Carnival time Gentlemen Of The Road

Celebration and community. Mumford & Sons are a favorite of my family — Aida’s a super-fan and my kids know all the words to the songs — so the announcement of this weekend-long festival brought a great opportunity for the lot of us to experience a concert together in a unique setting. Salida, Colorado, the host for this “stopover” (as the promoters called it), is a small but vibrant mountain town, and there couldn’t have been a better place to stage it. Local organizers and business owners gave us fans a warm welcome, presenting side venues, local food and beer, and family-friendly activities wherever you turned. The good vibes fueling the on-site camping grounds bled into the festival area, and embraced attendees like an old friend. The headlining band curated the lineup themselves: young up-starts like The Vaccines played alongside festival stalwarts The Flaming Lips and brothers-in-arms Dawes. Highlights for me were quirky sets by James Vincent McMorrow (that voice!) and Tune-Yards; Colorado’s governor introducing costume-clad Lips in front of a 3-story tall inflatable banner reading FUCK YEAH SALIDA; and Mumford & Sons delivering the electricity from <em>Wilder Mind</em> and with it laying waste to the hot and dusty main stage area. But the best part was the sincerity with which every musician interrupted their sets to acknowledge their hosts — Salida and Mumford & Sons — with huge smiles and full hearts. If the goal of a music festival is to spread art and fellowship to fans of both, then this one was a success, and one I was happy to expose to my kids. Setlist