Amp Jam #1: Suwannee Always Provides

Welcome back festivarians to the Wrangler ten-year anniversary tour and the beginning of the annual festival season at Spirit of Suwannee Music Park with Amp Jam #1 which came together in the woods of Live Oak, Florida March 6-8, 2025. SOSMP proved once again why it’s the premier camping/music venue in the country and be reminded, young grasshopper that the park always provides. Running low on pillow milk? Just poke around until the moss fairy provides the cornucopia. Welcome to the one fire where neighbors collaborate until they realize they have everything they need, together. Welcome to Amp Jam #1: Suwannee Always Provides. You don’t even know what you need until you poke around.

With influences and a bloodline connected back to bygone festivals such as Wanee and Bear Creek, Amp Jam #1 was a special treat and a gift for the longtime Suwannee faithful. Gov’t Mule, Dumpstphunk, Lettuce, Eggy, The Headhunters, Eddie Roberts and the Lucky Strokes, Diggin’ Dirt, The Legendary JC’s, Electric KIF, Shak Nasti and more treated the masses to three days of music, art, food, and frivolity. The intimacy of the setting, along with old friends and a manageable schedule that allowed for visiting time all contributed to a laid back weekend of down-home Florida goodness.

They were back in Florida with a mandate to travel on as few miles of interstate as possible. There was no way Lucy was taking I-4 from St. Pete to DeLand. That parking lot would devour her body and soul, rendering the leftovers unrecognizable. Anyway, since her blowout in Jacksonville, the Oldsmowagon was jittery between 65 and 70. All the better reason to slow down and take the backroads. After all, this is Florida in March. God’s country.

Yo, crack a book bro. These woods belong to Mario and Spencer and for all the old friends, there’s always a couple of friends that you’ve managed to miss all these years. This is how you get to know everyone at the park, one hippy at a time. It might take your whole life. The old gypsy woman was correct. It was a portent of things not exactly sideways but more corkscrewed. It was old school fun and a loop of friends coming together for another romp in the woods. Meow and meow.

Some of Lucy’s earliest memories of the park was Gov’t Mule playing “Fearless” in the field. She was hanging with the angels from A Bazaar Universe when she heard the familiar sound of a Warren Haynes guitar. It wiggled up her back and it was good to be home. She hung out on the back rail where she could enjoy the music and hassle the pedestrians on main street. The sound was clear and loud. She would usually be content there, but something special was happening. First, the horns gathered on stage left and underneath everything she could hear the beginning tricklings of “Spanish Moon” that would drag her, like a tractor beam, straight down to the pit. Thrilled it wasn’t filled with lawn chairs, she grabbed the nearest hoodlum and slow danced on the dance floor under the Spanish Moss.

“There’s whiskey and bad cocaine
Poison get you just the same
And if that… that don’t… kill you soon
The women will down at the Spanish Moon.”

The focus on the Amphitheater Stage had proven to be a sound idea. Everyone was there together. In between set breaks and artists there was plenty of time to walk back to camp for a refresher course. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. Everyone was together with nowhere else to go. And of course the lurking from camp to camp that makes camping festivals so different. That’s where the sauce is.

The Fallout Shelter was in full effect thanks to Pedro and Gaylord for showing up early and homesteading the site. Her “flea market” stylings contributed to the overall inner-city funk.

Possum moonshine and other potential disasters. Lucy was never one to cast the first stone but storing jars of formaldehyde directly next to jars of moonshine seemed like a recipe for some quality original content. They were both quart Ball jars and looked identical, except for the opossum tail and claws in the latter. Something about boots made of squirrel and opossum, as seen in the October Banana Republic catalog. Some mysteries are best left unsolved and what happens at the Street Walker’s house stays at the Street Walker’s house.

Any fool could see the event was a success. Something about focusing the energy on the Amphitheater Stage added to the ambiance. Things were dense with quality fun, in every direction. There was ample time to lurk about and find shenanigans in what many of the patrons call home, or church or whatever. This is Live Oak. The alpha and the omega. When you dance here you are dancing with many ghosts, born of celebration and music.

It wasn’t her fault. Blame the PTSD but she forgot Bfly was filling the bed with air and had plugged the pump into the back of her truck. She wasn’t driving fast when she left but it didn’t matter and was already too late. The cord attached to the mattress jerked violently and yanked the bed outside the tent…except the door was too small for the Texas king mattress and the entire tent was grabbed and dragged along toward hippy trail. Throw me something mister.

