There won’t be a Gathering of the Vibes in Bridgeport’s Seaside Park — or anywhere — for a second straight year, according to a statement by head Vibesman Ken Hays on the festival’s Facebook page.
“As you know, the music festival landscape is rapidly evolving,” Hays wrote, “and with that evolution comes greater competition that is far more challenging for smaller, independent festivals like the Vibes. … I too am disappointed and had hoped for a different outcome. However as the world changes, we must change too.”
For years, the GOTV was Connecticut’s largest rock festival, drawing campers and daytrippers out to hear Jane’s Addiction, Primus, Weezer, Branford Marsalis, Widespread Panic, Levon Helm, Elvis Costello, Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, and every surviving member of the Grateful Dead.
The first festival, called “Deadhead Heaven: A Gathering of the Tribe,” took place at SUNY Purchase in 1996, as a response to the death of Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia. In 1999 and 2000, the Vibes settled in Seaside Park, left for Upstate New York from 2001-2006, and returned to Bridgeport in 2007.
The Vibes last gathered in 2015, with Warren Haynes and the Seaside All-Stars, the String Cheese Incident, Wilco and Ben Harper & the Innocent Criminals headlining.
Bob Weir and Ratdog’s 2000 performance, Hays told the Hartford Advocate in 2011, was the “the first nod of acknowledgment that this is a special event, one that came out of a grassroots community that has also transformed itself from a Deadhead reunion. It was a special for the community. They knew how much it meant for us for [Weir] to pay attention.”
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