This week's Friday Music is the beginning of a series: Rothbury!

I had the pleasure, on my vacation July 4th week, to attend Rothbury Music Festival in central Michigan.  The first festival to emphasize "being green," Rothbury left its fields and venue floors cleaner than any fest I've attended (quite a few).  Not only did they have the best art design I've ever seen, seven stages and a hundred bands...they held seminars on how to lessen one's carbon footprint, had compost and recycle stations throughout the place manned 24 hours a day, and sold all their drinks in "plastic" cups made of corn - so they were compost-able.

If you're interested to see a few pics of the festival, hit my photo page.

If you'd like to use compost-able cups for your next party, you can buy them here.

That said, on to my first discovery at this great festival: Boombox.

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By conventional standards, a band is four pieces: guitar, bass, keys & drums.  Some bands depart from this structure, usually adding instruments such as saxophones or strings - but seldom does a band subtract from the number of instruments.  I'm no musician, but I would imagine the reason we don't see such a trend is because it would subtract from the complexity of the music.

The 21st century - and the advent of the DJ - has opened the doors for musicians to take liberties with this conventional structure, and create their layers using new methods.

Boombox blurs the line of what a band is.  You'd have no idea, listening to today's music, that the band is only two members:  Zion Godchaux, son of Grateful Dead alum Donna Jean, on guitar and vocals - and DJ Russ Randolph spinning in everything else.

Godchaux grew up a child of the Grateful Dead in the Bay Area before eventually exploring the hypnotic nature of San Francisco's seductive underground rave community.  Randolph's musical upbringing was very different.  A native of a vibrant artistic community buried within humid Alabama, Randolph went on to do production work for Los Lobos and Chuck Berry.

Together, they put forth an eclectic fusion of lick-based grooves and nightclub friction.  True children of both music and modernity, they approach music from the mindset of seasoned musicians *and* talented producers. 

They also put on one *hell* of a show.  Godchaux as a stage presence wears a new costume to every show; at Rothbury he sported oversized sunglasses, funky hat and huge pink feather boa.  Their set in broad daylight in "The Establishment" (a huge circus tent) convinced the audience that it was 3am in a dance club.  It was a slithering, sweating symphony of bodies eager to groove to this great sounds.

Today's Friday Music is their first album - Visions of Backbeat - available for only $8 through iTunes. 

http://www.thisisboombox.com/