'Church Of Live Music,' Long Island's Great South Bay Music Festival, To Bring Tunes To The Masses Next Week

PATCHOGUE, NY — It's not like other festivals where attendees flock to be seen. The Great South Bay Music Festival is about music and the people who love it, and this year, organizers promise to deliver one of the best lineups yet.

"We would love to see everybody, and we think it's going to be a great year of music, and yeah, and that's that's pretty much it," said festival organizer James Faith. "We always try to be the church of live music, you know, a little bit of everything.

Faith always likes to present "a very diverse palette of music over the four days."

"Artists that I feel are maybe important, and maybe they've not heard them before, but they should," he added.

Faith thinks this year's lineup is one of the best lineups the festival has ever had.

"Each day is a little bit different," he said, adding that Thursday night "skews a little bit younger," with bands like the Used, which is more emo, and rock.

Friday is always a reggae/rock night.

This year, the festival features Sublime, which is "probably one of the biggest names out there today."

The band is known for tunes like, "Santeria," "What I got," Doin' Time," and "Wrong Way."

The band is made up of original members — bassist Eric Wilson and drummer Bud Gaugh, as well as singer-guitarist Jakob Nowell, who is the son of late frontman Bradley Nowell.

The band also played the festival in 2018 and 2019.

"Saturday is more of a jam band kind of thing," Faith said. "We've got Gov't Mule with Warren Haynes, The Almost Brothers, and Bruce Hornsby and the Noisemakers.

There's also Sierra Hull, whom Faith describes as "a monster musician and singer and songwriter and kind of a prodigy, grew up playing with Allison Krause, and people like that.

"She's been playing since she's a very small child," he said. "She's amazing."

The last night of the festival, on Sunday, features My Morning Jacket, and Little Feat is opening for them.

"It's Little Feet's final tour, so that's something of interest," Faith said. "And also, My Morning Jacket, it's their only New York summer date, and we're pretty excited about that."

The festival, which is in its 18th year, is the third-largest and longest-running festival in the history of New York, all with "a backdrop of the peaceful setting on the Great South Bay," according to Faith.

It also features food, and activities, as well as artisans and craftspeople.

"Our attendees are mostly music lovers," he said. "It's not a more contemporary festival where people are there mostly to be seen, and more have a more of a fun thing, and it's about the audience. It's not."

"It's mostly about the music and four stages," he said. "It's four days, and over 55 bands."

This year, the festival started a new Vets Rock promotion in which more than 100 tickets were donated to veterans or discounted through nine different organizations.

"A lot of them are in organizations and kind of just not doing much and kind of sitting around," Faith said. "We just felt it'd be something cool to do, and give them something to do."

Other philanthropy the festival takes part in is that $1 from every ticket is donated to Stony Brook Cancer Center.

"We've done that since the very first day we opened," Faith said. "We've given them well over a quarter of a million dollars at this point."

The festival features a philanthropy tent, in which four to five organizations are set up and hand out materials to spread the word about their initiatives.

Faith expects Friday night with Sublime will bring thousands of people. The sold-out performance night in 2018 saw traffic jams in Patchogue's side streets, and some hoping for scalped tickets outside the door.

It could very well see a full capacity of 6,500 people when the band plays again.

"So, I think that night that you're probably going to see that," Faith said. "The Thursday is probably going to do pretty well, but that's the capacity. So we have the capacity to do about 24,000 people. I don't think we're going to get to there, but it should be a good weekend."

Faith said he expects to see between 18 and 20,000 people over the four days.

"We're hoping we'll see that, but it depends," he said. "Life's changing these days. A lot of older people aren't going out anymore, or they're going to a lot of the free shows, especially on Long Island."

"Pretty much every village in town has a free concert series, and they go, and they set up their lawn chair, and they bring their food, drink, or whatever they're smoking, and they watch tribute bands and stuff," he said. "So, you're getting a lot of that for the older crowd."

The younger crowd of 18-to 19-year-olds are not going to as many concerts these days, he says.

"So it's the middle," he said. "It's that group in the middle that likes Sublime and Taking Back Sunday, and bands like that and the Used."

"Those are the people that are still going out in their 40s," he said, adding, “So, we're all going through this. I guess we have to pivot a little bit."

Faith says the festival sees alot of returning attendees each year.

"We see a lot of them every year because they know they're going to see a lot of bands that know a lot of music that they may not have heard before, and now they love those bands," he added.