Wakarusa Recap: Day 4 and beyond
Blue Mountain was greeted by about a hundred fans and some great, warm natural light during their set on Thursday afternoon at the Wakarusa Music and Camping Festival.
Well, it’s over. Sort of.
Four days after it started, the music at the Wakarusa Music and Camping Festival has ceased, only to continue in the form of an official after party tonight (June 8) at George’s Majestic Lounge that is free for the public to attend.
We had good intentions of staying through the last notes of the festival, but continuing technical difficulties and the idea that a shower could be had back in civilization changed our plans.
Fitting that the last band I saw at the festival – and the only one I caught on Sunday (June 7) – was Jonathan Tyler & The Northern Lights. More fitting because they closed their afternoon set with the stomping rock number “Gypsy Woman,” which contains the lyrics “Take your lies and all your things / and take them right back from where you came.”
Maybe I’m stretching here, because the song’s about a lying, cheating woman, but I couldn’t help but think as I was listening about the rest of that concept: Take all your things, and take them right back to where you came.
That’s what the 10,000 some campers and revelers did Sunday. The grounds had transformed from open pastures just a week before the event to a field wholly consumed by tents, cars and party people.
Starting when the sun came up on Sunday, the lines of cars were headed away to points elsewhere. We talked to people from Michigan, from Washington state, from New York and all points in between. We talked to a lot of people who were headed straight to the Bonnaroo Music and Camping Festival in Tennessee, which begins June 11.
It was a remarkable event, to be sure. Thousands came. Thousands saw great music. Thousands left. And those same thousands have been posting videos and photos, like those here we’ve embedded on this page.
Wakarusa officials said before the event that they hoped to make Mulberry Mountain its permanent home, and I’m no decision maker, but I can’t imagine that anything that happened at the site changed their mind.
Bonus video: Heard some great things about Shpongle’s set, but I didn’t make it personally. This person did, though:
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