Music filled the air again at Willow Creek Winery this past weekend; two days filled with music to keep everyone happy. One of the greatest things about Willow Creek is that you get the festival experience in a smaller setting. If you combine the great location with Buffalive Productions, you’re getting the entire experience at a great value with Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad and Funktional Flow.
Buffalive, who just recently was founded, is doing things in their first year that many promotors take years to accomplish, putting great music out there for the fan to truly enjoy. Friday and Saturday was no different with the crowd being treated to a stellar show by Badfish-A Tribute To Sublime, bringing everyone the music of Sublime that they love, but most were not fortunate to see since the bands demise in the 90’s.Saturday brought music with reggae influence and started in the afternoon, going until well after midnight.
Preach Freedom, Mosaic Foundation, Tropidelic and The B-Side Dubs all playing early on before the main event. Funktional Flow and Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad played 2 sets each flip-flopping after each set. Funktional Flow started it off with the side stage and GPGDS took over on the main stage. Flow has been playing the winery all summer and seemed to have quite the following since Buffalove Music Festival. Giant Panda was great and as the night wore on with darkness casting overhead and their lighting show, all made for a terrific night of music. Chad from Mosaic Foundation joined them on stage to boost the great reggae infused jam to the next level.
Speaking with Chad as he came off stage he was happy as can be and he even said how it was a dream to be able to be on stage with Giant Panda, he had been huge fans of them since the beginning. Saturday night capped off another great weekend at Willow Creek and with one more event to go who knows what Buffalive has in for store for next summer, it will be tough to beat their inaugural season. But First, up next will be The Grapeful Getdown on Aug 9, featuring a bunch of the area’s top Grateful Dead Tribute Bands with a day full of Dead songs.
You can get more information about The Grapeful Getdown here and stay tuned for our preview of the upcoming show.
If you didn’t get the hints, this tour will be Willy Wonka themed with the moniker “
Harkening back to the aforementioned adventurous setlists, this writer can assuredly say pre summer-tour, he would not be clamoring to ooze compliments over a “Bathtub Gin”, “Wingsuit”, “Divided Sky”, “Wombat”, “David Bowie” First set closer. However, it as if Phish, whether it be intentionally or serendipitously, is beginning to find their footing for the new Fuego tracks. The Canandaigua setlist did not contain one cover and had a ton of new material, so it could be argued the band is carefully, and strategically trying to integrate the new material into their setlists, that in many ways in recent years, had become very predictable.
Of note from the end of this first set, was the 17 minute “Divided Sky”, which seemed to perfectly jive with the divided sky and piercing sunset over Canandaigua Lake at the same time. This version is definitely a top-3 version from the 3.0 era. Another impressive showing also came from “Wombat” (clocking in at over 7 minutes) which has quickly risen to be a ridiculously fun dance number with bassist Gordon and keyboardist McConnell having enjoyable interplay. This has got to be one of the silliest, yet funkiest phish songs to come out of the barn in the past decade with the chorus “Cuddly, but muscular.” The entire pavilion inside of CMAC was getting down with many observed to be thrusting their Wombat wings in almost mock Chicken-dance and shadowing the original Wombat strut from Abe Vigoda from last year’s Halloween set. The jam was shorter than many of us would have liked but was a tight little package of funk. Definitely: one of the “jammiest” highlights of the night.
The second set began with a monstrous “Down With Disease” that ebbed and flowed from a laid back sonic sound scape to an intense funky jam with Page McConnell crushing several sections of the arrangement with powerful keystrokes. All told, the DWD clocked in just over 20 minutes and was truly a playground of emotions. It perfectly summarized where this band is at on this summer tour installment. Seemingly firing on all cylinders, Phish has is leaving predictability aside and blazing new trails, especially in the song selection and placement in the second set, specifically the previously notable 2nd set, 2nd song which had previously been “thee slot” to expect an exploration. That continued Tuesday at CMAC when the band, coming off the heels of the raucous DWD, eased into a shortened “Back on the Train”.
The second set continued in this quick-hitting fashion but never officially stopping and starting an arrangement and seguing set start to finish. Albeit short affairs with a 6 minute “Back on the Train”, a 5 min “NICU” (first one of summer tour), an 8-min “Theme from the Bottom” and a 5 minute “Meatstick”, the set truly felt like one big melodic jam with a 9-minute “Gotta Jiboo” and a 10+ minute “Fuego” taking center stage before a longer than 2014 summer-tour standard “Run Like an Antelope” brought what was one, very cohesive set and show to a close. The encore was “Character Zero” and the band quickly exited the stage to hit the long overnight trip to Detroit for next show on the tour.