Real Human Moments

We arrived at High Sierra at 4:30 am and were first in line for will call the next day. High Sierra is a smaller yet prestidgious music festival in northern California. Quincy California, the host town of the festival, is a small logging town up in the Sierra mountains. There were around 4 stages at the event and several other side stages. We camped in the Shady Grove camping area and had our own stage right under the pines.

The weekend was full of great music, peoples and atmosphere. There were some awesome bands playing such as The Slip, Les Claypool, Disco Biscuits and many more amazing smaller ones. The stages were all of decent size yet still provided an intimate atmosphere to dancing, listening or sitting in the distance. Although there was a heat wave in the area yielding temperatures of 110 degrees people were still out there at almost every show.

We had very nice and polite neighbors mostly with kids, although we were also next to a group of travelers from Ohio. There really was no sketchy characters to be had the whole weekend. People looked out for each other, there was no reports or theft or problems with the police. You really couldn’t ask for much more.

The coolest part about the festival was the lack of seperation between artists and fans. The artists had a camping section that they kept open to everyone, or even some just camped in with everyone else. During the day between big sets, or late night after the big acts you could walk around the camping areas and find “sneak attack” stages everywhere. Blue Turtle Seduction played ontop of their RV drawing a huge crowd. After Saturday nights show, the guitarist from The Slip and some other musicians were jamming in a tent till late night then just got out and were talking to everyone, answering questions.

When Monday came around, despite the fact we were hot, sweaty, dirty and hungry it was still hard to leave that awesome environment. I’ll be back High Sierra.

Jimbo