How do you like your Dead?

These days, you can get Grateful with the Dead any way you like it. Phishified with Trey. Slow and bass-heavy with Phil and his friends. Fucked up and falling over on Ratdog. Nostalgic recreations of entire shows by Dark Star. Even pop-bluesy with Mr. John Mayer. Not to mention the rap mixes for the bling-custy niche that only listens to rap and Jerry. And, even if you missed the Furthur runs in which they incorporated new old man songs about the rain and other elder hippie business, you can still catch the funkity blue mastery of Joe Russo's Almost Dead. And in all likelihood, you will dance harder.

Like I can't stop dancing and have to pee everywhere but will drink everyone in the vicinity's water to keep fucking dancing hard. You don't want to miss a riff.

JRAD has brought the fire back to my mountain since I saw them this summer at the Great North festival. Now the Dead has been alive in me for nearly half my life, but I had never danced so hard at any orientation of the GD as I have at JRAD. Holy jamtastic. It's like Medeski, Martin, & Wood began blaring the jam classics in that creep-along jazz, funksplosive phenomena fantastica. Oh that Terrapin in Portland. The weebly warps of spookily space. The searing splooge of hyper-stimulated folk. The songs that have been a sacred auditory landscape for generations of jammers come to such an energized pinnacle and high point with every note. If you haven't seen Almost Dead, go forth Gratefully and catch them live....the music has still never stopped.

Pisces Band Fulfills Scorpion Desires, Blows All Else Out of All Water

If you missed the 2015’s most kickass orchestration of the year, that’s cus it happened at the very end if you weren’t one of the 10,000 jamsters at MSG, you were probably skankin’ elsewhere. Thing is, I know you felt it. Phish’s first jam first night of the New Years run, I knew EVERYONE felt it. There is truly nothing in life like getting real down on that gushy smile level with someone, that diggity dirty, funk flingin groove, all that Phishy absurdity oozing out every communal pore, like AHHHHHHH, really! REALly!!!!!...yep, this is still Mike's Song right now.

Like really, we danced as hard as those narrow cement tiers allowed us, funxtreme-tastica in every spoodley lick. And really, if you had showed me what the set-list would be for the first night of the MSG run, I would have nodded like I had heard all those songs a million times, because I have. But not like that. Each jam opened up into vibrating jams that opened and flowed and flounced so deeply and friskily in the moment and then the next. I haven’t missed an MSG run yet, and the hype’s true about this one. Every jam exemplified an ecstatic propulsion of art. And everyone felt it.

Phish reallh reaches all those under-water layers. Breaking through the Piscean chaos into the ️Neptunian love spell it has to offer, and bleeding, rippling, raging through the Scorpion/Plutonian core of if all. I swear. I felt it.

I always feel it.

Every head got so down on the whimsy, flitting “Bathtub” splanks, so thrilled thrashy wild as it built up and up and out for 15 minutes The whole show was riddled with the incessant sparks and tickle of the Phish crowd culminating again. So like wowwww, Phish totally is The band of the Scorpion Pluto generation, keeping us vibing, crawling, chasing their spirals under the rug, til they sting us with zaps of funk and splizzam lasers into zings and zongs we feel, love, rage and radiate. Yup. Phish has lured and played, pampered and swayed us all under the same covers. Where it’s dark, mysterious, and helplessly rainbow, so every cell in the midst of it is smiling so can’t-help-it-groovy.

I posted forever ago about my skepticism travelling to the city during such a chaotic time, but caught a ride with my daugther’s sister and her mom on their way back to Phili; thank the beauty of blended families. My excitement completely blinded me from initial hesitance, even through the metal detector and flashlights digging through my bag as one patted down my freckled friend in denim cut-off shorts and a “PURE SEX” button gleaming on her Mexican blanket coat, I was still unconcerened and completely shut off to the possibility of risk. But the cab driver on the way to my dad’s from the train reminded me.

