Mile High Music Festival, Saturday and Sunday, July 19th- 20th from 11:00am-11:00pm was rockin!
5 Stages, 48 bands featured Tom Petty, Steve Winwood, The Black Crowes, Dave Matthews, Michael Franti & Spearhead, Lupe Fiasco, JJ Grey & Mofro, Spoon, and MOE at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park, Denver Colorado.
Despite the unbearable heat and a few unexpected but minor glitches, the first annual Mile High Music Festival was a spectacular success! Over the two day weekend, and an inaugural attendance of over 90,000, the festival has set an excellent beginning to start from in an effort to add to Denver’s historical music event record books. There’s never before been a festival of this type or magnitude in Denver before now.
With ample parking, mellow people, abundant security, over the top food and drink, five bigger than life stages, and magnificent light shows on the main stage, neither bands nor patrons had anything to complain about but the heat. The five stages were set up on a rotating, overlapping schedule so that nothing would be missed.
There were 48 incredible bands playing over the course of two days combining a wide variety of music and tastes, each band ultra-talented and entertaining in their own individual style. There was hard rock, pop rock, classic rock, blues rock, funk, hip-hop, rap, alternative and some that is indescribable because of the combination of different styles within one band. Most of the bands that played were not local and are recording on major record labels (very few indie label representation) – some so new I’d never heard of them before the festival, but after seeing them, there was no question as to why they were signed to major label contracts. There was not one band that did not deserve to be there mixed in with the legendary major players, this is, after all the next generation of music moving up in the ranks. I was not disappointed in any of the players that I saw and heard, they were all fabulous and I’m very glad the festival was successful enough to already be planning the next one!
Of the 48 bands, I couldn’t possibly have covered them all with photos and show reviews. I managed to photograph and review nine of them: Tom Petty, Dave Matthews, Steve Winwood, The Black Crowes, Michael Franti and Spearhead, Lupe Fiasco, Spoon, MOE, and, JJ Grey and Mofro. What follows are a few photos and a short review on each.
TOM PETTY
Tom Petty and band have to have been my festival favorite. I haven’t seen him play live since his early, early days in the mid-1970’s when his music style was totally punk (so punk he was opening for The Ramones at the time!) and no one really knew who he was. Over the course of his long and very successful career, his music has evolved to a commercial success level that now makes him untouchable. However, he is so close to his fans and has such a friendly rapport with his audience, it is next to impossible to find anything distasteful about him or his music, commercial or not.
No matter what he plays, Tom Petty never fails to amaze me. His talent and classic songwriting still hold up decades later as being brilliant. He covered all of his hits with a style and class that shows his extreme professionalism by playing them 
with an excitement as if it were the first time.
His hit list is nearly endless and just when you think he’s played them all, he throws another one at you fresh out of his vault, smiling, winking and teasing the crowd with a charisma that endears one to him like no other that’s in his league.
Backed by his band of overly proficient talent, including Mike Campbell on lead guitar, Tom Petty covered all his hits; “I Won’t Back Down”, “Free Fallin’”, “Mary Jane’s Last Dance”, “Don’t Come Around Here No More”, “Refugee”, and several others I missed. The encore consisted of “Running Down A Dream” and, of course, “American Girl” (one of my personal favorites).
Tom Petty is definitely one of the best and goes down in history as a legendary American music icon in my book. What a class act!
STEVE WINWOOD
British rocker, Steve Winwood, performed like the legend that he is as well. Starting out his set with The Spencer Davis Group’s, “I’m A Man”, and playing the Hammond B3, the conservative and reserved Winwood always proves he doesn’t have to be flamboyant to get his message across. He’s a super talent that has stayed consistently strong since day 1 of his career.
I had shot photos of Winwood before in the mid-‘80’s when he was at the top of the heap with the commercial hits, “Back In The High Life Again” and “Higher Love”, it was such a pleasure to hear him do those songs along with others that are Winwood classics. “While You See A Chance”, “Roll With It”, “Can’t Find My Way Back Home” (from Blind Faith days), and “Dear Mr. Fantasy” (with him on guitar) and “Low Spark Of High Heeled Boys” from Traffic were all highlights intermixed with some very nice new tunes off his latest album, “Nine Lives”..
Closing out his set, Steve Winwood an outrageous version of his Spencer Davis hit, “Gimme Some Lovin”. He gave everyone some lovin’alright with his incredibly crisp and clear voice and the on their feet crowd gladly gave him some lovin’ back! Cheers were big for Winwood’s hot band as well which featured Jose Neto on guitar.
THE BLACK CROWES
With incense burners smoking and lead singer, Chris Robinson strutting back and forth across the stage, The Black Crowes have got to be one of the more high energy bands that I saw. Considering their set was during the peak of the day’s heat, I was impressed that they had that kind of energy in the Denver altitude.
Carrying on with some songs from their latest release called “Warpaint, these hard core blues rockers didn’t fail to please their adoring crowd, Chris and his brother, Rich are a great combination of talent and if you are a photographer and have your shutter set fast enough, a camera’s delight to stop in action.
