Camp Bisco

This July, MCP Presents is bringing us a brand new festival in New York and they are calling it The Hudson Project. The lineup was announced recently and this first-year fest looks to be stacked. Headliners include up-and-coming rapper Kendrick Lamar, electronic legend Bassnectar, Modest Mouse, and The Flaming Lips. That alone tells us this event is not messing around, but the lineup continues to impress as you go down the list. And friends, this is just the first installment of the lineup.

The Hudson Project is not picky with genres, which seems to fit the goal of it being a Music Project. You can see anything from hip hop, to jam band, to electronic, to pop rock, to jazz. Hip hop artists include, but are not limited to, Atmosphere and Isaiah Rashad. Rock acts include Matt and Kim, Capital Cities, and Dr. Dog. There are a wide variety of electronic acts ranging from Bro Safari, Keys and Krates, and Paper Diamond to Griz, Big Gigantic, Emancipator, and Conspirator. If you’re feeling a bit more groovy you can check out Lettuce, Tauk, Moon Hooch, or Marco Benevento. Some unique acts include a DJ set from Moby, and live sets from Infected Mushroom, Nightmares on Wax, and Bonobo.

If you are a music fiend and are saying to yourself, “I’ve seen a lot of these acts before, why should I go to this festival to see them again?” I have some answers for you. My first response is simply that it is a festival. It’s not a show confined to four walls. You can groove out in the fresh New York air, bond with the community while camping, and check out the art that is also included in the project. It may be a first-year fest, which would suggest there would be some production flaws, but MCP Presents is no stranger to holding these types of events. Tickets to this camping-optional festival are also fairly affordable, coming in less expensive than most other big festivals this summer.

Another reason to check out the The Hudson Project is these big name artists, some of which haven’t come out of the woodwork in a while, may have new things to share. Bassnectar has been working on a boatload of new music that seems likely to be played at this event. In addition to this, festival sets tend to vary from indoor show sets so you probably won’t be hearing the same thing twice. Festivals also provide a unique opportunity for collaborations. With all these similar and different artists in one spot, you never know who might join forces to create a brand new musical experience. Acts like Big Gigantic and Griz have been known to partner up. So really, my question for you music fans is, why wouldn’t you go to The Hudson Project?

Click here for more information on the festival including transportation options from Upstate Productions. The Hudson Project website is here.

Life has been detected from Camp Bisco, well sorta! After much controversy in Bisco’s 7 year reign at Indian Lookout Country Club and the #KeepBiscoAlive campaign circulating the social media universe, some answers have finally surfaced. With such a unique festival that so many of us Northeasterners hold close to our hearts any information at this point will have to suffice.

Indian Lookout Country Club will not be holding this year’s Camp Bisco or any type of “mass gathering” MCP music event for that matter. In the typical order of event planning, MCP Presents, the major production company behind Camp Bisco meets with the town officials of Pattersonville, New York in the fall to discuss any problems from the summer festival. They then review the issues and discuss how to improve on them for the following year. A highly publicized issue was attendance. 12,000 were to be the max amount of people allowed at the event; however rumors say that around 20,000 was the actual number of attendees. This leads to a severe understaffing of security, emergency responders, and festival personnel. MCP never took part in the 2013 reviews and measures to improve for this upcoming year. The special permit needed for the festival was deemed expired as a result. The owner of Indian Lookout Country Club has stated that MCP hasn’t even reserved dates for the event this summer, when planning a festival this is typically done months ahead of time. Frank Potter, the owner of the venue is sad to see this event possibly leave due to the economic boom it provided.

MCP has been working with another venue on the side in the meantime. The company is seeking approval for a three day event on Winston Farm Saugerties, New York. This is the site of the ’94 Woodstock Music Festival. It’s already received preliminary approval and in the works of cementing the deal. The festival will be called “Hudson Music and Arts Festival” with a rumored four stages and attendance limit of up to 30,000. It’s scheduled for the second week of July, the same week Camp Bisco is traditionally held on. Disco Biscuits band member Marc Brownstein spoke out on all the rumors and gave us this:

"The short answer is, yes, we are planning on having a camp this year, but there are some significant changes being made, and our number one priority is providing a safe event for our fans. We are hustling like crazy to make it happen and we have made huge progress in the last few weeks, and I’m feeling really good about it."

  What we have here is the major producer behind Camp Bisco apparently making plans with the Winston Farm on hosting a new event. The founding member of the Disco Biscuits is giving us his own inside look however and says there will be a camp this year. It is possible for an event to take place at Indian Lookout Country Club, but on a much smaller scale in order to avoid a lot of the political fluff needed for the larger festivals. There are two big guarantees out of all these rumors. MCP will not be returning to Indian Lookout Country Club and has made plans for Winston Farm, but Bisco is not dead yet as the man himself Marc Brownstein said they too have been making plans and great strides in the past few weeks in producing a Camp Bisco.

                We will just have to wait and see what information will be divulged in the upcoming months. It seems that Bisco isn’t entirely dead yet, but in what will form will it return to us? The only thing we can do now is be patient and lend our support to the rest of the Disco Biscuits as we wait.