What a pathetically short trip it's been. |

Hippie jam fans across the nation need not air out their sleeping bags and Volkswagen buses just yet because one of this summer's largest traveling love fests has burned out already. The Hoodoo Bash tour, scheduled to blaze a trail from New York to California starting next week, now looks as if it will fizzle out after just eight nights. |

The Boulder, Colo. bluegrass band Leftover Salmon announced late last week that they would ditch Hoodoo sidekicks Moe, String Cheese Incident and Strangefolk because "personal issues and schedules conflicted with tour plans." "They just needed a month off to put some things in order," Mark Bliesener, of the band's management company, told JAMTV on Friday.

The three remaining soldiers will trudge on without Leftover Salmon from June 5 to 14 across the East Coast, but will break apart following a show at Harvey's Lake Amphitheatre in Wilkes-Barre, Penn.

"This is a great disappointment all around because the potential for this tour was so great," Strangefolk spokesman Sam Ankerson told JAMTV on Thursday. "It all came together so last minute that the fundamentals just weren't worked out."

Just three weeks ago, JAMTV reported that Albany, N.Y.-based moe. had foresaken neo-hippie road warriors Widespread Panic and their Travelin' Light festival to tour more intimate venues on Hoodoo. High, but not necessarily dry, moe. is now scrambling to fill the rest of its summer itinerary, according to band spokesman Jim Walsh.

"It's a shame because this tour was the coolest idea to come along in a long time," String Cheese Incident spokeswoman Sara Kelly Jones told JAMTV on Thursday. "I know the fans are really disappointed. I think [the Hoodoo Bash] would have been good for everyone."

In a painfully ironic turn of events, defectors Leftover Salmon will enjoy stage time with the venue-packing Widespread Panic for four dates in the Midwest and Virginia in early July. The reportedly troubled outfit will also pull up its boot straps long enough to play with Bela Fleck & The Flecktones on June 16 during the Telluride on the Rocks show in Colorado, and again on July 7 at Wolf Trap in Vienna, Va.

Management for the band says they will tour the South and Midwest through July and August as well.

Meanwhile, Hoodoo's veritable unknowns -- String Cheese Incident and Strangefolk -- are left without the national attention that this tour would have afforded them. Just weeks away from signing with Mammoth Records, the harmonious Burlington, Va.,-based Strangefolk plan to hit the road out west on a solo stint. They will enter the studio in November or December and would embrace the opportunity to tour with the Hoodoo crowd again, Ankerson said.

String Cheese Incident management insists that the band will not be waylaid by the recent cancellation, but will push out across the nation regardless. With one member marrying and another expecting a new child this summer, the band will appreciate a little time off as well, Jones said. "This band has been on such a trajectory that everyone is just going crazy right now," she said.

Regardless of Hoodoo squabbles, Leftover Salmon will appear alongside String Cheese Incident at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival beginning June 18, when the Colorado natives will debut their new disc, Round the Wheel.

No newcomers to touring troubles, moe. was forced to cancel its weekend-long Brain Festival last year due to time and venue problems. Now, however, the Summer Sun Music Festival is picking up where moe. left off with 11 weekend-long music and camping adventures through the East and Midwest.

Kicking off this weekend at Val Du Lakes in Mears, Minn., the festival will welcome acts such as Gov't Mule, JGB, George Clinton & The P-Funk Allstars, Ekoostik Hookah, Zero and the Jazz Mandolin Project, who will also perform this Saturday at Northwestern University's Armadillo Day. (Anni Layne)

Here are the remaining Hoodoo Bash tour dates with Moe, String Cheese Incident and Strangefolk:

• June 5 -- Empire Court, Syracuse, N.Y.
• June 6 -- Nashoba Ski Area, Westford, Mass.
• June 7 -- State Theater, Portland, Maine
• June 8, 9, 10 -- The Muse, Nantucket, Mass.
• June 12 -- Electric Factory, Philadelphia, Pa.
• June 14 -- Harvey's Lake Amphitheatre, Wilkes-Barre, Pa.