Once again, the Crowe’s are a band that I shot before in the mid’ ’80’s right when they were hitting their first big commercial success with the album, “Shake Your Money Maker”. It was a highlight for me to hear some of their best work from that era again. Rocking to “Remedy” and “Jealous Again”, the crowd roared with approval.
Whether you like The Black Crowes music or not, if nothing else Chris Robinson is a born performer and watching him do his thing is enough to make you fan in itself. He’s the closest thing to being a combination of Robert Plant and Mick Jagger that I’ve ever seen.
DAVE MATTHEWS BAND
I attended this set knowing absolutely nothing about Dave Matthews other than his style of music is not at the top of my list of favorites. However, I heard that he had a hot, rocking band, zillions of fans and that his show never failed to please. I’m glad I listened to people that recommended I see him live. It was quite a show, especially with seeing the Dave Matthews Band version of one of my all time favorite tunes by Peter Gabriel, “Sledgehammer”. I doubt Mr. Gabriel could have performed it any better himself!
Dave Matthews is definitely a great performer – very connected to his crowd of fans, somewhat animated, very showy and high energy. Though I don’t know his music, I learned a couple of the fan favorites that were played in his set were “Jimi Thing” with a killer guitar solo by band member, Tim Reynolds, “Don’t Drink The Water”, “You Might Die Trying”, “Eh Hee”, “Two Step”, “Satellite” and “Stay (Wasting Time)”, which were definite crowd pleasers.
MICHAEL FRANTI AND SPEARHEAD
These guys were awesome, really great band with a politically influenced flavor in their combination rap/hip-hop/rock-funk style and I liked them a lot. Quite the showman, Michael Franti was non-stop energy, even at one point climbing over the photographer’s pit to balance himself on the rail where the crowd was in order to get closer to them and touch them. The crowd loves Michael and he was happy to love them back with high five’s and lots of hand grabbing. Even though security had a good hold of him from the back so he didn’t accidently get himself into a crowd surfing mosh pit, they didn’t need to. Michael’s fans were mellow in their excitement and made the security guards jobs easy by sending him back to the stage without any hassles or accidents. You 
have to like a guy that is not afraid to get up close and personal with his fans. I have a feeling we will be seeing Michael Franti on stage a lot in the future.
LUPE FIASCO
With the packed stage tent crowd chanting, “Luuuupey, Luuuupey, Luuuupey”, Lupe Fiasco hit the stage with an over abundance of energy. Had I known this was a rap/hip-hop group beforehand, I probably would have never stopped at this stage.
Lupe is pretty amazing, working the crowd with the power and finess of a 20 year music veteran. His band and back-up singers were equally impressive, doing such songs as “Hip Hop Saved My Life”, “High Definition”, “Dumb It Down”, “Daydreamin’”, and the debut album hits that started out the show 
with “Never Lies”, “Kick, Push”, and “He Say, She Say”.
What a great show and I truly would like to see these guys again someday. I loved the dance club atmosphere they contributed to this stage area, having the crowdon their feet and cheering the entire set. Such an entertainer!
SPOON
Seeing Spoon was another first for me and what a phenomenal beginning. Lead singer and guitar player, Britt Daniels is quite the showman playing his guitar upside down and sideways - every way he could to emphasize his amazing talent, please the crowd and get the job done all at the same time. They packed their stage tent to near capacity with the crowd loving them to the fullest extent possible. Capitalizing on their hits “The Way We Get By” and “Superstar” with crisp and clear keyboards along 
with Britt’s impressive guitar work, their fans happily sang and danced along knowing all the lyrics by heart.
JJ GREY AND MOFRO
Another hot guitarist and keyboard player, JJ Grey was yet another new band for me. A set of very expressive, rocking playing, I see why their stage tent was nearly full to capacity by the time their show ended – fullof people that had been drawn in as they were walking by and seeing and hearing all the energy that abounded. Hot new band for me to look forward to catching up with again.
MOE
I liked MOE for many reasons – I had never seen this New York based band before and they were very precision influenced, high energy even though they describe themselves as being a “jam band”. If they are a jam band, they are not a typical one. Each one of these guys was extremely talented, turning a four piece band into something that
sounded much bigger. As their sound grew throughout their set, so did the crowd – all on their feet, majority pounding their fists in the air in approval of the songs being played.
NOTE: As a side note, unfortunately, due to some miscommunication on staying with the schedule, one of the main stage acts started playing their set 30 minutes early which caused some havoc on the media coverage and fans leaving other bands mid-set to make sure they weren’t missing something bigger on the main stage.I felt this was a rather rude injustice on the bands who’s fan crowd went from huge to next to nothing for the climax of their sets and equally bad on photographers and other media not being available to cover the main stage because they were covering the other stages while they waited for the main stage act’s scheduled start time – definitely not geared up for an earlier than planned start time.
View more photos on the All Access Magazine Flickr Page.
