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The Avett Brothers — Scott and Seth Avett — closed out the Gathering of the Vibes Sunday, performing 26 songs in a two and half hour set that sparked a Vibe-wide dance party and sing along.
Hailing from the North Carolina, the bluegrass/folk-driven indie rock band performed a wide selection from their discography, including “Go To Sleep,” “Murder In The City” and “Pretty Girl from Bridgeport,” a take on their song, “Pretty Girl at the Airport.”
(Photos/Brian A. Pounds)
Above: Students from the School of Rock Allstars performed at the Gathering of the Vibes.
Jimmy Cicchino is usually a quiet kid, but when he sings on stage, its his chance to get loud.
“My alter ego comes out,” said Cicchino, 17, of Long Valley, N.J. “I can get wild, sentimental. You let the music take over and just feel.”
That feeling was echoed by a bevy of School of Rock All-Stars — the best of the best from the School of Rock, a national chain of music schools with locations in Fairfield and New Canaan — at the Gathering of the Vibes Sunday.
“It’s hands down the most amazing experience in my life,” said Sara Keden, a 15-year-old bassist, of Easton. “It’s absolutely insane.”
“To play a musical festival like this is any musician’s dream,” Owen McClusky, a 15-year-old keyboard player from Closter, N.J., added.
Clad in a retro patterned button down shirt, Cicchino wailed on The Who’s “Who Are You,” Frank Zappa’s “Zomby Woof” and Pink Floyd’s “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” with fellow members of his School of Rock band.
Besides performing on the School of Rock Stage, the Allstars had the chance to play on the Main Stage, where Primus and Phil Lesh & Friends had performed, on Friday.
“They’re having the time of their lives,” Tom McKey, a the music director of the School of Rock Allstars, said. “It’s a magical thing.”
Above: One-man band Keller Williams performed at the Gathering of the Vibes on Sunday, July 22. (Photo/B.K. Angeletti).
Keller Williams has been called a “guitar mad scientist.”
And with good reason: at the Gathering of the Vibes Sunday, the Virginia native played a slew of live looping instruments — two guitars, a bass, a drum module and an electronic instrument called a chaoscillator — to create the sound of a multi-part band.
“I wanted to do more and go more places as a soloist,” Keller said in an interview with reporters.
Williams said he has played in bands before, but plays by himself now because “the solo thing has been working so well.”
“I can’t rely on four humans to make the ideas in my head become a reality,” he said. “There’s no reason to go out and find a band.”
And while it might be unusual to be a one-man band in the context of a large festival, Williams makes it work. In fact, he has appeared at a bevy festivals in his 20-plus year career, including Bonnaroo and the Telluride Bluegrass Festival.
Williams said his criteria for a great festival includes “freshly clean portapotties, an amazing sound system and an open-minded audience.” He got all that at the Vibes.
“There’s love everywhere,” he said. “There’s so many good, positive things going on.”
It’s A.J. Robert’s job to play with fire.
Roberts (right), a resident of Albany, N.Y., is a professional glassblower for Prism Glassworks, a company that makes pipes, pendants, necklaces and other homemade glass products.
At the Gathering of the Vibes Sunday, Roberts was busy fashioning a glass pipe with a hand-held torch as a dozen members of the Vibe Tribe looked on in awe.
“It’s really cool,” Kristen Sturgis, of Rochester, N.Y., said. “The pieces he makes are really sweet.”
Roberts said that while glassblowing is usually a solitary activity, he and his friends occasionally like to work in public so that they can “reconnect with people who are into what we’re doing.”
“People can make requests” for particular pieces “within reason,” Roberts, who has been blowing glass for 15 years, said. “If we can come to an agreement, I will totally to do it.”
Roberts, who studied music in college, said he took up glassblowing to pay the bills and to express his artistic ideas. Since then, “it’s been a career,” he said.
The company also sells pendants created by Sarah Chabot, Roberts’ fiance, and her friend, Fiona Van Wie (above).
“The boys don’t make pretty pendants, so Sarah and I handle that,” Van Wie, of Chatham, N.Y., said.
Primus, the alternative funk metal band fronted by bass god Les Claypool, unleashed a spiral of hard-edged, avant-garde noise jams at the Gathering of the Vibes Saturday.
Coming out to the bizarre dream-sequence music from “Pee Wee’s Big Adventure,” Primus — a San Francisco band rounded out by guitarist Larry “Ler” LaLonde and Jay Lane — were one of the most anticipated acts of the four-day festival.
The band, which combines bizarre lyrics with off-kilter rhythms, achieved cult status in the 1990s with hits such as “Wynona’s Big Brown Beaver,” “My Name is Mud” and “Jerry Was a Racecar Driver.” In 1997, Primus recorded the original theme song to the animated Comedy Central series, “South Park.”
Primus is currently touring to promote its first studio album in 11 years — 2011′s “Green Naugahyde.” Claypool and Lalonde reunited with Lane, who had been in an earlier incarnation of the band, on the album.
(Photo/Christian Abraham). See a video of Primus perform, below:
Above: U.S. presidential candidate and sitcom star Roseanne Barr spoke at the Gathering of the Vibes on Saturday, July 21 (Photo/Christian Abraham).
U.S. presidential candidate and sitcom star Roseanne Barr pledged to “speak for American workers, American mothers and American human beings,” and criticized President Barack Obama’s policies on marijuana, in a fiery, cuss-filled campaign speech at the Gathering of the Vibes Saturday.
Barr, a self-avowed socialist who is running on the Green Party ticket, spoke to a crowd of several thousand jubilant Vibe Tribe members on the Main Stage before a performance from funk/metal band Primus.
Cursing flagrantly throughout her appearance, Barr said she could do so because “I’m not owned by an special interests.”
“I speak my mind and I speak what I consider to be the truth!,” she bellowed. “And if I’m wrong, I’ll admit I’m wrong!”
Speaking against the federal government’s increased crackdown on medical marijuana producers in Calif0rnia, Barr said, “I have a message for Obama: you can get my weed when you pry it out of my cold dead fingers!”
“You’re not going to lock up our kids for joints anymore!” she added, drawing a wave of applause.
Barr recently lost the Green Party nomination to physician Jill Stein, but she has continued her campaign, touting the virtues of socialism and encouraging conflicted liberals to register for the Green Party.
Midway through her speech, Barr, 59, evoked the spirit of the 1960s peace movement, giving a shout out to all “the baby boomers and my fellow hippies here.”
“We were right about everything!” she said.
The Gathering of the Vibes is as much a music festival as it is a carnival. And with that in mind, hundreds of Vibe Tribe members took a whirl on the Expo Wheel Saturday.
Mark Gibeley and Amy Phelps, both of Massachusetts , had just met each other outside the ride, and decided to take a trip together.
“We did it for the view,” Phelps said as the sun made its descent over Seaside Park. “It’s so nice up there. You can see the whole lot.”
Gibeley, who was trying to put the moves on Phelps, said he didn’t want the ride to end.
“I was hoping it would get stuck,” he joked.
The Vibes is all about meeting new people and, having lost their friends in the crowd, Gibeley and Phelps decided to head to the Main Stage together to see Strangefolk, a Vermont jam band, perform.
Added Phelps: “I don’t know where my friends are, but I did find this guy.”
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