Music festival coming to Warren County
BY JIM BOHEN
DAILY RECORD
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Source: www.dailyrecord.com

The ancient Mayans considered the year 2012 significant, and so does musician David Bryson. The Mayan calendar comes to an end that year, and it has cosmic meaning in other cultures as well, said Bryson, who adopted it for the name of a music festival he's staging in Warren County.

The Evolve 2012 Music Festival will take place Sept. 8 and 9 at Kids Camp, a 125-acre private campground in Frelinghuysen Township.

The featured bands and musicians include Kings in Disguise, The Roamin' Gabriels, Swampadelica, Pico Dada, Hemp Bag Monk, Jungle Jazz Initiative, Natural Breakdown, Subcommittee, Peter Biedermann , Salazar, Rhagavendra, One Eyed Jack, Breadbox Band, Juggling Suns, DJ Element, Mr. Tumnus' Sleepy Tea, Lima Research Society, The Brian McLaughlin Band, Antonin, Mike Lawlor Band, The Unruly Pilgrims, Awry, Maire, Elastic Pyramid, Soft Perimeter, The Mule, The Shannon Fordney Band and The Fellowship Project. Bands are subject to change.

Besides music, the festival will feature artists, poets, craftspeople, performance artists and guest speakers. Other activities include a stone circle, rock-wall climbing, face painting and henna, fire and dance performances, visual projects, drum circles, yoga, lectures and workshops.

The programs and workshops will focus on building community, ecologically sustainable lifestyles and interpersonal growth, according to the festival's Web site.

"In times like these that we live in, with so much strife, warfare and doubt about the future, people are looking for something to hold on to," Bryson said.

Bryson, who has been playing his own music since about 2000, also hosts a weekly open mike at the Grist Mill Café in Andover.

"Last year I wanted to get the bands I had been meeting together for a full day event," he said. On short notice he staged the Sunsplash Dance Party at Common Grounds Café in Franklin and drew about 250 people.

"That whetted my appetite for getting local music into higher visibility," he said.

More recently, at a potluck dinner, he met the organizers of Kids Camp, a nonprofit that each summer brings about 200 children a day from Newark to the country. During the school year, the camp is a field trip destination for fifth-grade classes from Newark.

"They do art, nature, swimming, hiking," said Joe Tighe, director of Kids Camp. "We try to teach them about the natural world and ecology. We also have challenge courses, obstacle courses, that teach them about teamwork, how to be good to one another, to be respectful."

The music festival is a benefit for the camp; Bryson said he hopes to raise $5,000.

"We want to make the camp a 100 percent sustainable place," Tighe said, "so that all the money that comes in for programming goes to programming instead of paying our electric bill."

Bryson said he hopes to stage more festivals each year leading up to 2012.

"There is a general consensus that we are moving toward a time of transition as a species," he said. "A lot of people are hoping for a big step up in terms of the evolution of human consciousness."

The idea, he said, is to "move out of a dualistic mindset into a more unitary point of view. There is essentially one thing that is, and we are all part of that thing."

Some of the musicians share his interest in the year 2012.

"There are all kinds of things that point to it being a very auspicious year," said Tim Carbone of the band Kings in Disguise, which will headline on the festival's second day.

Carbone, who also plays in the popular Railroad Earth, said this is Kings in Disguise's first festival in almost 10 years; the group only plays two or three times a year because of the members' other commitments.

"The Mayan calendar literally ends on Dec. 21, 2012. So all throughout Mayan history they assumed that that was going to be the end of the world," Carbone said. "There's another group that sees it as the beginning of another era, as opposed to the end."

Bryson agreed with that interpretation "Human history is not a phenomenon which is being pushed forward to some conclusion, but rather being drawn to some great culmination," he said.