Don’t ask Jack Shealy what really excites him about Everglades Roots Festival at his family’s campground deep in the Florida swamp and expect an easy answer. It’s tough, and he really can’t put his finger on it. There’s the music, the Trail Lakes Campground itself, the Everglades experience, the Cracker Culture, even the skunk ape he’s certain lurks in the woods and maw just beyond the treeline.
It’s easy to understand Shealy’s struggle. Now in its third year, the festival will bring a hot line up of blues, bluegrass, and folk talent. The show’s line-up boasts two sets of Grateful Dead players Grass Is Dead, along with The Firewater Tent Revival, Free Range Strange, Gator Nate, Daryl Hance PowerMuse, and a host of other acts. In this installment of Sit Down with the Producer, we’ll see what makes Everglades Roots Festival and host Trail Lakes Campground shine is this neck of the Glades.
Continue reading “Everglades Roots Music Festival Gives Swamp Life a Playlist”
As RV campers (who also happen to dig live music festivals), we’re witness each fall to an occurrence that saddens us. Friends and fellow campers beyond Florida are telling tales of some alien practice: winterizing their campers. What is this “winterizing” they speak of so forlornly? The short story is simple: Campers carry water in pipes and holding tanks. Let it freeze, and both could burst. Not only would the repair cost no small fortune, but it could be next winter before the RV repair shop gets to your job. So, owners drain the system and pipe in antifreeze. It’s an annual chore that people like us in SoFla cannot begin to comprehend. Besides, we’re putting Damp Rid in our rigs during the summertime. We all bemoan the chores that speak to the seasons we may loathe, for one reason or another.
When a writer noted last year that 
Twenty years into the FloydFest, Sam Calhoun and his team have gotten festival production down to a science. But they know art plays an invaluable role. After all, curating music, arts, and culinary creations – even the camping experience – for one of the most respected music festivals along the East Coast leaves nothing to chance.
RoadtripMojo first met our latest hammock winner at the Spirit of the Suwannee Music Park’s Suwannee Rising music festival last spring. Kym Campbell Eckard and husband, Joe, were camping on the Loop two spots down from us. When we weren’t at the Mushroom or Peach stages for The New Mastersounds, Melody Trucks Band, Lettuce, Dumpstaphunk, or Oteil & Friends, we were marveling at the Eckards’ rig. That bright blue Winnebago 