June Jam is a smaller, more low-key music festival that happens late in June every year, in a park in the forests near Flagstaff, Arizona. I found out about this one from the ads I was seeing on Facebook, which was recommending one obscure, out-of-the-way festival after another to me. Since I had friends going to this one, I bought my ticket to it, even though it was only a week after Electric Forest which was itself only a week after Beyond Wonderland at the Gorge. Three festivals in a row...I thought I could do it, but as we know from Electric Forest I was already feeling burnt-out at the beginning of the second one. Thankfully I had a few days to recharge before the third, and being smaller with fewer people, this one felt like a nice comedown after the craziness of the Forest and the unexpected tragedy of Beyond Wonderland.
Saturday, July 1, 2023 - Sunday, July 2, 2023
The festival started on Friday, and I could have hit the road immediately after work that day. But, after the long week-and-a-half trip I had just returned from, all those nights spent sleeping on an air mattress in a tent, or on a bunk bed in a hostel, I really wanted three, rather than only two, nights in my own bed before going back to the tent. I didn't start the long drive until I was good and ready Saturday morning.
Arizona neighbors New Mexico to the west, but both of these states are huge, making a trip from one to the other quite long when one lives on New Mexico's eastern border. The drive from Clovis to Flagstaff wasn't too complicated; after reaching Albuquerque it was a straight shot on Interstate 40. Crossing the state line gained me an hour, because while Arizona is technically in the Mountain time zone along with New Mexico, it doesn't do Daylight Saving and thus becomes de facto Pacific time when the other states "spring forward."
This is what the landscape around Flagstaff looks like, driving south on Interstate 17. Did you think that Arizona was all desert and cacti? Not quite...something like a fourth of the state is forested and hilly. There's even a ski resort a few miles north of Flagstaff, called Arizona Snowbowl. While I've never been there, I've heard it's actually pretty good as far as ski resorts go.
I made it to the festival some time around two in the afternoon, having stopped for lunch at a diner on Route 66 in Flagstaff. The festival was happening in a park called Playa Ponderosa, a dry lake bed, some distance south of Flagstaff. It wasn't exactly easy to find, and getting there involved driving on some extremely rough dirt and gravel roads. After finally reaching the entrance and claiming my wristband, it still took more time to finally find where my friends were camping, where I parked my dusty car and set up my tent.
June Jam had a much more DIY feel than the festivals I'd been to the last two weekends, Electric Forest and Beyond Wonderland. There weren't a whole lot of food & drink vendors, and the little beer and booze were being sold by unofficial vendors who were just reselling stuff that they had bought themselves. This included one person making some interesting craft cocktails. It all reminded me of what I've heard about Burning Man; I've never been there, but I know the whole experience is made by the attendees themselves and otherwise has very little organization, and June Jam was much like this.
As for the music, I didn't recognize any of the names on the lineup. Not even Truth, even though he had played at Electric Forest the weekend before. Most of it fit into this vague electronic sub-genre I've recently noticed. I'm not sure if it even has a name but it's slow, trippy, and dreamy, and particularly popular in the southwest.
The Oasis stage
This stage is either the Nook or the Porch, I'm not sure which.
There was also a good deal of art cars that various collectives had brought with them:
Sunday night, I spent a lot of time away from the action. Out in the middle of the lake bed I saw a curious construction I wanted a better look at. It was some kind of wall of lights...
I tried to get a good picture of this thing, but it just wasn't possible. There were all these impressive light patterns flowing and waving this way and that way across the wall.
Next to the light wall, there was an old boat sitting there on the grass, with some people sitting in it. So I stayed there for awhile, getting to know some interesting people while drinking whatever I brought with me. While I was in the boat, we were visited by a local artist selling pendants and such.
A view of the camping area from out in the middle of the lake bed where the light wall and the boat were.
Monday, July 3, 2023
I woke up Monday morning knowing that I was finally done sleeping in a tent, for the next four months that is, and all I had to do now was eat breakfast, pack up, and drive home.
The weather in northern Arizona had quite a contrast between day and night. During the daytime, it was hot and sunny, t-shirt-and-shorts weather. After the sun set, it became chilly enough I had to put on a sweater. Both nights I slept in my tent wearing a raccoon onesie. Early in the mornings I still wore it while getting breakfast and coffee from one of the few vendors, because it was still that chilly, but I could feel the air warming up every minute, and by the time I got back to camp I had to take the thing off as quickly as possible because I was starting to sweat.
Well, it wasn't long before I had the car loaded up, and I was driving down the bumpy, unpaved back roads around the park, finding my way back to the highway to start the long drive back to eastern New Mexico.
Finally, the long, tiring, quest through three music festivals in a row was drawing to a close. First there was Beyond Wonderland at the Gorge, in the middle of Washington state, then a week later was Electric Forest in Michigan, and finally this one, which was a bit of a different vibe from the Northwest and the Midwest. This fest was smaller and less organized than the last two, the artists were lesser known, mostly playing this slow, dreamy, bass-heavy music that seems to be most popular in the Southwest, and there was this DIY feel to it all. I suspect most of the people there were Burners. While I won't make it there in 2024, I thought it was worth coming back to.
