Yet another beautifully sunny day graced us on Friday at Yonder Mountain String Band's Harvest Music Festival. Not a drop of rain and enough sunshine to charge cell phones (a rarity among the few most recent Harvest festivals.) There is such happiness floating through the campsites and stages, families are playing and wrangling children, and barbeque nachos are in my near future. Life is good.

A mainstay in the New Orleans music scene, Papa Mali has shared the stage with the likes of Bill Kreutzmann, Willie Nelson, Henry Butler and a diverse array of other musicians. He won’t quit playing music unless it starts to feel like work, and it hasn’t yet since the mid-70s when Papa Mali first graced the stage. He has a new album coming out very soon, which has already been recorded and will be out at the very first of the year. Follow Papa Mali on social media to get the scoop.

On August 1st at the Beekman Beer Garden, Jerry Garcia’s birthday will be celebrated with sets by two artists connected to the Grateful Dead legacy:  7 Walkers, featuring Bill Kreutzmann of the Dead, and guitarist Steve Kimock, who has performed with the Other Ones, Phil Lesh & Friends and RatDog.  Hard-touring Brooklyn-based roots collective Yarn will open the show.  Located within the South Street Seaport

As we drove into this year's 10KLF at about 1:30 in the afternoon, I thought we'd have to wait to get into our campground. We'd even gotten some subs to tide us over while we waited. Instead, we were the first car at the gate at that moment in time, no line, and not many people in the field at the entrance. We noticed that the Viking and Blue Ox campgrounds were empty.

I almost didn't go to Wakarusa this year.  I had sworn never to go to Bonnaroo, the venue just being too large in my opinion, but the scheduled acts were just too sick to turn down.  Not thinking that I could swing both weekends, I made a hard decision based mostly on financial reasons.