These are certainly strange and colorful times we live in. Seems that there were forgotten tunnels leading from the park all the way to Ole Mexico. Tricky times to be sneaking around, to be sure, but what’s a wook to do? Who was that getting “braced”, sitting bookended, on the back of somebody else’s ride. Apparently not everybody is into Mulakas, Dino. The Suwannee River Pirates don’t like it when folks trap their crew. The glaring lack of Jolly Rogers and privateers illustrated just how unsafe the waters can be off the Barbary Coast.

Can we be real? Lucy made no bones about it, on many occasions she was known to miss out on sets because she was a bonefide camp monkey, but when Horhay and the uncommon Street Walker invited her to the Daze Between Band, how could she know what brand of funk lay ahead? Featuring John Scofield, Ivan Neville, Eric Krasno, Tony Hall, Ian Neville, Deven Trusclair, Jennifer Hartswick, Ryan Zoidis, Alex Wasily, Viveca Hawkins, Ari Teitel and guests, this set celebrated the career of George Porter Jr. in slick funky fashion. Playing the first three songs off the Robert Palmer debut album, Sailin’ Shoes, Hey Julia and Sneakin’ Sally Through the Alley, they pushed into Get Out of My Life Woman and Yes We Can Can….a true Toussaintathon and one of the best sets she’d seen in a while.

Did that fruitcake really ask if she liked kimonos? Of course she liked kimonos? God is her copilot. You’re welcome for her service. What do you know about the Burma anyway?

This segment is sponsored by Under the Hood Auto Repair, “We work front ends and back ends.”

Pound Town, Stripper Poles and Beyond. It was the only bar he hadn’t been banned from and somehow his credit was still good. They’d been kidnapped earlier by the Jason waterfall and ended up on the stripper pole. Don’t judge. Things were moving pretty fast and the nights without sleep were beginning to catch up.  J Sploosh pulled up to Pound Town and poured everyone into the bar, promptly ordering the special, raw milk with Cialis rim. Drifting too far from the shore, Baitbucket and Bfly Irish goodbyed their chauffeur and proceeded to stroll back to the camp. Not far from the Hulaween Kamp they were picked up by the Cracker Train and promises of rides back to  camp turned to dust as they were promptly shenghaied right back to Pound Town. Warm crawfish and pretty girls anyone? The lesson, if a man needs one, is not to have plans and don’t argue with the Suwannee. She knows what she’s doing and she always provides.

Thanks to Steph Giera for taking the reigns on the festival poster and bringing the camp their precious Horhay. Putting the whore in George.

Just what exactly is happening here? The Street Walkers’ banana liquor had upended in his pocket and was running down his leg like some kind of viscous oil slick. It was time for a costume change before that splooge and the moonshine came into contact with a cigarette ember and burst into flames. The rendering of opossum fat is not a pleasant aroma and once you’ve taken it in, it lingers for a time.

By the time the rains came Sunday afternoon, the party was all but over. The Hobo Kamp slid into the womb of the Bill Monroe Shrine and picked a few more songs and enjoyed some leftover liquor before it was finally time to lay down and celebrate another successful jaunt in the forest. Namaste y’all.

At the end of the day their books were in the red and once again, swamp thugs had kidnapped their chicken. Lucy knew this time they’d made a crucial mistake for no longer did they negotiate with terrorists. Thanks to Plugged’N Production for the site lighting. Visit the Amp Jam website and like their social media sites on Facebook, Instagram, X and reddit. Please remember, although it may seem advanced, we use no A.I., but rather, all good, old-fashioned, free-range, man meat. You’re welcome. You’re worth it.

Thanks for making Wranglers Media your number one source for entertainment news. This whole rap has pretty much been the same for ten years so by now you gotta know what’s coming. Half-ass, low bar, rehash pulp. Believe what you want. Follow the Wranglers as we head back to SOSMP for Suwannee Spring Reunion with more of the greasiest Mexican and Ka’aoli and the five-year plan. Join Gainesville’s best at the Kamp Happiness family jam with Blancito and Lucienda Rosalita. Kick off your shoes and sit a spell.

En Pablo confiamos.