Eclectic, Inclusive, Magical

"There's a lot of magic in a lot of voices in unison," says Daniel Rodriguez. "Festivals are always different. There are a lot more elements conspiring [than at club shows] -- people have been camping out for days, they have room to hula hoop or whatever they need to do. There could be a full moon out or it could be raining. ... So many things contribute to the inspiration of [the performance], and you never know what's going to happen."

Rodriguez is a member of Elephant Revival, the five-piece from Colorado with roots in the Ozarks and a sound that's difficult to confine to just one label. Their music holds elements of Americana, bluegrass and indie rock, as well as more abstract identifiers like gypsy and "transcendental folk." The group returns to Northwest Arkansas as part of the lineup for the Hillberry Harvest Moon Festival in Eureka Springs.

"We try not to limit ourselves to one interpretation of string music," says festival organizer and Deadhead Productions partner, Chris Anderson. "In today's world, the term bluegrass kind of loosely applies. It all fits, and it all plays its part in the grand scheme. There's no one factor that we can pin down and say, 'That's what Hillberry's all about.'"

As far as Deadhead Productions go, Hillberry is the Americana/folk/bluegrass contribution to Northwest Arkansas' music community. You may also recognize the company's name from funk music festival Phunkberry -- which took a year off in 2016 -- or Highberry Festival, which moved to Mulberry Mountain this year and is more a "cornucopia" mix of all these music styles. They like to use -berry in their naming, but they also like to bring good music and a good time to festival-lovers of the Ozarks.

"The premise is the same [for] all the events -- a reflection of our core values: Creating a quality product that also appeals to [our] crowd. We have people of all ages at our events -- it's an eclectic and all-inclusive type of thing," Anderson says. Although the goal in 2015 was to host three different music festivals, he says the decision to forego Phunkberry in 2016 "allowed us to plan and really develop a quality experience for our attendees. What we're doing is from the heart -- it's really by the music fans, for the music fans."

Hillberry has its roots in the summertime with Hillberry 1 taking place in August of 2015. When Pipeline Productions' Harvest Moon Festival fell through last October, the Deadhead team was able to swoop in and pull a festival together in less than 45 days. Hillberry 2 gave ticket-buyers and artists who had already made travel plans a festival to come to after all. Now, with that date in October being open, Hillberry 3 will bring music lovers back to The Farm in Eureka Springs for cooler camping weather and expanded infrastructure at the venue.

"We love coming to festivals in Arkansas -- [where it's] often down home and wilderness-based," Rodriguez says. "The music for us actually started in those kinds of environments -- camping in the wilderness, sitting around a bonfire -- and that's a how a lot of the songs were born, too. It's like a sense of community that doesn't happen all the time. A lot of festivals have that vibe and it does add to the show."

NAN What's Up on 10/07/2016