fan favorite “Moth,” combined with their longtime cover of Blue Öyster Cult’s “Godzilla.” The band taped ito the full extent of their instrumental prowess for the evening’s jam centerpiece in “Recereational Chemistry,” then brought on one last blast with another Headseed standout, “Brent Black.”
Suwannee Hulaween’s first day extended into Friday morning with subsequent sets from Jigitz and Highfade. The festival will continue through Sunday, Nov. 2, with highly anticipated stagings from The String Cheese Incident, Goose, Digable Planets, The Disco Biscuits, Daniel Donato’s Cosmic Country, Parcels, Joe Russo’s Almost Dead, Illenium and more. Find tickets and more information at hulaween.com.
