Photo Credit: Zach Ehlert
Spearhead is not
a spectator sport. Twirling under an umbrella of dreadlocks, the band’s 6’6” frontman
Michael Franti yelled “How you
feeling?!” to a crowd that was up and dancing before he ever reached the
microphone.
Spearhead offers socially poignant, high-energy, poetry jams
to face the ugliest realities of our current times. On this night the group did
so by stringing a group of covers together, from Bob Marley to Sublime to
popular songs from Sesame Street
(with a fine impression of Kermit the Frog and Cookie Monster). Eyes closed,
feeling it, Franti often painted his hands over his guitar and played a game of
catch with the chorus, offering it to the crowd and echoing it back—feeding off
the exchange without basking in revelry.
Kids of all ages filled the stage for Spearhead’s encore.
The flesh wave rapidly rose to high tide and drew toward Franti’s banks. He
scooped a nearby child up onto his shoulders, passed the microphone overhead
and the little girl sang into it, no fear—exuding the essence of Spearhead’s uninhibited,
One Love, joyful spirit that exists within all of us when we clear enough dust
out of the pit.
And when it was all over he didn’t leave. He stood
there and introduced the band, did a synchronized line dance and encouraged us
to not just be known as the noisiest crowd at the Britt Festival but also the
cleanest. I crawled around on my knees in the dark, boxing-out other scavengers
hunting for trash left behind from hundreds of picnics on the grassy hillside,
triumphantly found an abandoned water bottle and wine cork, tossed them in my
pack and took them home to recycle with Spearhead’s music filling me from the
inside out, reminding me that I’m alive.
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