Langerado Music Festival

Langerado came at just the right time this year. As the east coast was experiencing one of many late season snowstorms, the sun was shining bright in the cloudless skies of South Florida. The fest was held in Markham Park; just east of the Florida Everglades in a town named Sunrise (which is well deserving of that name).

There was a lot of excitement surrounding Langerado this year. The south Florida jamband community had just pulled off another successful Jam Cruise and was still basking in its afterglow. But they didn’t bask too long before they gathered some of the hottest names in live electronica, funk, groove, hip-hop, jazz, and good old rock and roll to throw a raging party in the Everglades.

The festival started Saturday with Pencilgrass’ infectious rhythm and grooves to get you movin Saturday morning and the feet didn’t stop until the freaky people danced their way off of the String Cheese stage Sunday night and the lights went out.

There seemed to be two major themes present throughout the weekend’s performers: Up-and-coming artists, and horns. Almost all of the bands on the schedule fit in one of these categories. Bands like the Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra The Dirty Dozen Brass Band, and The Spam Allstars are bands primarily driven by a horn section while groups like The Duo, New Monsoon, and MOFRO gave the festival the fresh energy of bands still on the rise to the top.

I had an opportunity to sit down and speak with the Duo on Saturday about the direction they see their music going.

“I would love to work with a vocalist like Rufus Wainwright,” said Joe Russo with a smile. “I think he’s one of the most talented songwriters out there and I would love to see what direction he would take our music.” Other artists mentioned were Thom Yorke of Radiohead and Beck.

With these new artists' ever growing lists of influences, the genre of “Jamband” is expanding to a point where the overall blanket phrase is becoming obsolete. To see the same crowd of people migrate from futuristic rock from Particle, then on to the classic reggae vibe of Toots and the Maytals to the ‘ol skool hip hop beats of De La Soul, then rocking out to the jams of Umphrey’s McGee clearly shows this diversity in tastes. The bottom line was that everyone there simply wanted to see good music and boy, did they get their wish!

While speaking with Keller Williams, I had the opportunity to ask him what his first impressions were of the fest. He proclaimed, “Clean, positive, sunny, happy.”

Everyone else that I spoke to had similar impressions on the organization of the fest. With two stages next to each other, there was very little downtime between acts. If you wanted to get away from the music for a while, there were plenty of other things to do. You could eat from a smorgasbord of food choices, sip on a tasty microbrew, jump on a bungee trampoline, or even join the Dirty Dozen Brass Band in a parade. This was truly an amazing way to spend spring break basking in the sun and getting psyched for festival season to catch up with the higher latitudes.

For more info see: langerado.com

Photos by Adam Foley