music festivals

Sorry, but what sort of music and art do you like? I could then maybe give you some pointers.

No use going to Seattle if you hate grunge (probably no use anyway most of the places are gone apparently, hope I'm wrong)

Hey there, my and my love are planning a year long trip across the usa end of summer 2011,

Just to make sure--this is a year-long trip beginning and ending in late summer, so you're going to be traveling between late sumer 2011 and late summer 2012? So in reality, you could conceivably go to festivals at any time of year?

any good music and art fesitvals happening?

There are hundreds.

But given your other posts, you seem like the kind of person who would really enjoy Burning Man. Read very carefully their information about safety and survival, though. The festival is in the middle of the desert, and you are expected to carry in everything you need (and carry out everything you bring).

Beyond that, I'm not an "art" person in the generalized sense--I mean, I like art, and I'm even an artist (a writer), but when I reach for adjectives about myself, "artistic" is not in the first ten or twenty that I pick. So I don't know that sort of scene.

Music I can do, though. Here are some of the major music festivals:

Coachella in California.
South by Southwest and Austin City Limits in Austin (neither one is in the summer--Texas in summertime is, um, not fun).
Summerfest in Milwaukee.
Bonnaroo near Nashville.
Lollapalooza and Pitchfork in Chicago.
The Jazz Festival in New Orleans.
The venerable Newport Folk Festival, still going.
The equally venerable Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, one of a number that I could name if you prefer classical music.

any good music and art oriented towns to check out?

I have never heard of a decent-sized city in the country that does not have an arts scene, and by and large, the bigger the city the better the scene. Try New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Seriously.

I know that wasn't the answer you were looking for.

Another thing you might try is America's college towns. The ones that have a reputation for being "vibrant" include (but are by no means limited to) Berkeley CA, Madison WI, Austin TX, Cambridge MA, Amherst MA, Chapel Hill NC, Ann Arbor MI, Bloomington IN, Athens GA, Lawrence KS, and Boulder CO. I don't necessarily agree with that reputation in all of those places--I've been to over half of those, and in some cases, I've found them relatively sleepy. So your mileage may vary. At the very least, they're all more interesting than your typical non-college towns of comparable size.

If you head to the "college-town" parts of the big cities, you might get the best of both worlds. So that'd be Greenwich Village (NYU) in New York, and Hyde Park (U of C) in Chicago, but not Westwood (UCLA), which is too close to Beverly Hills to be terribly arty.

--M.

Edited by: mrpenney to add Spoleto

Nice job, mrpenney.

Hi

I just created a group dedicated to travelling the festivals of the world but only just started using this site and I can't find it. Anyhow, if anyone is interested in joining me in my quest then please drop me a line.

First stop: EVOLVE, Nova Scotia. http://www.evolvefestival.com/

L x

best small festival in Canada: Dawson City Music Festival, July every year for 30+ years.
The place/town defies description.

A huge list of international Music Festivals for 2011 can be found at a website called Dance The Globe, google it or add .com

they have them based on continent so you can search based on time and place

Hope this helps

XX Lucy

Or festivalplanet.com has a few too. There are so many music festivals and not all of them are mainstream and expensive. Have a search around and see who's playing where.