“I hope security was tight,” he said, “ya never know what those nuts will do after that shit in Paris.”

At first I was like, “Come on, really…”, inclined to say something like, “Then we can blame all nuts for fear of the unknown, not an allocated few.” But before speaking, I let the intention behind his sentiment linger, and I remembered my gratitude. I prayed protection barriers for everyone dancing and celebrating music and art in beauty and love.

And to me at that point still, it was all very Phishy and drippy and teeth-clenching exciting to get home and drink so much water I wouldn't have to slip someone a dollar then duck away for it not being two...and have a cigarette and pass out with my toddler, replaying replaying replaying that bass-slapping energy, that build, that force of everyone singing “Character Zero,” knowing it was the last song; knowing in a breath, the boys would leave the stage and be gone. Until tomorrow, for most of them. Until Mexico, for the fortunate ones. The lesson here is urging everyone I know to get ready for summer tour, because Phish is gonna blast all our hats off. And also, all are welcome and encouraged to continue beaming love and protection for the jammin’ masses. We couldn’t have momentum without all of us making moves.

Rising Appalachia Bringin' the Heat this Spring

Rising Appalachia hits the road this spring, from the south to the west to the northeast and all over in between! After -22 temperatures and 60 mph winds this winter, I am stoked as a fiddle to catch the soul-spirit, razzity folk-hearted jam in Portland, Maine again. Sisters Lea and Chloe throw down and flow a lulling warmth in their music with a smooth kind of friction, like elegant but tribal, spiritual but dirty, vocals both haunting and enchanting, music both Southern but global, old world but new. It all grooves and grinds together in an entrancing melodic haze punctured by rolling rhythms, soul-dripping voices, and “LISTEN THE FUCK UP” lyrics.

Rays of Sandstone drummer Ben Rayborne introduced me to Rising Appalachia and Nahko Bear on Southeastern travels last winter, and I've been hooked since. My alienation to modern music dissolved; the music so spoke to what I was feeling in sound and intention, after YEARS of not hearing any new music that sparked me up. Truly I'm picky and have no patience for radio indie-pop or the soberest kid's Macbook dubstep. But I have seen both Rising Appalachia and Nahko Bear and Medicine for the People this past year, and totally have my show calendar marked to see both bands again.

Rambling bongos and bouncy banjos, the three friends I brought to the July 2014 show in Portland actually danced as hard as I did (which usually only occurs with a drug-induced endeavor.) But there were no drugs—can't even remember drinking, and we were skip-dip-hoppin' with the high swing-around energy of a hoedown, then wiggle-wham wormed into the deep, low bass notes that follow you creeping “Downtown” through a dark alley to swerve your limbs like snakes. These ladies and their high energy band raised my auric plane into a sunrise over the Blue Ridge parkway and sent it falling fast but featherly all at once. That alpine mountain soul-jam is gonna rage Wakarusa this year, hot damn. And it's a lot of things, but mostly magic when artists hook you somewhere no other music can take you. I'm sure as hell not gonna miss what's next. Check the dates and make sure y'all don't either!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOsEvYBLo7I&list=UURmxz4fw_LzwQF19LKXgRVg&index=1

"Fare Thee Well" Shows July 2015: Listen to the river sing sweet songs to rock your pockets

Some Phish vs Dead stuff is just true. Like with my ex-boyfriend. He could hear any Dead track and tell you what members were playing, what early to late decade, or even what year it was, and anecdotes about that tour. But get him on Phish tour 2011 right my ACL surgery, and I literally danced the fuck out of my wheelchair more than he did in his healthy two feet. He danced to one song. ONE SONG. Okay, I get that it doesn't exactly blither and flow so smooth-ecstatically through everyone as it does through me, but like, can't you open up a bit? Really, spanning 14 shows, six states, and the only song to stimulate you to shimmy and snake around is “It's Ice”?!

