Nothing but Serenity within Nature Coast Music Festival Spring Camp Out

One of the necessities at Nature Coast Music Festival was caterpillar repellent, because the setting was unlike any other festival I’ve seen before it, the site of the festival was a swampy biker retreat filled with large oak trees with drooping Spanish moss that overhung like long shaggy dreadlocks, chalky limescale paths and a series of tiny camping huts littered throughout the grounds. For a festival with headliners like Reggae Lou & the Kind Budz, and Seranation, names synonymous with beach vibes and well, reggae, it was certainly out of the norm, but once inside the grounds, the greenery around me began to envelope the reggae vibration like no other festival before it. I started my trek toward the stage and I felt the music hit my eardrums followed by DJ Badda Skat’s famed “Dub-Shot Hi-Fi” sample. Then I started to hear the heady beats of Black Uhuru. My hair stood on end as I closed in on the DJ booth to say hello to Badda. The bass hummed heavily and my heart began to synchronize with the beat. I nodded to Badda and went in for a handshake. “Give Thanks,” He told me while shaking my hand. After talking with Badda for a while and dancing to his provided beat I decided to take a look around the Scooter Haven grounds. Throughout my journey through the site I traversed through the lunar like limescale and winding pine needle trails until I thought it was best to turn back toward the stage area.

Before long, the party had started and groups of people could be seen forming communal circles and were passing to their left hand side. Stagehands were scrambling with wiring with their usual organized madness, and I could hear laughter coming from the LGH Dockside lounge. The way the laughter tuned with the music tickled my ears like tiny little fingers and I felt my body wanting to start to rock and move. Badda supplied the groove and LGH Dockside supplied the remedy; toward the end of Badda’s DJ set, I was able sit up on stage with him and talk. I mentioned the absence of live music and Badda told me that the month of April was treating him very well and that he was being booked a hefty amount of shows, in fact he was catching a flight out to Virginia to bring the heady vibes to COVA Fest where bands like The Elovaters and Tropidelic were set to headline. “I’ve had bookings all throughout April,” Badda said. It was great to hear things were getting back to normal for the St. Petersburg Rastafari.

After catching sativa feva and swimming through a sea of smoke with event organizer and music mastermind, Kenny Mullins, along with some others I decided to check out the LGH Dockside THC lounge area. The lounge was draped with mesmerizing tapestry and employed a no shoe policy, so I kicked off my shoes and plopped myself down onto a giant round pillow that matched the psychedelic design of the tapestries. With the smell of lemon scented sanitizer wafting through my nose, and the sounds of The Joey Tenuto Band in my ears, I took a deep breath in and stared out at the sky. I exhaled with an exuberant force and decided to watch the rest of Tenuto’s set from that spot. After losing myself in the sights and sounds, the story of a festival surrounded by lush greenery started to unfold itself within my mind. The sun began to set and Reggae Lou and the Kind Budz were getting underway. Their tantric sound with a memorable trumpeter sent people skanking and sliding through the sugar sand as their sly silhouettes contrasted against the stage lights. The smell of sticky sinsemilla came from every which way, and the low hanging moon illuminated through thick storm clouds.

Day two of Nature Coast Music Festival came way sooner than expected and personally, I had gotten a later start to the day than expected. I scrambled back to the festival grounds, and once there I was astounded at the uptick in foot traffic, but still presented the calm, cool vibes of the day before. After walking around for and seeing what the rain had done to the grounds, I decided to track down festival sponsor and good pal, Mark Boltwood of Boltz on Board. After hopping over freshly filled pools of rainwater I found him in a remote part of the haven, Mark and several others were preparing the Boltz on Board tent. “This is beautiful, isn’t it?” Mark asked me, while looking at the lush greenery in awe. It was beautiful, and the fresh rain from the night before released a lovely scent of damp pine needles, but also unearthed Florida’s most infamous bugs.

All though I set out to find Mark and his crew, I ran into Bianca Schlosser, bassist of Seranation. It’s been said that she plays each show as if it were her last, but this was her first show back since the band’s Drive In experience back in October. She expressed how it had been a long awaited reunion with fans and she was ready to be back on the stage with her crew. When asked if the live music hiatus was at all beneficial, she smiled and told me that it was actually nice to have a bit of a breather from constantly being on the go. She had mentioned how fast things were moving for her and the band. She also said the time off was used to the band’s advantage, allowing them to sit down and write and record even more iconic tunes and hone in on some really killer tracks.

After reuniting with old friends and meeting new ones (and of course getting a brand new Boltz on Board necklace or two from Mark) I decided All throughout the day festival goers could be seen dancing and laughing among friends and family and occasionally swatting at pesky Florida bugs. If anything the bugs created more of a reason to dance and once Unified Mind kicked off the live music, it was almost impossible not to dance. The West Palm Beach natives brought a spicy flavor of reggae to Nature Coast Music Festival and was able to blend styles of hip-hop with heavy guitar solos, only to bring it back to a smooth reggae overtone.

When asked how the sound of Unified Mind came together, singer and frontman Mario DeMoura told me about his background in hip-hop, but really saw something special with reggae. “I made hip-hop for about fifteen years and the culture was too over the top and not serving me anymore. I wanted something more positive and something to be welcomed at,” DeMoura told me. Though the band had officially been together for a couple years now, this was the band’s “showcase” moment. Drummer Travis Schmeider told me “This is a moment for [us] to highlight original music and show off [our] talents.”

Unified Mind kicked things off into overdrive and made it hard for any band to follow, but The Dub Collectors and Cloud9 Vibes seemed to feed off the energy and things seemed to get even crazier. Sierra Lane had transfixed the crowd with her set, but things got real crazy when St. Petersburg progressive funk rock band, Ajeva hit the stage things got real crazy. Long ago I was told by someone that although reggae is the rhythm of the heart, funk is the rhythm of the soul, and that very well might be true, because Ajeva’s set took things to a whole other world. Literally. It felt as though they had transported the show to Mars with sweeping guitar solos, hypnotic synthesizers dueling it out and at one point the funk band even spotted Funky Green Men somewhere amongst the trees. By this point it was hard to fathom that Seranation was still set to play but as they always do, Seranation put on a set that electrified the crowd. The amount of energy Seranation put out into the crowd was pure pandemonium. Seranation guitarist, Adam Hocker zapped the crowd with his guitar work. Shit got real when heavy when the group covered AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck” and what was thought of as pandemonium turned into an utterly beautiful array of chaos, throughout the crowd I saw groups of heads banging up and down and fists clenched in the air. With the amount of energy in the air I almost forgot I was at a reggae centric festival.

As Seranation played on, I was tranfixed in what artist Chad ‘Cheeta‘ Ruis, was creating throughout the set. The concept of live painting has always fascinated me, but to see the artist astonished with his creation was nothing short of divine. Cheeta’s smile was huge as he stared at his creation; a stunning view of a turquoise and golden crescent wave crashing down juxtaposed a rusty red background. After Seranation’s set I watched as Cheeta signed his creation and discussed the idea behind it to Seranation frontman, J.KOOL. Soon after I watched as the stage came apart and I walked back toward the clubhouse for the afterparty and a sudden downpour forced me inside. After shaking off the chilled spring rain I thought to myself how great of a time it had been at Nature Coast Music Festival. Then I thought of Kenny Mullins asking what kinds of things could be done at future festivals, and it dawned on me that Nature Coast Music Festival was bound to make a return sooner than later.