The painful sunburn is starting to fade. The exhaustion from double-digit hours of nonstop music is starting to wane. But the thrill of the experience that was Mountain Jam IV is still going strong.

Those three days, May 30-June 1, up in Hunter began like a dream. The weather was, no exaggeration, perfect — at least on the first day. It wasn’t until Saturday that the festival’s rain curse returned (it has rained all four years). And Sunday, though largely overcast, was intermittently sunny with no actual water falling from the sky. With attendance at 10,000 a day, the slope at Hunter Mountain gradually filled, starting from scratch each day at noon, until the side of the mountain was full of groovers. Just as slowly but surely (she writes only three days after the fact) sets from the fest are making their way online. Reliving them is only reinforcing what an amazing time it really was.

From the opening act — easygoing New Paltz groove rockers Ratboy — to the closing act — two sets from jam forefather Bob Weir and RatDog, the music entertained, energized and even expanded attendees’ musical tastes and thresholds for stage presence. Athens, Georgia-based Dark Meat served up a heaping spoonful of psychedelic punk Friday, filling the air with beautiful noise and the stage with a bunch of rowdy personnel — two drummers, too many horn players to count, etc. The lead singer threw gummy bears at the crowd as incentive to approach. One of the female singers stripped down to frilly undies and a bra and a male bassist stripped down to a purple Speedo. One member wandered the mountainside with a day-glo painted tuba. Good times!

Saturday was chock full of various incarnations of soul, with JJ Grey & Mofro and Citizen Cope on the small stage and Ray LaMontagne, Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings and Michael Franti & Spearhead on the main. And Sunday dug into roots with blues guitar great Larry McCray Band (hands down the best first act of the fest), the quirky New Paltz-based up-and-comers the Felice Brothers and the ever-twangy Drive-By Truckers. Lead Trucker Patterson Hood didn’t temper his tremendous respect for “the almighty” Levon Helm, whose Ramble on the Road easily could have been the headliner and was certainly revered amongst all their backstage peers.

Switching drumming duties with his daughter Amy and the drummer from her group Ollabelle, Tony Leone, Levon bounced between the kit and the mandolin as well as classics and newbies from his 2007 Grammy Award-winning album “Dirt Farmer.” “The Weight” was a more impacting version than the one played Friday by Jim Weider, who filled Robbie Robertson’s guitar shoes in 1985 when he left The Band. “Deep Ellum Blues” was a stone-cold groove and when festival headliner and event co-promoter Warren Haynes joined the group to play “I Shall Be Released,” it was transcendental.

Bob Weir and RatDog closed the event Sunday, getting off to an endearingly shaky start. The signature opening music was spot on, but “Help on the way…” Weir sang into the mike, then stopped and racked his brain while everyone chuckled. The band kept playing as Weir walked over to guitarist Mark Karan. “What’s the first line?” he asked. “Paradise waits,” Karan replied. When the music came ’round to an entry point again and Weir started the song correctly, the crowd cheered. But not nearly as loudly as it did when Levon took over drums for Bob Dylan’s “She Belongs to Me” a couple of songs later.

“Everybody say ‘Thank you, Levon’” papa Weir nudged as our hometown hero left the stage. The crowd complied. After Warren joined the group for “Loser” a couple of songs later, Weir again prompted the crowd. “Say ‘Thank you, Warren.’” By the end of the night everyone was certainly thinking “Thank you, Bobby.” An acoustic “Masters of War” and “Friend of the Devil” marked the start of the second set, with the epic “Terrapin Station pulling out of a 20-minute drums to jam interlude and ultimately ending the night with the apropos final lines of “Ripple,” ” If I knew the way I would take you home.”

Still, the real star of the weekend, as always, was main headliner Gov’t Mule, which performed double-set shows Friday and Saturday. The group’s performance Friday night was, live, a second-by-second sonic adventure, brimming with “What’s around the corner?!” anticipation that only improvisational masters like guitarist/frontman Warren Haynes offer. The “Wow! I’m here to witness this!” sing-along excitement is unbeatable in those circumstances. But downloaded, burned and streamed via headphone into the cerebellum, jacking up the volume little by little until your ears can’t handle anymore, the nuances of such treats as the set one Beatles bonanza — “She Said, She Said,” “Tomorrow Never Knows” and “Taxman” — for example, take on an even deeper intensity. Especially when you can fast forward to the second set “Dear Prudence” and Saturday night’s opener “Helter Skelter.”

It’s increasingly obvious as this festival approaches its fifth year that there is no performer in the jamband scene (perhaps in music period) better suited to host a weekend-long festival than Warren Haynes. The man has long been credited as the hardest working player on the scene, and for good reason. He’s never stingy with his time when it comes to sitting in with other acts and inviting other musicians to come and play with him, a trend that predates bassist Allen Woody’s untimely demise, but which was catapulted by the “Deep End” tribute CD and tour era, circa 2000, that followed. Bassists and other musicians rallied to honor Woody’s memory, and those ties not only earned Mule a new bassist in Andy Hess, it established unbreakable bonds with and an even wider open door for musicians to jam.

Eight years later, with a platform such as Mountain Jam, Gov’t Mule not only offers acts a stage to play on, it essentially sets a stage for some of their favorite fellow performers to come up and play with them. And vice versa, Haynes hits the stage earlier in the days as well. This year found him sitting in with Medeski, Scofield, Martin and Wood, Citizen Cope, Michael Franti & Spearhead, Levon Helm’s Ramble on the Road and RatDog. And it would take much too much space to recite the laundry list of musicians from other acts that joined Mule on stage during their four sets this weekend. In fact, it would take much too much space to genuinely do credit to this event in words. And I guess that’s why popping in the next downloaded disc is the only way to go.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 4th, 2008 at 4:01 pm and is filed under Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.