Bethel, NY 2011

I know what you're thinking. There's got to be something else going on there.

And yes, it's called “NOT BEING THERE FOR THE MUSIC.” This boyfriend made thousands of dollars off phans, and that was his sole reason for following a band he resented with a trunkful of crystals and wire-wraps. But it's not the Dead, right? So how could it ever be good enough? So goes the logic of the Dead elitist (at least this one), so set with the Dead on the top of the pyramid that nothing else could possibly reach those heavens and therefore really matter at all. And man, those elite show-goer heavens are higher than my high-interest student loans could dream of surmounting to. Like hundreds of thousands of dollars high. EVEN with a splash of Phish.

Because here we are, facing our last ensemble of the Grateful Dead this July, with three 50^th anniversary “Fare Thee Well” shows in Chicago, Trey billed as lead guitarist. Come on, hyping up the mail-in ticket-order tradition and giving heads three days to gather hundreds of dollars for the threat of the last-ever Dead shows is not all that bad. Because after selling out 210,000 mail-order tickets, the band's heavily rumored to be announcing more shows. Really, why have one last show when you can have lots of lasts shows?

Right, so Trey is playing with the remaining original members of the Grateful Dead. Those stuck in the Dead vs. Phish complex are forced to accept the culmination of energy. My best friend growing up/tour wingman says, “It's pretty much my wet dream,” despite the fact that she among millions of others did not get tickets after coloring an elaborately beautiful Steal Your Face envelope in a potentially expensive effort to see that wet dream fulfilled. Instead, the Bears season ticket-holders got precedence in their Chicago playground, but at least they've been willing to sell tickets back to heads and custies for 1000% mark-up value. 

Truly, the music of these bands are food for my soul, and every head I've ever met is going/trying to go to Chicago this summer. But $200 for parking is not my wet dream. It's exploitative. The more I hear about it, the more I cower in the "REALLY JAM GODS?!" corner. This is a horrific jam scene rape.

“Oh it's totally about the money. If it were about the heads, the community, they would have done it where people could camp!” laments Ophelia, the space-cat spinning a magic wand center-forward of every lawn. As a Libra who loves both bands, Ophelia is positive about the musical potential. “I think it will be interesting! I've never felt the Dead and Phish were at all the same, except for the fact that they both jam. Obviously Trey is not Jerry, but I don't expect him to be. It will be a totally new musical thing...Basically, I imagine it as Phish playing Dead covers. For both bands, the lead guitarist is the one with the inimitable sound.”

Live artist Kait Buckley, actually an electronica-hooked hooper who's grown up on the Dead, speaks to the inevitable Trey-zy nature of Anastasio, explaining, “I've seen [Trey] play with Furthur before and at first, he was a little all over the place 'cus he's used to his own thing, but he got in the groove as the set went on. I'm sure they will be practicing a lot together for those shows and he will have a lot to live up to, so I assume he is taking it seriously.” Stoner Bob Pirrone is optimistic, saying, “He basically took over the jam band scene after Jerry passed. It feels right to give him the honor to play some Jerry. I mean, he plays well with Phil and Friends.”

Pirrone has a point about the scene takeover. The jam-world lost Jerry as Phish's following swarmed and swelled to a cult level. Trey has been quoted as saying that he used to avoid listening to the Grateful Dead to prevent being overly influenced by Jerry while coming into his own sound. These days, he details to the Rolling Stone, “I've made a conscious effort to learn everything I could about Jerry's incredible style.” From tripping on acid at his first Grateful Dead show and being trance-formed by the music to learning it inside and out twenty years later, “Fare Thee Well” is sure to be a collectively epic-beyond-jamtabulous-fathomability phenomenon of the decade. If of course, you can afford it.

Jerry's daughter Trixie announced the 4^th of July shows online as a celebration of American culture and history (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RR3LaG4vcBk). With Scorsese filming the shows in the city of the Dead's last concert with Jerry, the event seethes the high profile status that hotel hippies like my ex cream over, a circus for glampers. 

