Northlands Festival Thrives as Jam Scene's Big Fests
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- Northlands Music & Arts Festival held its fifth installment in Swanzey, New Hampshire, headlined by Joe Russo's Almost Dead, Disco Biscuits, Yonder Mountain String Band, and Andy Frasco & the U.N.
- Co-producer Jen Meyerhardt framed the event as a rejection of corporate music culture, telling Rolling Stone: "There's too much soul in the music and in the festivals. It's all about the vibe."
- Summer Camp, a longtime Midwestern jam weekend, canceled its 25th anniversary edition last month citing "unforeseen financial circumstances," joining defunct peers Gathering of the Vibes, Wakarusa, Rothbury, and 10,000 Lakes
- Joe Russo's Almost Dead opened their headlining set with Grateful Dead's "Don't Ease Me In" and "Cats Under the Stars," positioning themselves as heirs to the Dead's scene after Bob Weir's death earlier this year
- The Slip played their only show of 2026 at the fest, celebrating 30 years as a band and the 20th anniversary of their Eisenhower album, with Joe Russo filling in on drums for an absent Andrew Barr
- Natalie Brooke, a Baltimore-based keytar player in a futuristic funk-and-soul quartet, was among the newer artists Northlands championed, sitting in with Dogs in a Pile on Aretha Franklin's "Rock Steady" and with Frasco on "Talk About It"
- Lotus guitarist Tim Palmieri credited the fest's musical variety for filling the void left by dead fests, echoing the event's ethos: "We don't want to be on concrete. Here you are in New Hampshire — a bunch of trees and good earth."
Why it matters: With Summer Camp's 25th-anniversary cancellation joining a string of defunct jam festivals, Northlands' fifth-year survival in a scene plagued by "blue dot fever" (seas of unsold tickets) shows the indie, roots-first model can still work — but only by booking artists tailored to a tight community demographic rather than chasing scale, making the festival one of the few remaining circuits investing in improvisational, community-driven jam music.
