Harvest festival tuning up

Fall is a time to romanticize the dark and absurd and then retreat into the comfort of piled leaves, brilliant days and spiced cider. It's a time to gape at the world ablaze while snuggled in sweaters that smell like campfire, to light candles and recount ancient tales, to dream of carnivals and gypsy wagon trains.

It's a time of distinctive sounds, a season that lends itself to traditional music and mangled traditions, to crisp hooks and stripped renditions of longing and nostalgia, to story-songs and rollicking, big-top jigs.

In other words, it's exactly the right season for the tunes that Harvest Music Festival has delivered for eight years atop Mulberry Mountain in the Ozark National Forest.

"We love the weather -- warm days, cool evenings and the foliage changing. It's usually pretty spectacular," says Brett Mosiman, 53, of Pipeline Productions, the company that operates three festivals at the private resort. (There are also Wakarusa and Thunder on the Mountain, both in summer.)

Now called the Yonder Mountain String Band's Harvest Music Festival because five years ago the Colorado-based group hopped onboard as title artists playing three sets, the event technically runs from Thursday afternoon through late Saturday night, but V.I.P. pass-holders and reserve campers can come Wednesday afternoon for extra music.

This year's Harvest Fest features 78 bands, including 13 Arkansas bands who will largely occupy the Roost stage, churning out freak-folk (Tyrannosaurus Chicken), old-time string music (Arkansauce, Coyote Union, Sad Daddy and Foley's Van, the latter famed for an impromptu roadside concert during an I-40 traffic jam), irreverent, punky bluegrass (Mountain Sprout, Shawn James and the Shapeshifters), hip-hop/funk fusion (Cadillac Jackson), psychedelic, introspective southern rock (Swampbird), rootsy-rock covers (Mojo Depot, The Coverlets), reggae (The Irie Lions) and folk-pop (Candy Lee and the Sweets).

Other bands range from the legendary to the newly groundbreaking playing bluegrass, rockabilly, funk and punk, among other genres.

THE BANDS

The Jayhawks, formed in Minneapolis in 1985, influenced acts such as Wilco, Drive-by Truckers and the Avett Brothers. Often considered the original alt-country band, their sound became more diverse when founding member Mark Olson left the band in 1995. The group tours infrequently and the members, now in their 50s, are busy with side projects. But the post-Olson incarnation of The Jayhawks will play Harvest Fest, pulling from three recently re-released albums -- Sound of Lies (1997), Smile (2000) and Rainy Day Music (2003).

"I have a hard time finding a band I can equate to The Jayhawks, because we're not quite as clear-cut as maybe Uncle Tupelo was or Whiskeytown. We're more of a rock band or a pop band, but we have a very heavy folk influence," says original Jayhawk Gary Louris. "We're a weird mutt of music, which to me is usually the most interesting, but it's the hardest to market."

Formed in 2008, Trampled by Turtles, an indie-rock/Americana blend, are Minnesotans of a later generation.

The Carolina Chocolate Drops, from North Carolina, are a band on a mission. Playing primarily traditional songs (as well as a killer cover of Blu Cantrell's "Hit 'Em Up Style"), their goal is to to educate fans about the overlooked black string bands of previous decades.

"I'd be playing a bluegrass song and someone would go, hey, black people don't play bluegrass, and I'd have to be intellectually armed to defend my playing. ... I think that's why we're very academic at our shows and try to teach people and tell lots of stories," says Hubby Jenkins, 28, a multi-instrumentalist for the Chocolate Drops.

He's quick to mention that the American version of the banjo was invented by slaves and widely used in black-face minstrel shows. Bones, which Jenkins plays, are sometimes made of wood or metal rather than actual bone, and were an important percussion instrument for slaves who no longer had access to drums. (Some plantation owners banned drumming to keep slaves from developing a common identity.)

Jenkins lists Mississippi Sheiks, The Memphis Jug Band, Tennessee Chocolate Drops, Lead Belly and the Dallas String Band among the group's influences. The Carolina Chocolate Drops won a Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album for their 2010 record Genuine Negro Jig, and their sounds are clean and powerful, in turns haunting and dance-able.

The Devil Makes Three, whose members came of age in the Boston punk scene, play messy, ragtime-influenced bluegrass with lyrics mentioning plank-walking, mermaids and octopus bartenders, among other material.

Dirtfoot is from Shreveport, the poor man's New Orleans, and they sound like it -- high-energy, rough-and-tumble, gonna-get-down and come up drinking and swinging.

On the dreamier side, there's Trevor Hall, with vaguely political lyrics, a sung-rapped delivery and a world music vibe; the Oh Hello's, who are mellow, harmonic and sweet, with tempered explosions (think Lumineers); Paper Bird, delivering multi-part harmonies and polished, baroque folk; and Elephant Revival, with new-age, Celtic-flavored folk.

If a change of pace is in order, try Making Movies, a bilingual band with Afro-Latin rhythms, the occasional nod to vintage trip-hop and hooks as catchy as anything Vampire Weekend has ever dished; and the hipster, rootsy-rock outfits of Blackfoot Gypsies and Ha Ha Tonka.

GROWING ON THE MOUNTAIN

According to Mosiman, when Harvest Fest began, Pipeline Productions struggled to attract 1,000 people. Last year's festival saw crowds of about 7,000 a day. But even with such growth, the festival is about 16,000 a day short of Wakarusa, which means that there's more space on the mountaintop and no need for satellite stages and campgrounds. (It also makes the festival more handicap-accessible, although the grounds are largely unpaved and turn to mud in a single shower.)

There are nearby hotels but most people camp, and Harvest Fest skews a bit older -- and younger -- "less Mardi-Gras," according to Mosiman, than Waka. (Harvest still pulls from area colleges, but there are more empty nesters and construction-paper crafters, less nudity and substance abusers.)

"There's face painting and art, instrument making and parades, and all kinds of stuff going on for the kids," Mosiman says. There will also be free morning yoga, songwriting and picking contests (sign up online), fire dancers, hula-hoopers, waterfall hikes and dozens of food and merchandise vendors.

But those are just bells and whistles. Harvest Fest is about the music, and this year, the music seems mountaintop-solid.

Style on 10/14/2014