Austin Hastings

Third Eye Gathering, or 3EG, is a non-profit for arts and education that I took part in launching back in 2003.  Since then, we’ve had a couple of large multi-day festivals, then scaled down to night shows at a warehouse in downtown Los Angeles with our last show held last year at The Roxy in Hollywood.

3EG originally came into the world as ToolGathering in ‘03, in which we as fans of the band Tool wanted to bring together others who appreciated some of the concepts, art and aural style that the band Tool brought forth.  Early on in our effort, we had serious issues in attempting to work with Tool’s management, who attempted to smother our fledgling event, though I’ll give credit to their drummer Danny who I met a couple times around LA and he was always very down to earth, friendly and cool about our effort.  And while I think Maynard is one of the best singers out there, I’ll refrain from going into details on his, uhm, “support.”

Through the turmoil of attempting to bring something meaningful together, we had met a handful of extremely talented artists, musicians and thinkers who were interested in what we were doing, we realized this was more than just a group of fans of a band, and thus the event was rebranded as Third Eye Gathering, or more commonly, 3EG.  The first 3EG-branded event was a 3 day day and night festival in Irvine, CA in which we had visual effects, art from talented artists such as Cam De Leon (known for earlier Tool album artwork) and Tony Koehl, a roster of talented up and coming bands including members of the prog-rock band King Crimson, as well as presentations on various ideas, movie screenings and discussions.

The concept behind 3EG has and continues to be a synergy of live music, presentation of progressive art and infusion discussion of interesting ideas.  The goal is to stimulate all of the senses and the intellect and to stir the soul.  The 3EG movement has come out as an enjoyable experience with participants from around the world, and because 3EG is a 100% volunteer effort put on by people who fairly busy lives, we only tend to have a 3EG event once a year.  It’s about time for another gathering.

We’ll be having the next installment of 3EG this September the 12th on a private ranch in Paso Robles wine country, just outside of San Luis Obispo county.  This is in partnership with a long-time friend of the organization by the name of Chad Land who is actually doing most of the leg-work on this event.  Chad first played ToolGathering back in ‘03 with his band 00 Metro, and now heads up the band Axia who will be playing this event.  It’s a camping event in which we’ll have rock bands during the day, and electronic as well as acoustic accompanied by visual effects at night.  There will be BBQ, music, art and community.  I’m stoked.

The details should be online shortly for anyone who might be interested.