Sure at first, even I was set on heading to the lot and the slim chance of a miracle, but the fact that three day passes are going for over $100,000 on StubHub turns me off from the whole jam porn wet dream thing. Maybe Meg, it is too good to be true! Go follow Phish for a whole Tour for the same cost!

This was the basis of my ex taking me on Phish tour: money. After too many months on the road driven by the hustle, I refuse to go anywhere where the spirit of money is heavier than the music. Monetary flow is so much more tainted than the organic/gasmic potential of jam. You can always tell a custy fest from a grassroots one. I'd rather pay twenty bucks to a family farm who hired their friends to rage bluegrass in their cow-field all weekend. But of course, I say that as someone with 20 grand in student debt and no degree...Are you an affluent grower/capitalist stoner like my ex? Have a blast! Maybe you can tell me about it at 3DL! (Check it out)

Welcome to Jam Sauce

Jam Sauce is your ultimate tour guide for the ins and outs of festivals, shows, and other manifestations of the collective consciousness. Much of Jam Sauce will come from my experiences. I've done the lush tour life vending every show with Orbitz discounting pet friendly hotels all across the country, and I've followed Phish seven months pregnant selling organic iced coffee out of a cooler on wheels, renegade camping in fields and up mountains (so long as you get there before sunset, depending on the mountain.) But, my expertise are limited to my own experiences, and this project is largely about the collective momentum that generates the jam love flow. For example, I have not toured in a camper yet, but perhaps you have; maybe you're the four season glamping guru who has all the rooftop gardening wisdom and bathroom systems down, and you want to write about your invaluably unique experiences. Email me at wordsthatwander@live.com and help stir the sauce. 

Any given jam is a melting pot of everything within its vortex vicinity--sights, smells, thought, desire, action, intentions and outcomes, energy and vibes, colors and filters--so what has your vortex encompassed? For lively glimpses into each other's vortexes, tune into Jam Sauce for lot life, live art, miracle tickets, hustlin', swingin', and the warbling gaps in between.

Bear Creek, FL

The Festy Forensic: How to Spot Fake Tickets, Bum Drugs, and Cops Disguised as Hippies

We'd all like to think of music festivals as free-loving escapes from the mainstream world where we can let our whole freak fly without inhibition or looking over our shoulder. But, flouncing around like there are only daisies and no aphids will catch us in compromising positions. Like when Meggy spent two hundred bucks outside MSG for a New Years Eve Phish ticket.

1. Does the scalper look like a head? Hemp, crystals, smiles, dreadlocks, moccasins, festy bracelets?
2. Look at the ticket. No, really. Is it a printed out Ticketmaster ticket? An old roommate of mine saved our friend fifty bucks at the Charleston with the simple observation that the page said VOID behind the event information.
3. Is the scalper going to the show as well? If not, did his/her girl/boyfriend get stranded hitchhiking or what? In Meggy's case, why is he or she not going to the sold-out, most coveted show of the year and instead, selling a ticket for five hundred less than they are selling for on Stubhub? And is this person alone, or surrounded by flowery, trustworthy hippies around to reassure good intentions and vibes in general?
4. Why is this person selling a ticket? Did a friend bail? Did he have extras and all his friends were already going? Or did she decide to go to the Biscuits show across the city instead? And most importantly concerning all of these points: do you believe this person?

Generally, your vibe-o-meter should be able to tell whether someone genuinely has an extra to sell or is trying to take advantage of go-lucky jammers. Unfortunately in Meggy's obsessive desperation to get into the New Year's Eve show, she overlooked her scalper's telltale sketchiness. Yes the majority of Phish-heads are white college kids (or graduates/drop-outs), but if the scalper is not and he's a middle-aged bald-head trying to sell you a ticket in Manhattan, he should be gregariously jolly and explain how he's come to sell such a cheap ticket for such a high profile show over a joint or coat-sleeve beer. The scalper should definitely not take your money and leave the scene without joyous tidings for a helluva show.

