It’s just two short weeks to Suwannee Hulaween in Live Oak, Florida and the daily schedule is out. Hulaween is one of North America’s premiere multi-faceted boutique festival experiences, and is celebrating its seventh year with a mix of 100+ live and electronic artists on five stages to soundtrack a fully immersive creative journey. Of course, I’ll be viewing and videoing as many sets as I physically can focused on the funk and jazz end of the spectrum. The lineup is stacked and here’s the day-by-day rundown of my targets for video.
Thursday arrival late and I’ll be off the beaten path most of the time at the Campground Stage. Starting off with Electric Kif at 7 pm – this dynamic funk fusion band out of Miami has a terrific new album “Jefe” which is on our heavy rotation and looking forward to seeing some of the new cuts live.
My ATL homies, Space Kadet, follow at 9:15 as they bring their electronic space funk to Live Oak.
I’ll close out the first day with Polyrhythmics at 11:30. I’ve never seen this band but they’ve been “on the list” for a long time. With a FB description of, “Imagine a hybrid of The Meters with The JB Horns meeting Fela Kuti when Africa ’70 was backing him during his incredibly creative 1970s,” how could I not want to check them out big time?
Friday is, by far, the most stacked day of the festival regardless of your musical taste or interest and runs from 2 pm to 4:30 am! This is great for fans but it pains me to say that I’ll have to forego some video to capture others. As of now, here’s the planned capture –
The Motet at 3:30 pm is a sure bet on the main Meadow stage. This Denver-based funk crew is as dynamic and solid as they come. What a great way to wake up and see them rip through their ever growing catalog.
Definitely want to catch at least some of Robert Walter’s 20th Congress at The Patch as he bring his heavy organ grooves to the fest. He’s been on the hit list for a while. It pains me to miss Andy Frasco & The U.N. as his sets are always the wildest most raucous of any event he’s at. Hopefully, there will be some secret campsite fun with Andy and the bad boys?
Next up for full set video will be the funk lords of Lettuce back on The Meadow stage. Their 2019 album Elevate is among the tops of the year for funk and the band is tight as a fist!
After that, I plan to chill for a little bit and bounce between Tom Morello, PPPP and Tauk before ambling down the The Patch to blast off a little with STS9.
The planned last full set video of the day will be Break Science Live Band at 10 pm at the Spirit Lake Stage. Caught most of their set at last year’s Hula with about 20 minutes of video and it’s one that I’ve been waiting to see full stop ever since. This is a sleeper set that you don’t want to miss!
Who knows how I’ll close out Friday — Marc Rebillet will be wild and crazy I’m sure and I’m thinking that’s the move.
Plan to get there early to catch the reggae legends Steel Pulse at 3 pm on The Meadow Stage. I’ve been following these guys since the ’80s and their terrific sets at Reggae Sunsplash! Next up will be LPT the dynamic latin afrobeat band out of Miami that I first caught at Suwannee Rising this spring. This is also my first conflict of the day as love to catch The Hip Abduction who’s also on at the same time, we I did recently catch them in Atlanta.
Again, I’ll probably relax some in the afternoon and gear up for the evening catching some of Asheville’s upcoming soul-funk band Travers Brothership before closing out with as much of Anderson.Paak & The Free Nationals that I can possibly muster.
Sunday will be a great day to wind down although there are some great acts to follow. Probably will start out catching some Ella Jet & Future Soul on the Campground Stage before heading over and catching the full set of Ripe at Spirit Lake at 4:45. Ripe is again a sleeper set, one of my favorite new up and coming soul/funk bands out of Boston with some great vocals and a ripping horn section.
Definitely want to catch as much as I can of Erica Falls, the super talented New Orleans vocalist who’s been the main singer for Galactic over the last few years. Finally, I had the chance to catch Star Kitchen in Atlanta a couple of weeks ago and Marc Brownstein (Disco Biscuits) funk band is an all-star band that brings the heat to close out our video targets before swinging over for the JRAD finale.