Maine’s first ever Nateva Festival, featuring local and national talent, created a culture all its own on Fourth of July weekend. 

 

By mid afternoon on July 3, the confines of the large barn building that housed the Port City Music Hall Stage were sweltering. One of three stages at the first ever Nateva Music & Camping Festival in Oxford, Maine, the room seemed to magnify the summer heat. A swarm of damp bodies danced, howled and sweated as music ricocheted off the concrete walls, compounding the humidity.  

 

Onstage, Amesbury-based jam band The Brew was finishing up its set at the three-day festival. Guitarist David Drouin looked like he’d been pelted with water balloons as he tore through a series of solos.

 

“I don’t think I’ve ever sweated like that in my whole life. It was streaming off me like a fountain,” Drouin later said as he and drummer Kelly Kane cooled off in the band’s air-conditioned van. 

 

“I like to think of it as giving my drums a bath,” Kane added.

 

Despite competition from the Drive-By Truckers, who performed simultaneously on one of the festival’s main stages, The Brew coaxed a generous crowd into the muggy building. That crowd was rewarded with an inspired set of rock, a cyclone of improvisation that rivaled the world’s most exalted jam bands. Drouin, sopping though he was, executed riveting guitar solos book-ended by percussive explosions from Kane. Joe Plante bobbed enthusiastically on bass and Chris Plante supplemented the sound on keys, bringing the music to shrill, orgasmic crescendos.

 

For bands like The Brew, who play “shit-tons” of festivals, as Drouin put it, this is the ideal atmosphere for a show. Many of the audience members, lured to the festival by headliners moe. on July 2, The Flaming Lips on July 3, and Further on July 4 (featuring former Grateful Dead members Bob Weir and Phil Lesh) experienced The Brew for the first time, and the crowd’s intensity helped fuel the band’s performance.

 

“A lot of people that normally wouldn’t see us are gonna see us,” Kane said of playing festivals like Nateva. “It feeds lots of energy to us.”

 

Brett Wilson, lead singer and guitarist for New Hampshire-based reggae band Roots of Creation, said he prefers festivals to solo concerts. “I like playing festivals a lot more. Everybody’s loosened up already. It’s really cool,” he said.

 

Roots of Creation had played on the Port City stage a few hours prior to The Brew and enjoyed a similarly reception. The group’s closing jam featured a techno-reggae segment of the “Star Wars” theme that sent fans into a frenzy. A tie-dyed tornado spun through the room, spraying perspiration like a sprinkler. 

 

Wilson and his band mates planned to stick around for the entire weekend and check out some of the other 50 bands (including numerous acts from northern New England). Sipping a cold beer backstage after his set, Wilson relished the time to relax.  

 

“Most of the time, we have to pack up and leave. This weekend we took off just to hang out and party,” he said. 

 

The Brew, too, looked forward to spending some downtime at the festival. Drouin and Kane watched through the windows of their van as dreadlocked hippies sprayed each other with squirt guns. Drouin appreciated the celebratory atmosphere.

 

“It harkens back to the beautiful days of the ’60s,” he said. “There’s a level of freedom and true humanitarian living. People help you out.”

 

Although Drouin is only in his mid 20s and never personally experienced those “beautiful days of the ’60s,” it’s easy to imagine a comparable environment 40 years ago. With more than 100 acres of grassy land, the Oxford Fairgrounds provide ample space for weekend camping. Parking areas became tent communities bustling with activity. Hundreds of others camped a few miles down the road outside the Oxford Plains Speedway, where the Grateful Dead famously played two shows in July of 1988. Buses shuttled people back and forth from the remote campsite to the festival 24 hours a day. 

 

Within the camping areas, a communal system of commerce reigned. Despite security’s efforts to search every person and vehicle that entered the premises, lawless entrepreneurs roamed the grounds, audibly advertising “nuggets,” “doses,” “shrooms,” “rolls” and “molly.” It was like being in the stands of a baseball game, except instead of hotdogs and peanuts, the wandering vendors offered hash tootsie rolls and Ketamine. Some of the campers didn’t even have tickets to the actual show, but hung around the campground listening to the Dead on car radios. 

 

Those who did make it into the fairgrounds wandered between the Port City stage and the two massive main stages, which were surrounded in a vast perimeter by food vendors, a beer garden and a Ferris wheel. After dark, a group of fire dancers set up in the middle of the field, twirling flaming chains and batons. Others danced about hypnotically with light-up hula-hoops.

 

On Saturday night, The Flaming Lips took the main stage and treated the crowd to a psychedelic feast, complete with huge smoke machines and confetti cannons. Front man Wayne Coyne, as he is known to do, entered the show in a man-sized rubber sphere and later donned giant hand gloves with green lasers shooting from the palms. By midnight, the audience seemed to be running out of gas, and Coyne repeatedly implored the crowd to ramp up its enthusiasm.

 

Former Seacoast resident Nate Wilson, who helms the Nate Wilson Group, said the party atmosphere at festivals adds an element of surprise to live performances that can be hit or miss. Also a former member of Percy Hill and Assembly of Dust, Wilson estimated he has played about “a jillion” festivals. 

 

“It can be a little crazy,” he said from his campsite a couple of hours before his Sunday afternoon set. “You never know quite what to expect.”

 

But, he said, large festivals always offer a chance to expose new fans to your music. Many guests who came to Nateva primarily to see Further later that night popped in to check out the Nate Wilson Group and, maybe, left with the group’s name still in their heads. “It’s always a great opportunity to get exposure,” Wilson said.