The 12th anniversary music festival between Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids continued Saturday and Sunday with inspiring performances by regional acts. A recap with photos at Local Spins.
Molly on the Orchard Stage: One of many Saturday highlights at Buttermilk. (Photo/Chelsea Whitaker)
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Positivity reigned at Buttermilk Jamboree on Saturday — bold, defiant, compassionate and hopeful.
Changing perception through language, acknowledging your own power, and channeling it to help others and be present among them took center stage as artists took to the many Circle Pines Center performance spaces.
The schedule and premises were packed, but still retained its forest idyll.
For Sue Perez, a longtime returning festivalgoer from Kalamazoo, Buttermilk draws her in thanks to Circle Pines Center’s gorgeous site in Delton. P.J., a first-timer at the event, described the festival as a “good mix” of busy and peaceful.
Happy Crowd: Jamboree-goers on Saturday afternoon. (Photo/Cassandra Kipp)
On the Orchard Stage, Michigan native and Nashville-based singer-songwriter Rachael Davis showed off her original compositions. Late-morning stories and a buttery voice surrounded songs like “Lazarus,” about hope in death.
Peter Madcat Ruth and the C.A.R.Ma Quartet’s groovy combination of country, classic rock and blues made a laid-back space to chill in early afternoon.
To the left at the Garden Stage, The Missing Generation combined spongy drums that absorbed moody guitar shreds for a more electric sound than their surroundings.
Hawk and Owls taught festivalgoers to square dance at Sugar Bush, low-stakes and fun, and Jive at Five — actually at 4 p.m. — filled the dance floor with big band jazz.
Other Saturday highlights:
• Great Lakes Brass — The troupe performed their second set of the Jamboree at noon, leading a sunny parade of festivalgoers around the main hub’s perimeter just like last year. The main difference was the size of the massive following crowd. Kalamazoo’s Jared Selner (Saxsquatch), the band’s saxophone player, called it a “fantastic experience” with a “buncha good artists, buncha good music,” making the forest much better than open-space festivals.
• Seeger Stories and Songs — Adam Gottlieb and crew performed a Garden Stage tribute to Pete Seeger, who himself performed at Circle Pines Center in the late 1950s. The “Stories” section of their set came in Gottlieb’s thorough explanation of their folk tunes’ backstories, the events they referenced, and Seeger’s history. For instance, they played “Michael Row the Boat Ashore,” interspersed with its story as a spiritual developed by recently freed people during the Civil War. They took the extra step of all folk work by adding verses or lines addressing the moment, specifically the Palestinian genocide.
Funking It Up: Funktion closed the Orchard State on Saturday. (Photo/Chelsea Whitaker)
• Molly — Displaying tracks such as “Shine” off of her 2019 EP, Molly’s hot pink outfit wasn’t the only attention grabber of her set. She provided lush vocals in pop form, a fascinating watch: her physicality, grooving and creating a vocal landscape, carried energy and love for her music like an aura in perfect control.
• Funktion – The Southwest Michigan funk band revved up fans for Saturday’s final set on the Orchard Stage with a high-energy salvo that had tons of people dancing as the sun went down.
Throughout it all, there was an air of collaboration, togetherness and inspiration: The keyboardist for Funktion also played impromptu with Jive at Five; J Hobbs encouraged the power of positive language with “music that empowers”; Rose Compton, organizer of August’s Shagbark Music and Arts Festival, also served as merchandise coordinator for the Jamboree, noting simply that, “Everyone here feels like a family.”
On Sunday, Michigan songbird May Erlewine closed the three-day festival with real aplomb. As photographer Derek Ketchum put it: “No better group to close out the incredible weekend than May Erlewine and band. It was a hot one; everyone left at the end had found some shade whether it be from underneath a tree or one of the tents on the outer fringe of the main stage. Even as hot as it was, everyone came to their feet at the end and danced along with May.”
PHOTO GALLERY: Buttermilk Jamboree (Day 2)
Photos by Chelsea Whitaker and Cassandra Kipp
Photos by Derek Ketchum
