I just got back from Burning Man 2011 where me and 100 other like-minded folks started a new Live Music Theme Camp that created quite a stir out there amongst the thousands of DJ/Electronic music camps, art cars and sound systems. I joined an incredible lineup of talented vocalists and instrumentalists including some familiar Jazz Mafia names like Rich Armstrong, Jeanne Geiger, Shaina Evoniuk, Acacia Quien, Brandon Werlin, Chris Fletcher (longtime JM Sound engineer) with the new faces of Finn Kelly, Chris Paxton, Wesley Frederick and an incredible group of singers from LA who had their stuff down TIGHT! We also had an insane blues band from Chicago, many accomplished dancers, theatrical performers and stage hands/builders. The whole thing was put together by Uriah Duffy and our homie Trance Thompson (the leader of the vocalists from LA) and our long-time pal Craig Arant, with lots of help from everyone else involved. For all you “Non-Burners” it’s useful to note that there is no money or compensation exchanged at the Burn; everything we did out there was a gift to our fellow humans in attendance. All the equipment we brought was ours (and is now a very different dusty color) and everything had to be brought there, built and transported home by us. You can’t leave anything there, especially trash.

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After last year’s “Burn,” many of you got together; some newer burners, and some people who’d been going for over a decade and decided that it was our obligation to bring more live music to this mega epic event (which has a reputation for being inundated with electronic music DJs). It’s even rare to hear a DJ spin live music…. Wait, what? Yes, the one day when a truck pulled up blasting a song by Sly and the Family Stone, it was like “Whoa!, they’re actually playing an MP3 of “live” music!! Crazy!” With 60,000 people in attendance, you might go a whole week without running across a single live instrument or vocalist on a real stage and many people find that kind of mind boggling, so that’s where our inspiration came from.

This year was a little better than recent years for live performance; there were a few theme camps with stages that featured live music many times a day. The stuff I saw was definitely not for everyone, my friends weren’t feelin it but it was cool to see the pendulum possibly starting to swing in the opposite direction a little. Our camp, “Crossroads,” featured nightly performances of a 15 piece all-star band of musicians from LA, SF, Chicago and beyond, rocking all sorts of good party music with lots of horn solos and ripping 5 part vocal arrangements. Most people said they’d never seen anything like it out there and we were all very proud of the hundreds of people who came to our shows every night freaking out that there is finally something live on the playa that can compete with some of the mega parties out there.

We basically constructed a small town, complete with Bar, Lounge, 30′ x 50′ 2-story Stage, Sound System, Lights, Sculptures and room for 100 people to camp behind it all. The stage was beautiful and put to shame most “real” venues where we’ve performed! (Well, except for the sound system, we need to work on that for next year!)

One of the highlights included a rare sighting of Uriah Duffy and his brother Dorian slaying it onstage together, rocking improvised synchronized moves and blazing licks. Another infamous event happened after our Tuesday night show when a friends “Art Car” showed up and 30 of us piled on. We cruised to the “French Quarter Camp” and proceeded to rock a huge, renegade, brass band-style set at their Fat Tuesday Party – It was one of the craziest moments of the whole week and I hadn’t played the trombone that loud in months. It felt incredible to do our thing out there in the desert and bring smiles to so many faces who normally wouldn’t get the experience of a live brass band in that setting.

Perhaps the biggest highlight on our stage was an elaborately choreographed and costumed burlesque performance by nearly a dozen beautiful and talented ladies from our camp; it blew minds and will definitely be a bigger part of the Crossroads experience next year!

Also, if you get a chance and about 10 minutes, ask me about the impromptu wedding we played/performed out in the desert. It was truly unbelievable!

The Crossroads “experiment” succeeded beyond our wildest expectations and we’ll definitely be returning bigger, better and featuring a wider range of music for the people out there who like to see real humans making sound vibrations on stage, in front of their eyes, and into their ear holes.