Blackwater Festival, FL

And ah, the drugs. The bum-drugs are trickier to identify because 1.) they are more common, and 2.) because what hippie doesn't look like a head shuffling through the campsites and dance-crowds, sputtering, “Moon rocks, mushies, oil, dabs...” And really, there's only one direct way to know if a chemical is what is said to be—try it! But indirectly, the best way to make sure your “mescaline” isn't 2CE or that your molly isn't meth is to only buy what trusted friends and heads have tried and recommend. There are (or always should be) those heads you trust through and through, to the point of saying, “If she did it, I'll do it.” The more acclimated you are to the scene, the less likely you are to be sold Shitake mushrooms on Shakedown Street. No, but really. It sounds preposterous, but there are real-life gutter-skunks who actually try to get away with overcharging 14 year-old rave bunnies household herbs and bicarbonate soda. My ex Mikey would always close his eyes and go on “antenna mode,” where he could read energy in rainbows and even dance without knocking into anyone this way. Sure he went schizophrenic, but he was an excellent judge of character. You don't need a spirit-antenna, but always be aware of your vibe-o-meter.

Plus the cops. There are the venues like Suwanee in Live Oak, FL where cops are allowed to assume duty so long as they buy tickets along with everyone else. So if you are you are tucked into a tick nest in the very back of the 300+ acre music park in Florida and a cheerful dude with a shaved head and crisp new tie-dye stumbles in looking for his cell phone, you can rest assured he is not there by accident. His shoes should also be a dead giveaway. Wooks don't wear stiff, brand new Nikes.

If you are on the lookout for under-covers, it should be fairly easy to pick up on scripted dialogue. “Cold night. Rad show!/Do you go to festivals often?/Do you have anything to smoke?”) These guys are like Porky Pigs in a field full of Roadrunners, but there are, however, the very schooled “dready feddies.” In 2011, I watched one standing in a line of busted wooks with his hands behind his back like the others. When the others were taken away however, he dropped his hands unbound and walked away, this dirty blond six foot something dready guy in Charlotte. An older, raspy guy with blue eyes and shaggy hair under a mad-hatter of a chapeau had come to my vending table on Shakedown and narrated this whole literal shakedown scene to me. When he called that the alleged dready feddie would walk away untouched, I was amazed, though not surprised when that exact action transpired. Unkempt teeth and parking lot hygiene should never be a ground for who to trust on tour—the older, crustier spunions have made it this far along for reasons.

Also, be it known that there is no magic “If I ask if you're a cop, you have to tell me” rule. Take it from undercover turned activist and legal consultant Barry Cooper, who explains, “I'm not sure how this rumor started but it is not true and actually helps law enforcement. Many times as an undercover, suspects would ask if I were. I would respond, 'No. I'm not a cop and you are correct. I would have to tell you if I were.'” To really tell if someone is a cop, Cooper suggests offering him or her a bong rip, as cops can be trained to fake a joint rip through their noses, and undercovers are often drug-tested following a bust.

Also, listen for the Rainbow children and other helping friends on scene. If you hear funny numbers and encoded words being thrown around, be on your guard. But in general, although it's super omni-chingadaza-blisstastico to lose yourself in every moment and be fully immersed in the groove-adelic magic of jam, always holding onto at least a kite-string of a clue is paramount. When any spunshine sprites of the festival-love-flow get taken away or even advantage of, the whole festival gets tainted; it's the manipulation of purity. Taking personal responsibility with even a toe-hold in reality can keep us out of jails, hospitals, even rude awakenings in the wrong states. (Been there...and other places too.) Because even though the smooth roll of ecstatic dance-shine moments can feel perfect and infinite, we have to wake up somewhere, and we can totally prevent unnecessary loss of money, rights, and control. Just remember your bag, your phone, your stash, and your Shakedown Street smarts.

