This past weekend a friend and me made the 12+ hour drive from Louisville, KY to Live Oak, FL for the 3rd annual Bear Creek Music Festival. The festival was held in the amazing Spirit of Suwanee Music Park, which is actually designed to host music events with several permanent stages including one of the most enchanting amphitheaters around! The festival is still very young and because of that it offered a very intimate atmosphere with what I heard to be only around 5 thousands people in attendance. We had an absolutely stunning time to say the least.
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We ended up leaving Louisville at about 3am on Thursday morning, after taking all night to get our camping supplies ready and packed in the car. We finally arrived in Live Oaks at about 4pm that same day and found a prime camping spot right next to a beautiful lake located in the heart of the party. Needless to say we did not end up sleeping much the entire weekend . The festival was being primarily pushed as a funk festival, but what become quite undeniable from the first night was that Electronic Dance Music continues to re-invent itself and expand it’s reach far beyond the traditional club circuit outlets. This was apparent through various “Livetronica” bands/artist like: Alex B, The Pnuma Trio, Break Science, Telepath, and Lotus who all played a substantial role in keeping the party peeps moving over the weekend. Also late at night many tents kept the energy moving by throwing private dance parties in various areas of the campgrounds!
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The first night we caught a good deal of the The Pnuma Trio PA set which included DJ Alex B spinning his glitchy hip-hop tracks while Lane Shaw threw down on drums. Alex B truly has a lot of love for his fans and kept the energy up all night to the point of refusing to get off stage even one second early! The performance was jam packed with people getting down on the dance floor, yet it was not until Friday night that the party really got going!
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The first performance that blew me away was RV’s friends Telepath. I had seen these guys before at the Brown Theatre but their performance at Bear Creek was on a whole new level. First and foremost they played in the Purple Hat Tent which quickly became my favorite stage of the festival. Lets just say the budget for that tent must have been outrageous because they had some of the sickest lights that I have ever seen with a sound system that rumbled your chest and rattled your brain! (more…)