Over the last week or so, we’ve been hearing a slew of new rumors about potential new festivals in 2011. Some involve Phish, some Dave Matthews Band, some include both bands, while others sound like they’ll be multi-band events in the traditional festival style (e.g. Bonnaroo, Coachella, etc…).
The two most credible rumors are for multi-day events at:
Watkins Glen Motor Speedway, July 4th Weekend
and
Bader Field, a site near Atlantic City, NJ, some time in June
Bands That Jam has been all over the Watkins Glen rumor, with sources primarily suggesting the event would be for a standard Phish festival, like Festival 8, IT, Lemonwheel, etc…
Our friends at Hidden Track have been on top of some of the rumors, including the latest for Atlantic City, at a spot outside of town called Bader Field. The Atlantic City Weekly had this from the Mayor:
Langford broke some news at the event, saying that a big-time promoter is working to put on a three-day music festival at Bader Field in June. One source says the three days of music would feature some of the best bands in the “jam band” genre.
We recently mentioned DMB’s short announcement about doing their own festivals in 2011, so this might match up nicely with the newly-proposed spot outside of AC.
And today, DMB bassist Stefan Lassard chimed in with some serious fuel for the fire with a single Tweet asking: “DMB & Pearl Jam or DMB & Phish?”
And if that’s not enough for the rumor mill, we’re also hearing a few other potential sites being floated around for other large, jam-heavy events, including Chicago’s Grant Park as well as the Gorge in Washington State. So far, we aren’t seeing anything super credible for these last two, but we’ll keep eyes and ears open.
One thing’s for sure, combining the Phish and DMB fans bases might not be the best match-up. From the outside, the DMB and Phish fan bases often get lumped together as the standard, happy-hippy jamband types. But as most of us know, when you dig deeper, there are some key divisions that might not make this combination work all that well. Check out the responses to YEMblog’s informal polling of Phish fans for one example. The Barn Presents has actually dug even deeper into the divisions with a post on the subject, including a link to this 2009 article from the River Front Times.
It all makes for some fun speculation. Plus, all the message board bickering and twittering amongst the various fan bases kinda makes me want to kick back with some popcorn and watch everyone battle it out. This is going to get silly.
So, who’s got more fuel for this fire?
