For enthusiasts, the annual Electric Forest festival in Rothbury is a sensory overload of music, dance, lights, art and community.
For MLive multimedia specialist Joel Bissell, it’s 40,000 steps, thousands of images, and scores of interactions with festivalgoers during the course of 20-hour days.
All in heat, rain, dust and wind, then filing from a pop-up canopy or a car seat in the middle of a horse pasture in a makeshift campground. But don’t worry – it’s a labor of love.
“If I could only cover one story each year, it would be this one, without question,” Bissell said. “You have all these people from all over the world that come to a middle-of-nowhere spot in Michigan and they're blown away. This is a place where you can escape from reality and have fun.”
That passion is evident from the fact that since 2015 Bissell has spent every single day the event has been held – it shut down for COVID in 2020 and 2021 – on festival grounds, making photos and videos and writing stories.
That’s 55 days in all, which typically start for Bissell around 8 a.m. and often don’t end until 4 a.m. or later. That reflects his dedication to covering every aspect of a festival that runs pretty much around the clock.
With seven music stages, immersive art installations, and surreal environments like the Dream Emporium and Sherwood Forest, Electric Forest is more than a music festival – it’s a temporary city of creativity and connection.
“You go in the Dream Emporium, you’ll be there for three hours. You’re just in this La La Land where you can let your brain go and pretend like you’re a kid again,” Bissell said.
The lights, fog and glowing artwork create a dreamlike backdrop for stunning visuals, as you can see in the 17 stories and photo galleries that Bissell posted this year from Rothbury, which is near Muskegon.
“It's a spectacle, seeing the lasers and the fog and the trees and you turn around and it's, ‘Holy cow, there's 30,000 people,’” he said. “It's a photographer's absolute visual paradise. I mean, you could easily go there and take 100,000 photos.”
Electric Forest draws tens of thousands of visitors each year, many of whom camp from Wednesday through Monday morning. The music ranges from EDM (electronic dance music) to jam bands, and the cultural vibe is artsy and bohemian. Bissell said the underlying bond is communal spirit and discovery.
“Everyone is so friendly there. I probably meet more people than most, but even if I wasn't taking photos, I just kind of become friends with these people randomly,” he said. “I've made friends with people from Buffalo, from Miami, from New York, Pacific Northwest – everywhere.”
They recognize him each year, too, but he’d be hard to miss. He’s the guy moving through crowds constantly with multiple cameras or toiling away on a computer to file stories and photos for MLive readers.
“People are always like, ‘Why is that kid on his laptop in the middle of the campground here? You got 50-mile-an-hour winds ripping through and rain and what the heck is going on?’”
But for Bissell, it’s about a contribution to the community – documenting the spirit of the event and the people who make it unique.
Will he be back? Does a sequined raver dance in the woods?
“I've spent 55 days in Rothbury and every one of those days is so magical,” Bissell said. “For one weekend, these people get to unplug from the world – connect, relax, create, laugh, and be part of something much bigger than ourselves.”
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