Ten Thousand Lakes Festival – 2007

Four days of camping and music sounds like a lot, but when Sunday morning rolled around our little group was not ready for it to end.

There is a lot to like about 10KLF. Soo Pass Ranch is a permanent festival venue, and it is well laid out and very comfortable for this festival. About 15,000 people were spread out among six campsites that surround the “concert bowl.” (By way of contrast – over 100,000 turn out to this same site for “WE Fest” the biggest country music festival in the Midwest. Stucker, one of the masters of ceremony, described it to me as “nuts to butts.”)

Stucker takes a break – and so do we – to listen to Shoeless Revolution
from the shade of the Saloon deck.

Permanent showers and rest rooms, and plentiful water facilities; wooded and lakeside camp spots; lots of cool clothing and merchandise for sale; general stores for emergency needs. And most importantly the sound systems were really great.

Our campsite

If I have any complaint at all, it is only that our camp setting was so nice and comfortable that it took some real motivation to leave it and head over to the bowl for the shows. But we did see some great performances, including very strong sets by:

• Bob Weir and Ratdog
• String Cheese Incident
• Zappa Plays Zappa
• Galactic
• The Tragically Hip
• Toubab Krewe
• Everyone Orchestra

Ratdog on the Main Stage, and joined by Keller Williams

Field Stage was the secondary “main stage”

Toubab Krewe on the wonderfully shaded Barn Stage

Hippies of all ages were in attendance, but as you would imagine this was generally a younger generation of hippies. Music officially ended at 3am, but the party continued in the camps until the sun rose. I’m a heavy sleeper, so got all the rest I needed. Light sleepers might want to bring all their arsenal of sleep aids!

Until next time. . .