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OCP photo by Ross Field
By Ross Field, Contributing Writer
ROTHBURY — And that’s a wrap. The massive number of cars heading south on US 31 Monday morning, June 23, was proof positive that the 2025 Electric Forest had come to an end.
While Mother Nature brought intermittent rain on Thursday and Friday, and high winds over Saturday and Sunday, these weather events actually contributed to make the 2025 Electric Forest comfortable. The rain helped to hold down the dust in the festival grounds, and the winds tempered the high temperatures then being experienced by the eastern United States.
The number of attendees appeared to be down this year as evidenced by open areas in the campgrounds and the relative ease of walking from stage to stage across the concert grounds. In years past, the campgrounds were bursting at the seams, and it was nearly impossible at times to make your way through the huge crowds between shows.
OCP photo by Ross Field
As usual, the 2025 Electric Forest was a magical world of art installations and music that became more enhanced as the night skies darkened and the vast array of lights and lasers illuminated the concert grounds and the Sherwood Forest.
Sabrina Jaquez, from Louisville, Kentucky, was attending her first Electric Forest. Asked about her experience, she said, “My first night was just amazing. It was whimsical, magical, and carefree. I like how interactive the whole experience is — the music, the art, and the people. I’m definitely going to bring more friends with me next year.”
Her friend, Tony Wallace, from Long Island, New York, was also at the festival for the first time and also intends to return.
“There’s really no reason to go to any other music festival after you’ve experienced the Electric Forest,” said Wallace.
While the three main stages hosted some of the biggest names on the current music scene, it was once again on the smaller stages where less known and newer bands amazed their audiences.
Chelsea Dunhan, an artist from Jackson, Michigan, sat with friends enjoying the Denver-based eight-piece soul/jazz band, Dogtags, at the Observatory on Saturday afternoon.
OCP photo by Ross Field
“We hadn’t planned on attending but decided at the last minute to check it out. We are so happy we did.” said Dunhan. “The overall vibes and people are amazing, and we love discovering so much new music. We’ve enjoyed Lost Lands (an Electronic Dance Music [EDM] festival in Legend Valley, Ohio), but there’s so much more to the Electric Forest, so much art, so much everything. It’s really inspiring.”
To be sure, this Electric Forest featured more EDM acts than in years past but there were many opportunities to experience non-EDM acts, and both The String Cheese Incident and Khruangbin had huge crowds for their Ranch Arena sets on Saturday and Sunday.
In an interview on Friday afternoon, Kyle Hollingsworth, the keyboard player for The String Cheese Incident, talked about the evolution of the Electric Forest to being predominantly EDM in nature. He said that after their appearance at the 2009 Rothbury Festival, the band decided to combine the unique setting of the band’s annual festivals at Horning’s Hideout in rural Oregon with the art they had experienced at Burning Man, and bring it to the Midwest.
“We wanted to reinvent the festival experience,” said Hollingsworth. “Even though our role might be slightly diminished this year, we’re still super-excited to be involved — our souls are still deeply into it. But what outweighs everything is the chance to reach a younger audience with our music at the Electric Forest.”
On Saturday night The String Cheese Incident did just that. Their show filled the Ranch Arena with a huge crowd of a wide range of ages, all dancing under the incredible lightshow, from the lip of the stage back into the woods at the top of the hill.
The evening ended with what the band calls “The Shebang,” where a specific musical theme, lights, and fireworks combine into an incredible experience. This year’s Shebang was a highly curated set of cover songs that lit up the Ranch Arena beginning with The Killers’ “Mr. Brightside,” sung by Detroit’s Mike Posner, and then segueing to songs from Cypress Hill, Bob Dylan, Sublime, Peter Tosh, Damian Marley, and Musical Youth featuring guest musicians Berky, Saxsquatch, and Boogie T, and a troupe of dancers.
The last two songs of the evening by The String Cheese Incident were incendiary covers of Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs” and REM’s “It’s the End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine),” a haunting coincidence given the developments in the Middle East shortly before the concert ended.
Lucy Briggs came to the forest from southern California, but she grew up in Colorado, and it was only natural that she and her friends from Colorado and Michigan were enjoying Colorado’s String Cheese Incident on Saturday night.
“This is my first Electric Forest,” Briggs said. “The Sherwood Forest and wide open spaces are amazing, but the people are the best part. We’ve met people here this weekend that I hope we will always see at the Electric Forest.”
If there was one show that might keep people coming back to the Electric Forest — a show that demonstrated everything the Electric Forest is all about — it might be the other-worldly Sunday night concert put on by Khruangbin, an Austin, Texas, trio whose sound incorporates Thai rock music from the 1960s, Middle Eastern sounds, American surf music, and many other genres.
Khruangbin’s largely instrumental music was a hypnotic blend of precise musical passages, quiet interludes leading to blazing crescendos, and then rising to huge rock music, while guitarist, Mark Speer, and bassist, Laura Lee, strode across the stage and up and down the giant staircase that had been constructed on the stage of the Ranch Arena. Donald Johnson, Jr., kept precise beats from a riser at the top of the stairs.
From time to time, Lee’s ethereal chants and minimal vocals rose up in the musical stew that seemed impossible for just three musicians to create.
Kent DePuydt, from Grand Rapids, Michigan, was an Electric Forest first-timer, and also seeing one of his favorite bands — Khruangbin — for the first time.
“I was blown away. The big sound, the great picking, the awesome compositions, and Donald (the drummer) was just as cool as the other side of the pillow,” said DePuydt. “It took the group from great to legendary in my book.”
And the stunned crowd certainly agreed, with gigantic applause and cheers ringing around the Ranch Arena as Electric Foresters headed out into the night to catch some of the last acts of the festival.
And just like that, the 2025 Electric Forest had been sent out in style.
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