Or, "Festivals I Have Known and Loved." As my long and detailed series of blogs on Tomorrowland and Untold may have suggested, I am a bit of a music festival veteran. Some of these happened long enough ago that by now, I'm starting to feel just a little bit nostalgic, especially about Euphoria, of which I experienced the last three iterations.
Euphoria, when it was still around, happened the first week of every April at Carson Creek Ranch, which is on the southern fringe of Austin, Texas not too far from Bergstrom Airport. It was also my first introduction to festival culture. Euphoria 2015 may not have been my first festival, since I had already been to a single day of Austin City Limits in 2013, and a one-day affair in Grand Prairie called Meltdown in 2012, but there was something else here that just pulled me into a whole new subculture. I wound up going back to this the next two years, though it pretty much collapsed under its own weight after the 2017 edition.
2015
It started on Friday, and while some people could take a day off work and show up while the sun was still up, I got there much later as everything was winding down. I would be joining a rather large group of mutual friends, some of whom I didn't know too well...at least, not yet. I think there were nine of us. They had already staked out a large space in the General Admission camping area--this also just happened to be my first camping festival. My arrival wasn't exactly smooth, since I had to lug all my stuff (backpack full of clothes changes, tent, air mattress, 24-pack of Miller Lites) to that place, but I finally found it, struggled to pitch my tent (I can slap it together in less than ten minutes now, but this was a different time), and put the beer I brought in a cooler. After taking a few minutes to unwind I could finally go into the festival and enjoy what was left of the night. What was left was Adventure Club's set.
Adventure Club meeting a few fans after their set wrapped.
It was after that that I could finally rejoin the group I was meeting there, on our way back to camping. Some of us found that the party wasn't quite over; in the camping area there was another "stage" still active, a big inflatable tent/pavilion/room (any of those terms work) which housed a dance floor and a DJ. Looking back, I note that this stage was not there at the 2016 and 2017 Euphorias.
One stage that was still there in later years was this, the Dragonfly stage. It was scenically placed on one bank of the Colorado River, and was a nice place to chill during the day. Note to anyone not from Texas: this is NOT the same Colorado River that flows through Colorado.
The lineup back then wasn't as loaded with big names as it would be in the later two years. We spent a lot of time at the main stage on Saturday night, and looking back at the Wayback Machine version of the Euphoria website, and watching YouTube footage people made, I can see it was almost certainly Pretty Lights, who headlined the main stage that night. For me at least, it was more about the music itself and the atmosphere than the artist names. They all pumped out a lot of great music, so who cares if we didn't know who they were or recognize most of the songs?
Saturday night was really the high point. After the great time we had at the main stage, there was all manner of other stuff going on throughout the grounds. There was a huge swing, made of a long wooden board hanging by two long ropes from a tree branch, which every one of us gave a ride once, I by standing on it. And just a few meters away were a group of artists, with far more coordination than I, spinning around fire.
This is from early Sunday afternoon. We spent a lot of time at this stage here in the Unearth Tent seeing one unknown DJ or DJ duo after another. Here was someone under the name Regulators--I remember there being two guys there but I only see one in this photo--from Chicago; I only remember that because this information was part of their logo on the big screens.
Break Science used to play Sunday night at Euphoria every year for most of its existence. They were noticeably absent in 2017.
After Break Science, as the sun was going down, I packed up and headed home, having had enough festival for one weekend. But still I drove away feeling like I'd been a part of something special.
2016
I had hoped to get there a little earlier than last year on Friday evening, but wound up having to turn around and drive back home after realizing I had forgotten my wristband! And so when I finally got in and got my tent set up and headed into the fest, it was, like last year, almost done for the night. I was able to catch most of Dillon Francis' set, which included then-new songs like "Turkey on Wheels" and "Bun up the Dance."
Early Saturday afternoon a few of us went to check out one of the yoga sessions that was going on. We got there an hour too early and so first went through a meditation workshop. This I found to be way too full of New Age fluff to be any kind of use to me. Yoga after that was far more worthwhile; I think I stretched out a few muscles I didn't even know I had.
The music started Saturday afternoon with Skydyed...
I'd consider Skydyed to be a jam band, but a more electronic-leaning jam band, similar to Papadosio who would play this fest a year later. Both bands have become at-work playlist staples for me over the years.
Sad to say, this was the peak of Saturday for me. The dusty air in the Austin area often does not get along with my allergies. I made the mistake of taking two different pills to make my nose and sinuses clear up, and the two pills put together just made my nose close up entirely. I wound up missing Eric Prydz and Bassnectar while trying to sleep it off.
Sunday afternoon I mosied into the fest determined to make this a great day to make up for the last miserable night. First I saw these guys, Nahko and Medicine for the People.
I'm not sure how to describe their music, even though it doesn't sound like something hard to describe. What little I heard at this set sounded kind of reggae-ish, but what I later listened to in the weeks and months after the festival doesn't fit that description at all. I kind of want to say "folky" but that doesn't quite work either.
Euphoria 2016 has the dubious distinction of being the last music festival in the USA in which I could openly buy drinks with liquor from any of the drink stands. At this time I could get a rum 'n coke, or a gin and tonic, or a vodka tonic, or a vodka Red Bull, etc. from any of the booths that also sold beer and wine. Something must have happened in the next six months, because at ACL in October, only beer and wine were available and the only booze I could get was what little a few friends had smuggled in.
But it was still April, so it was still possible to get a rum 'n [Diet] Coke, and this is what I was doing most of Sunday afternoon, maintaining a nice steady buzz while wandering from one stage to another, taking in various little-known DJs.
Motion Potion
The highlight of Sunday, and indeed the whole weekend, was Above & Beyond's headlining set. I had heard of them before, after all they'd been around since 2001, but this was really my first introduction to their brand of trance and the label they own, Anjunabeats. Between their own songs they also put in a lot of stuff by other Anjuna artists like Adam Beyer and ilan Bluestone. I ID'd a lot of these songs with Shazam and listened to them a lot over the spring and summer that year.
But the most unforgettable moment was this. A hallmark of A&B shows is their habit of typing out messages to the crowd which appear on the big screen in real time as they type. During the penultimate song, "Thing Called Love," they typed out a special message they were relaying on behalf of someone else in attendance (one of Euphoria's organizers, I later found out)...a marriage proposal. That's just something you can't forget, whoever you are.
Even long after the festival was over, it still continued to have its effects. Throughout the months after it ended, I occasionally looked back in the lineup and tried listening to various artists I'd missed. This is how I discovered Wave Racer, who quickly became one of my favorite not-so-well-known artists because so much of his music sounds like early-90s video game music. And through Wave Racer I even later got turned on to Flight Facilities and Cosmo's Midnight...
2015 and 2016 were unforgettable experiences, to be sure, but Euphoria's best, and last, year was still ahead.
Other articles in this series:
