WHEN: March 11 & 12, 2006 WHERE: Sunrise, Florida WHO: Various artists, including Ben Harper, Drive By Truckers and G Love. MORE INFO: www.langerado.com G Love plays for a packed crowd at Langerado. All photos by Steve Gregg, copyright 2006.

Langerado Music Festival 2006 by Steve Gregg Ben Harper is one of those artists who is best on stage. He’s a rock star who manages to energize a crowd even while seated, a plate no other musician of his caliber save Robert Randolph has stepped up to. Backed by his band The Innocent Criminals, Harper at his slide brings to mind a front porch hoodang made electric. Each member of the band is an arm and a leg of this animal dubbed Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals, and Harper himself is the soul, mind, and heart. Without him, the poor animal dies. With him, it grooves forward, and groove forward is exactly what it did Saturday night at the Langerado Music Festival in Sunrise, FL. Fortunately for Harper, his eclectic songmanship knows no true genre. Rather than being uniformly packaged, Harper’s music seamlessly slithers from style and style and often slips into the dark rabbit hole in between. To merely classify the band’s sound as gospel-rock-reggae-soul-blues-metal-funk-punk isn’t fair to Harper or the band. His inimitable sound explores new territories, and in doing so, it establishes a genre of Harper’s own creation, a genre that allows him to play whatever he wants to play whenever he wants to play it. Those in the know understand this genre is simply called music. And he plays this music with a careful abandonment that can be captured only by his live performances. As Saturday night’s headlining performer, Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals had a full audience two hours before they took the stage. Most revelers bypassed The Flaming Lips, who were performing at an adjacent stage, so they could secure front row positions. I was one of those revelers. Harper took the stage, waved to the fans, and drove his way through the first single, “Better Way,” from his new album, Both Sides of the Gun. After two songs from the new album, Harper peppered the remainder of the show with older material mixed with material from the new album. Harper’s reputation as a political voice is evident in this new material. A song like “Black Rain,” while groovy, doesn’t disguise its target. The audience at Langerado understood all too well just who Harper references in “Black Rain.” Some even yelled in agreement with Harper’s assertions. The crowd was rowdy, and the photographers were rampant. Genial Harper obliged front-row fans by asking the photographers to stop blocking the fans’ view. Harper’s strength rests in his diplomacy, sincerity, and rage. From one song to the next, Harper is at one moment solemn and the next moment frenzied. All facets of Harper make for one terrific show. Harper is a first-class performer who owned the headliner’s stage at Langerado for over three hours, which included two encores to satisfy the weeper and the fighter in all of us. The last song of Harper’s second encore, “With My Own Two Hands,” is a beast uncaged. Raw vocals, kinetic spirituality, and plaintive heart collectively stomped the crowd into fury unparalleled. Harper’s relentless faith in humanity’s ability to remedy itself bled through every passionately delivered lyric. Harper’s optimism is infectious. When Harper bellows, “I can make peace on earth,” we the listeners are inclined to believe that he really can. Thousands of open hands pumped high overhead as Harper closed with a call and response: “Together we can make it a brighter place,” he called. “With our own two hands,” the audience responded. And everybody on their way home after the show said, “Amen.” One word can describe Saturday afternoon at Langerado: perfect. The sky was clear, the sun was hot, and the Drive-By Truckers were set to walk on stage at 2:00 p.m. Because the assembled crowd was small and sparse, I was able to snag a front-row spot, from which I watch the Truckers rock and roll and touch their inner Skynyrd. Whether the Truckers perform during the day or at night, you can count on them to have two items on stage at all times: cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon and a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, which is guzzled by each member of the band before being handed off to the next guy. The Truckers had performed the night before at The Culture Room, and 2:00 p.m. on Saturday at Langerado appeared to be too early for the band. However, the late night before did not stop them from delivering a powerful, if mellow, performance for the laid-back folks at Langerado. Running long and hard with their bag of hits-never-to-be, the Truckers give a live show that snarls in your face like a pack of hungry Southern hounds. The band deserves to be more famous than they are. The meager gathering for their performance at Langerado was disappointing. You ask yourself, “What’s wrong with people? Can’t they hear this beautiful batch of fallen angels? Can’t they love a South reborn under a better set of circumstances than the first time around?” The axe-trio of Patterson Hood, Jason Isbell, and Mike Cooley delivered tunes trademarked to each of them individually. Hood ripped “Let There Be Rock.” Isbell haunted “Decoration Day.” Cooley cradled “Marry Me.” If the Truckers continue to bring their Southern thang to the dinner table like they do, then maybe more fame will come to them. Halfway through the one-hour set, Hood tore off his aviator sunglasses when he sang the lyric “my eyes were puffy” from “Tails Facing Up” to reveal just how red and puffy his eyes really were, presumably from the previous night’s show at The Culture Room. The Truckers’ short show satisfied those who came and those who were enticed by the irresistible pull of Southern-fried stories about beer, whiskey, women, and soul. One can’t ask for more from a band like The Drive-by Truckers, except that they would tour Florida more often and play longer than one hour. One hour’s just not enough time to wrap your arms around such a pleasing group of roof-raisers and the tales they link by chord and lyric.