One Album on the Road to a Music Festival Lifestyle

By Jeff Zbar

I was about 12 when my father and I walked into a record store in Coconut Grove, Florida. I walked out with my first album, the debut LP from some new act called Boston. A few weeks later, I bought my second, Elton John’s Greatest Hits.

By the time I was a senior in high school, I was playing bass in a rock band (it wasn’t considered “classic rock” back in ‘82) and I had two “Peaches” crates of vinyl. My passion for music was never as fervent as it was then.

Until now.

Between then and now, my albums thinned as my collection of mixed cassette tapes and CDs grew. But over time, my interest in recorded music somehow faded. I’d listen on the car stereo. But listening in the house or home office became a rarity.

So, how did I get my music mojo back, and come to co-launch RoadtripMojo, a blogsite and Facebook page on festival music and camping?

I credit the confluence of three events.

The first came sometime around 2004 when my brother, Darrel, bought me an iPod. I’d never even launched iTunes before that. Soon, I was copying entire CDs or burning single tracks to my PC. I now had all that music in a device that followed me wherever I went. Today, it’s all on my iPhone. Not to be dramatic, but I realized then – and still do today – that it was literally an experiential, life-changing event.

The second event came quite by chance. A business writer, I wrote a first-person article on working from home. The Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel ran with the piece a photograph of me in my home office – with my drum kit in the background. A guitarist in a local band saw the photo and contacted me. His act had two guitarists and a bassist. Would I join them?

Within weeks, we were practicing. In months, we were playing out. They had revived in me a very personal passion for participating in the musical experience. A decade later, I’m still playing with one of those guitarists (our outfit is called Wobble!) and his son is engaged to my daughter.

The third event happened in the dentist chair. A life-long friend and my personal dentist, Barry, mentioned between x-rays and pokes that he and his wife, Jennifer, were going to “Lockn’.”

“Wow. Lockn’!” I recall thinking, thoroughly impressed, kinda like how some punk kid gets a mind-blowing dose of FOMO – for something he’d never heard of moments before. I came to learn that Lockn’ is a multi-day music festival on Oak Ridge Farm in central Virginia. Since that intro, we’ve traveled to every Lockn’ fest.

(Another coincidence on this life-changing trajectory: I soon realized that long-time SoFla family friend and six-doors-down neighbor, Rachel, was an executive with Lockn’s producer.  I had long known that her husband, Josh, was then-editor of jam music magazine Relix. As I noted my growing interest in “jam band music” beyond the Grateful Dead and Allman Brothers Band, Josh hand-wrote a list of bands I should follow, like a doctor scribbling some tips for healthier living. I wish I kept that list, but I’m sure all those acts are on my Spotify).

Five years later with more than a dozen festival and concert bracelets hanging in the travel trailer my wife, Robbie, and I haul to festival campgrounds, music is entrenched in my character. My family even calls me a “hippie.”

This week, Barry and I visited the Florida RV SuperShow as co-creators of RoadtripMojo.com. The website and social media platform explore the convergence of RVing and trailer camping and arts and music festival scene. I call it the another professional pursuit of a personal pleasure. Or, “RVing, with a better soundtrack.”

Looking back, I’d add a more seminal event to the list that changed this guy’s life. A visit to that music store in Coconut Grove. Who knew the music fan I’d one day become?