At High Sierra Music Festival , there is music everywhere. Rustling through the trees, on the summer air, from the river where Gold Rush miners once panned for fortunes, and seemingly all up and down the walls of the valley where the west coast festival is nestled. Attendees bring their own instruments for campground jams, and the sonic binge of tunes rarely stops for the festival's 96 hours.

Four days is hardly enough time to pack in all the musical goodness, but the organizers do their best with a nearly 96-hour binge of bluegrass, funk, reggae, jazz, electronic and some whimsical fusions like “newgrass” and “country punk.” This year, Ben Harper & The Innocent Criminals, Tedeschi Trucks Band, Thievery Corporation, Dr. Dog, Greensky Bluegrass, the Chris Robinson Brotherhood, and many more took the stages this year for freewheeling jams, much to the delight of High Sierra's music connoisseur attendees.

Your typical HSMF attendee is a not casual music fan looking for a soundtrack to drink a Budweiser to, but true sommeliers of sound. Their honed ears savor the slightest nuances of rhythm and note in their favorite songs. They track set lists, and compare one song version to another, and capture the shows on tape (unsurprisingly, the founders and producers of HSMF festival are Grateful Dead tour veterans). They play their own music throughout the festival's grounds.

You can practically feel the melodies oozing out of the jubilant festival photos below.