Summer fest

We may sit longer in traffic and pay more for housing than we used to, but living in the Golden State still has its advantages. Like the two multiday, multigenre music festivals that take place not far from Chico. With the California Worldfest in Grass Valley and the High Sierra Music Festival in Quincy coming up, it’s a good time to get out of town for a couple of days.

High Sierra Music Festival
“The original idea was to create a camping music festival that combined bluegrass music with electric music,” said High Sierra Music Festival founder and organizer Roy Carter.

Since its inception in 1991, the event has embraced a few new genres (world, Americana, didgeridoo), moved a few times (too much snow in Leland Meadows in June) and settled in Quincy, about a 90-minute drive from Chico.

‘We put it together like we’d want a festival to be,” Carter said.

That includes logistical concerns, such as having enough shade, and events such as industry panels, offering career advice and legal information to musicians. Also unusual, said Carter, is that bands often stay for the event’s entire four days and camp among fans, and many bands give three to four different performances on the five stages and in three late-night, indoor venues, which are a lot like night clubs.

That’s good news to Jill Snyder, who attended last year’s festival. She said there was enough happening on the grounds’ tree-lined roadways and meadows that it was easy to miss a key performance or two the first time around.

High Sierra’s atmosphere, according to all reports, is all-out festive. There’s a parade each day. Photos from 2005 feature a high concentration of Burning Man-esque fashions, belly dancers and fire jugglers. Many campers join forces in the service of a ‘theme,” competing for ‘coolest camp” award. (Last year, the Pirate Camp took home the gold.)

For some, things can get too festive. Snyder noticed a few confused-looking children searching for parents among the sometimes-intense revelry. One outdoor-events blogger wrote, ‘I had to comfort a few lost souls each night who were completely lost, not only directions-wise, but also lost in their own heads.”

Still, Snyder felt the festival was kid-friendly enough, and she plans to bring her three young ones (who range from pre-school to high school) again this year.

‘People were extremely friendly,” she said. ‘People left out little wading pools in front of their camp sites for people to come over and cool off in.”

Snyder was also impressed with the shopping opportunities: She stocked up on the usually hard-to-find athletic-style clothing she terms ‘hippie-jock.”

Despite the festival’s size, Snyder said she thought it was well-managed. She said, even with 10,000-or-so hungry music fans, ‘I don’t remember waiting in lines at all.”

This year’s High Sierra Music Festival includes more well-known artists, like My Morning Jacket, Son Volt, the Mother Hips and Haiti’s Emeline Michel, as well as up-and-comers Mia Dyson, hailed as ‘the new Bonnie Raitt” of Australia, and Japan’s guitar-rocking Meltone.

Tips: Choose a camp site wisely, especially if you’re considering actually sleeping. Many sites are close enough to the stages that the music, which goes on late into the night, is clearly audible. Bring a bicycle and a lock. Biking is permitted in many parts of the fairgrounds, and there are several areas for bike parking.

California WorldFest
Dan DeWayne gained a new perspective on music in 1977, as a Peace Corps volunteer in Mali, where playing music wasn’t reserved for just professionals.

‘Music and dance were just a part of everyday life,” recalled DeWayne, director of Chico Performances at Chico State.

Everyone would play an instrument. Inspired by the social cohesion he saw in Mali’s music scene, DeWayne started California WorldFest in 1997. He said seeing people from usually disparate walks of life unite over music is his favorite part of being the festival’s co-director.

Julie Quarterman, a local high school teacher, praised the event’s food, camping amenities and workshops (as a clarinetist, she enjoyed local musician Sid Lewis’ seminar on the etiquette of jamming and improvising with other musicians), but she said the congeniality in the air was the festival’s best asset.

‘There is a culture to WorldFest. It’s hard to describe. The atmosphere is very loving,” she said.

Not only has she brought her children to be among Worldfest’s 4,000-strong crowds, she feels safe enough to let them roam around on their own, even her youngest, who was 3 when the family first started attending seven years ago. (‘They’re not allowed to do that anywhere else,” she noted.)

‘I thought I was going to lose my kids to the henna lady,” Quarterman joked, explaining how they easily made new friends. Last year, her four children, who range in age up to pre-teen, hung out with the sketch artist and played soccer with the guy who runs the barbecue stand. Her 12-year-old, no more easily impressed than any other 12-year-old, was impressed with the teens-only drum circles and by the fact that WorldFest organizers called a meeting of teenagers to get their feedback on what would be cool to include in future festivals.

While family-friendly to the extreme, the festival doesn’t ignore adults’ needs; microbrew by the plastic cup and spicy Asian and Indian food are easy to come by, and Quarterman said she appreciated the full-service coffee bar in the camping area. Concession lines can be long, but many of the vendors are close enough to the stages that concertgoers don’t have to miss much while they’re waiting to be fed.

At night, the nearby camping area is lively but mellow. Jam sessions around tents and RVs are easily joinable, or, for those who prefer to sleep, easily avoidable.

This summer’s lineup includes acts from most corners of the Earth on eight stages, spanning genres from headliner Michael Frante & Spearhead’s hip-hop funk ‘n’ roll to Nickel Creek’s acoustic-pop bluegrass to Jake Shimabukuro’s fusion-ukeleke. Among the 50-plus acts on the bill are Afro-Cuban, country blues, West African and mariachi acts, most of them playing two or three shows each.

DeWayne said sometimes the most positive feedback he receives from audience members is about bands they’ve never heard of.

He laughed, ‘Maybe you go home with a new way to shake your booty a bit.”

Tips: Camping is available, but RV sites are sold out. Bring mosquito repellent; Grass Valley is more humid than Chicoans are used to, and therefore home to a few more bugs.