For more on Barry Cooper, check out www.nevergetbusted.com for an inside look on preventing nonviolent drug crimes.

That's Not Blood, Man; it's Glo-Stick Goo: Nonviolence and the EcstaticDance Party

The only fight people seek out of a Sound Tribe show is a glow-stick war. And while I've known some to trip out from being on the “wrong” side of a color exchange, electronic enthusiasts pulse with the innocence of neon for the simple sake of bright and shiny. Initially, I struggled with that ease of satisfaction. When I first came onto the scene as an overeager Earth pleaser, I spent countless hours talking to the most tripped out chemists on lot to try to devise a way to recycle the thousands upon thousands of damn glow-sticks that always end up painting the grass in clear plastic by the end of the night. And really, not one of these new wave ravers wanted to hear or think about their toxic footprints. In fact, many say, “I never thought of that before!” with complete wide-eyed honesty and just as sincere a smile as they plunk right back into their dance or bra or pocket for some molly to share.

Admittedly, I've always seen the sparkle-faced Bratz Dollz generation with glow-sticks and dubstep as “them.” Evil. I saw plastic and computer glitch-beats as a robot-zombie plague upon the purity and synergy of jam. But when ecstatic Dave at his first Bassnectar concert squealed, “It's expendable energy!” and began collecting and throwing glow-sticks like flowers bursting from the pit of his highlighter-yellow soul, the electronic scene finally clicked into mine. Ah! These self-proclaimed “bass-heads” don't want to suck away souls, not out of the earth, music, nor each other...they just want to have a good time.

And that time that my friends and I left Charleston's Music Farm extremely perplexed as to how Nate acquired a spatter of blood on his T-shirt after the STS9 show/danciest energy-a-thon ever, it took us to be in the dark crashing five people on a bed and a couch to recognize the neon nature of the stain. And yes, it tickled and cheered me to know it was the reckless innocence of glow-stick goo.

Yes I will always be a jam band purist, and in the electronic realm, I will always pick a band like Sound Tribe or Lotus over a Macbook party like EOTO or Pretty Lights. Still, I must pay tribute to the nonstop party wizzam-wow that the dubsteppers celebrate and chase, as the ecstatic dance party is now a routine therapy for my daily kitchen sanity. My gay best friend in college explained the hypnotic rhythm of dubstep as such: “Sometimes you don't need the fucking intricacies of everything. You just need to wobble.” Me, still no—I'm not a wobbler, I'm a prancing jamming pirate with skippy, stampy gazelle legs and a punk-rock head-bang, and music like Phish and Toubab Krewe will always foremost satisfy my multilayer thirst for kick-offs and crescendos. But electronic music and the ecstatic dance parties have become a parallel friend instead of an opposing force of evil: I love the dance for the sake of feeling good, the wobble for a speedway into the collective zen flow, and the oblivious love of everything for the oblivious love of everything.

After the pounding headache that consumed my body after vending Electric Forest summer 2011 next to a K-holed kid pressing WAH-WAH-WAH-WAH on his warble machine and slapping “DIRTY GIRLS LIKE DIRTY BEATS” stickers on every shoulder passing by, I was convinced these electronic dubsters truly were part robot, digitized beyond salvation of the human soul, a foreign species—the enemy. But at the end of that weekend, when a shirtless boy in a pink bandanna, cargo shorts, and cowboy boots spray-painted the clop of cop-horse shit razzle-sparkle pink, giggled and ran away with kicked up heels like a naughty elfin farmhand, I had to smile, and even giggle too. What, really, is evil about bright and shiny? After all, calculating the damge of glow-sticks to the soil is not celebrating a festival to its highest potential, and it is human nature to want to have a good time,

Photo Credits: Meggy Schaeffer

Instagram @Nut_Meggy