Electric Forest’s Day 2 groove: From Skrillex to String Cheese to Charles Bradley to The Accidentals (Story, video, photos)

Day 1 at Electric Forest was about fans. Day 2 was about bands, with Traverse City’s Accidentals making a significant splash while being awed by the wondrous spectacle of this festival in the woods.

 

Suffice to say, Savannah Buist and Katie Larson of The Accidentals haven’t experienced anything quite like Electric Forest.

Take their late afternoon set Friday as guests with the funky, jam-oriented all-star Everyone Orchestra on the new Jubilee Stage – a tented, discotheque that drew thousands of wildly garbed, dance-happy festivalgoers for a make-it-up-as-you-go set led by conductor and singer Matt Butler.

Butler described it as “mixing it up” with musicians from different internationally acclaimed acts such as The Werks and Dopapod “making music as a team” and making “a dream come true. …This is perfect.”

The grinning teens from Traverse City’s Accidentals certainly reveled in the opportunity, earning roars of approval for Larson’s lively cellos leads and Buist’s violin work, along with some standout (and gigantic) vocals, quickly cultivating a new and ever more diverse fan base for their genre-spanning talents.

“I feel really lucky that they gave us a chance to collaborate,” Buist said immediately afterward back stage, part of the band’s five-show schedule during the four-day festival. “We had a blast.”

“That was the ultimate,” added Larson, noting she was anxious yet thrilled about getting to “create a musical experience” with complete strangers in front of an approving, big crowd.

“I was comfortable,” insisted Buist, “but I had no perception that any of this is real.”

Said Larson: “I thought, ‘Am I dreaming?’ ”

It was no dream, just another feather in the cap of the trio, which seemed completely in its element later the same night with drummer Michael Dause and special guest, Grand Rapids rapper Rick Chyme, on the more intimate Grand Artique stage with a buoyant, attentive crowd that twirled and swirled to the band’s constantly shifting music. Afterward, fans gathered around the musicians to ask questions and collect autographs.

The Accidentals weren’t the only Michigan band to make a splash, though they likely made the biggest impact of that handful of acts of among the 40,000 or so festival-goers who have nearly unlimited options with more than 100 bands – most of them of the EDM or jam-band variety – playing a bevy of stages.

THE RAGBIRDS AND FLINT EASTWOOD ALSO ROCK THE FOREST

Earlier in the day, Ann Arbor’s The Ragbirds got things started on one of the festival’s largest stages – Ranch Arena – for a small, rapt audience. Many likely were unfamiliar with the band when it kicked things off, but they rapidly embraced the rootsy, folk/world music band, especially with Erin Zindle sawing away impressively on the fiddle.

And on Thursday — opening day — Detroit’s Flint Eastwood created a stir of its own for a compact crowd on the Observatory stage.

With new stages and a new layout (including a change in the entrance and camping), this year’s Electric Forest isn’t without issues – exceptionally long lines of cars getting into the site, exceptionally long lines of festivalgoers entering the venue, spotty wifi and cell service, limited signage, no paper maps or schedules, confusion among workers and volunteers providing information to attendees and media representatives.

But none of it seems to faze fans – many who’ve come from all corners of the country to immerse themselves in the magical and unusual music festival in the woods. They came to soak up the peace, love, music and general grooviness of Electric Forest – dressed colorfully, creatively, or in some cases, not really dressed at all.

“It’s all worth it,” said first-time forester Hanna Calhoun, 21, of Topeka, Kansas, noting her group waited three hours in line just to get into the campground on Thursday. “Once you get in, it was way more than I dreamed of it being.”

Chris Dabrowski, 21, of Clarkston, came back for his second year, marveling at how much he enjoyed the festival in 2014.

“How can you not? The people, the vibe, everything,” he said. “It’s an experience.”

Indeed, it’s the kind of singular experience that compels many to transform their appearance through makeup or costumes and enter another world for the occasion.

They carry totem poles topped with everything from giraffes to cacti to cartoon characters to peace signs (to help identify their group) or signs proclaiming, “Love Life,” “You Know Why I’m Here,” “Because Acid” and “This Is Where I Feel Alive.”

MEDICAL CALLS AND ‘SOME ARRESTS’

Of course, there are examples of party excesses: Michigan State Police report that medical tents have been “overrun”: More than 10 attendees were taken for treatment for illness, intoxication and drug overdoses the first night, with similar reports on Friday. Police said “some arrests” have been made and indicated more details would be provided after the festival is completed.

For festival veterans, it’s a four-day marathon of late-night revelry, where pacing is paramount.

Many attendees are there principally for the mega-names in the music festival universe, with Electric Forest hosts the String Cheese Incident playing extended sets three nights in a row and EDM stars such as Lotus and Skrillex firing up late-night throngs, as well as funk’s Lettuce. Indeed, that ebullient, head-bobbing throng for Skrillex on Friday was perhaps the largest yet for any stage at the fifth-year festival.

But there were less obvious gems, too, from The Accidentals and Chyme doing their eclectic thing in the forest’s Grand Artique to New Orleans’ Preservation Hall Jazz Band (with special guest, Lyrics Born) in the new nightclub-like Hangar to soul man Charles Bradley & His Extraordinaires getting all retro-soulful and James Brown-like on the Jubilee Stage after midnight. (Sadly, it was a smaller crowd for Bradley than it should have been, considering the stellar show that this powerfully voiced, vintage singer unleashed.)

And this year’s version of Sherwood Forest, an art- and light-bedecked oasis in the woods with bars, stages, hammocks and gathering spots, stands out yet again with its “future tribal” theme, lasers and psychedelic milieu that draws the hippie contingent like a magnet, especially after dark.

“It’s a collaboration of all different genres of art,” Buist said of Electric Forest, “which is amazing to witness.”

Indeed it is.

VIDEO: Electric Forest 2015, Day 2

PHOTO GALLERY: Electric Forest 2015 (By Anthony Norkus and Local Spins)

Copyright 2015, Spins on Music LLC