Tickets are now on sale for the May 31-June 2 event on the Hoxeyville festival grounds in northern Michigan, with Billy Strings, Rayland Baxter and more also slated to perform.
MARCH UPDATE — Added to the final lineup for Camp Greensky: The Go Rounds, The War and Treaty. May Erlewine, The Wood Brothers and Marco Benevento. Details online at campgreensky.com.
Support our coverage of
West Michigan's music scene
Northern Michigan’s inaugural Camp Greensky Music Festival today announced the first wave of artists joining hosts Greensky Bluegrass on its stage.
Phish-ing for a Festival? Mike Gordon will play Camp Greensky. (Photo/Derek Ketchum)
Greensky will play all three nights of the festival and joining them on the top of the bill will be heavy-hitters Jeff Tweedy (Wilco), Mike Gordon (Phish) and Trampled by Turtles, a band that has been on hiatus since the fall of 2016 and earlier this week announced plans to release a new album and begin playing shows again in May.
Tickets are on sale now for the festival — scheduled to take place May 31–June 2 on the Hoxeyville grounds outside Wellston. Other artists that were announced on the initial slate of performers include a handful of acts that have spent ample time on the road with Greensky in recent years: Billy Strings, Fruition, Rayland Baxter, Joshua Davis and Cris Jacobs Band.
More artists are expected to be announced soon.
“It’s nice to be curating music that we like and sort of highlighting the eclecticism of our taste and being able to be in control of the other elements,” said Paul Hoffman, mandolinist for Greensky Bluegrass and one of the band’s primary songwriters. “We’ve been to a lot of festivals and there are things that we like about them all and it’s nice to have the chance to incorporate some of those ideas into one thing that’s sort of our own.”
‘NOTHING TO OVERLAP SO PEOPLE CAN ENJOY ALL OF THE MUSIC’
Among those elements that will be incorporated, Hoffman said, is a continuous music schedule “that will start early, but not too early” and “a program that allows for nothing to overlap so that people will have the opportunity to enjoy all of the music and not have to skip anything.”
Curating Music they Like: Greensky Bluegrass (Photo/Derek Ketchum)
“We think everything we booked and everyone we are having there is worthy of checking out,” Hoffman said. “We want people to see it all. We didn’t book any bands to occupy time while another thing is happening.”
Similar to Hoxeyville Music Festival, Camp Greensky will be spread out over two stages. Greensky has been a mainstay at Hoxeyville over the years and that festival has been somewhat synonymous with the band, almost as much as the Bell’s Beer Garden Opener had been. Prior to this year, Greensky had headlined the garden opener the first weekend of June for 13 consecutive years.
“We decided a while ago that the Bell’s Beer Garden Opener was just going to sort of grow into the festival and that’s why it’s the same weekend,” Hoffman said. “That event was so special … we just sort of feel like we had outgrown it. That ticket became really hard to get and we don’t want to turn people away, so we grew the event into something bigger.
“In my mind it’s still the garden opener, it’s just in a different place.”
Tickets for Camp Greensky are $175 for adults, $50 for children ages 6-12 and free of charge for children 5 and under. Information about RV camping as well as RV tickets are also available now at www.campgreensky.com.
The Hoxeyville Music Festival will celebrate its 16th year on the same 85-plus-acre site inside the Manistee National Forest Aug. 17-19. Early bird tickets are onsale now for that festival and a lineup announcement is expected to come in March.
Get Hoxeyville tickets online here.
VIDEO: Jeff Tweedy (Live for NPR Music’s 10th Anniversary)
VIDEO: Mike Gordon “OGOGO in Studio”
Copyright 2018, Spins on Music LLC
