Nateva Fest: Latest Updates, Campground Fail (?), LMB on the Scene

We’re about two weeks away from one of the biggest live music weekends since, well, this past weekend with Bonnaroo 2010 and Phish’s return to the stage. That’s right, Fourth of July weekend is approaching fast and while your friendly editor and team will be up in the Sierra Mountains in Northern Cali for the wonderous festival that is High Sierra Music Festival, we’ll also have a team up in Maine attending the first-ever Nateva Festival.

The guy that got the whole thing started, Frank Chandler, has been making the media rounds to really get the word out there….

Newton resident organizing big jam-band festival in Maine [The Daily News Tribune]

Named after his children, Nate and Eva, the Nateva Festival – being held on Fourth of July weekend in Oxford, Maine – may be the biggest thing to come to New England in a long time.

Featuring headliners such as Furthur, the Flaming Lips, Moe, Passion Pit and George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic, the festival boasts an eclectic mix of indie music, jam bands, blues and alternative music that is sure to satisfy all in attendance.

They’ve still got some work to do to get things finalized, but weekend passes just sold out and they’re looking at a “full festival” thanks to their amazing inaugural lineup.

‘A muddy mess:’ Nateva Fest campsite ruled off limits [sunjournal.com]

A 15-acre hillside at the Oxford Fairgrounds slated for camping during the three-day Nateva Festival in July will not be used because the site has been cleared and excavated to the point of becoming unstable — “a muddy mess,” Planning Board Chairman Dennis Gray said Tuesday.

“It’s an ecological disaster waiting to happen,” Gray said. The land was being cleared to use as a campground for some of the 14,000 concert-goers expected to descend on the Oxford Hills next month for the Nateva Festival and for future festival and event use.

Go here for a chance to win tickets from our friends at Consequence of Sound. Also, drop some comments if you’re attending because we want to hear from you while you’re at the festival! Our man Kevin Fuller will be on the scene shooting his favorites at the festival, so go ahead and subscribe to @FullerVisuals now so you’ll have live updates from Nateva as they happen. To that end, make sure you’ve got me on “follow’ status for any updates from High Sierra and stay on the @livemusicblog for summaries and retweets from the best in live music that weekend. Yehaw.

Update: I got an email from Frank Chandler, the guy running the festival, as it seems that the news reporting issues at the campgrounds has nothing to do with this year’s festival but rather on future land use:

I just want to point out that the article written by Leslie Dixon of the Lewiston Sun Journal is inaccurate, misleading and poorly researched. The Fairgrounds is looking for a permit to develop a hill in Norway, Maine and it was determined by the planning board that the area may not be suitable for longterm development and it was decided to table the application for the time being. Nateva is a tenant of the Fairground and has nothing to do with this application process, nor do we have any real interest in the outcome. If Miss Dixon had spoken with the Norway Town Manager or the Norway Chief of Police, she would have heard from them what I heard today, which to paraphrase was something along the lines of ‘Nateva has the appropriate license from the State of Maine and the Town of Norway to hold their event and use all of the land that they have leased’.