For the first time in the event’s history, PGroove will share this year’s Amberland bill with other acts including Zoogma, The Mantras, Noise[ORG], Under the Porch and Former Champions. Most of these groups have roots in Amberland’s history as part of the band’s extended family, including Perry’s brother, Damien, on a shredding guitar. “We’ve wanted to step from making a highly glorified barbeque where we are the house band, to then it’s the festival of Perpetual Groove. Each year we have taken steps in that direction, which brings us to the logical next steps of this year and bringing in additional bands,” Butler says.
Having attended several Amberland’s at Cherokee Farms myself, I still can’t believe that one of the best festivals around manages to keep such a chill, unique and everyone-knows-everyone vibe. Picture inviting a few hundred of your closest friends over to your house, camping out for three days and having one of the most talented bands in our scene play in your backyard and you have a sense of the event. Amberland keeps its unique character thanks to a dedicated fanbase that is as close knit as they come and the overwhelming nature of this being a grand scale barbecue for some close friends, new and old, as the band has maintained the same mentality towards the festival since it started. To further my point, there is a full pig roasted each year by “Uncle Daddy,” an old friend of the band involved since the beginning, which results in a pot-luck dinner of sorts.
Undoubtedly one of the other highlights of the weekend is the Sunday morning “Brockfast” set, which features the solo, acoustic sounds of Butler, perhaps with a friend or three joining in for a few tunes at some point. “It certainly is a part that I always look forward to,” Butler says with a grin I can hear over the phone. “It is a beautiful thing to be able to play some acoustic music, enjoy the lovely scenery and look out and know almost every face in the crowd by name. It very much has a family reunion quality to it.” Butler also shines in this stage: with his guitar, his sense of humor, and his often sunburned, loveable, teddy bear complexion and personality. “How it happened the first time was incidental. Having been up all night, and being the only band on the bill, we found ourselves with a lot of time between sets, which this year will be another advantage of having other bands playing. So, I was already playing acoustic around a campfire, the sun was coming up, so I got the system fired up, got on stage and played for, oh, about four or five hours. And I’m not a morning person, either.” Ah, the humor of Butler is unmatched, I tell you.
In looking forward to this year’s festivities, Butler entices those thinking about attending. “Traditionally, we have usually have one or two brand new songs ready to go that get unveiled at Amberland, so there will be some new bust outs on stage. With the band’s that we have playing, there is going to be some collaboration. Another benefit of having other bands play there is that for the first time we will be able to come out and hang out on the other side of the fence. [We’ll] get to enjoy the lights and the stage as a viewer and get to have the pleasure of seeing the fruits of our labor and enjoy it with our audience.” Butler ends in his patented, never in a hurry way, by pausing and graciously summing up Amberland in a perfect synopsis. “The nature of it has always been to go out and get real, true quality time with our audience, our friends, our people.”
If you are in the area, I’d plan on checking out this special event over Memorial Day Weekend as I have a sneaking suspicion that this is the year the secret of Perpetual Groove and Amberland finally gets out.
One Response
The one time I went to Amberland, it’s where I met Brian Bovosa. We watched a great Green Tea and forever are friends now.