The Double JJ Ranch dates back to 1937, when it opened as the Jack and Jill Ranch in the quiet town of Rothbury, north of Muskegon. The resort was originally a dude ranch for Chicagoans and Detroiters looking for rural escape. What a long, strange trip it has been.

On July 3-6 the ranch will be center stage for “Rothbury,” the most mind-bending music festival north of Bonnaroo in Manchester, Tennessee. “Rothbury” headliners include the Dave Matthews Band, jam stars Widespread Panic, John Mayer, metal mavens Primus, rapper Snoop Dogg, reggae legends Steel Pulse and former Grateful Dead bassist-vocalist Phil Lesh. More than seventy bands will appear on eight stages.

And more than 40,000 grateful dudes are expected to attend.

On any given day Rothbury’s population is 438.

Rothbury is a mile-square town about six miles east of Lake Michigan. Planners expect “Rothbury” to become an annual event. The festival’s subtext is to direct the energy of the live music community into a durable social movement towards climate change and clean energy alternatives.

“Rothbury” will host a Think Tank and Energy Fair. The festival is committed to donating a minimum of $50,000 worth of solar panels to Shelby High School in Shelby, Michigan. Conscious Alliance will attempt to get into the Guinness Book of World Records for the “World’s Largest Canned Food Sculpture,” which will also generate more than 50,000 cans of food to be donated to food banks in several counties around Rothbury. The sculpture will be on display all weekend. Concertgoers who bring at least twenty cans will receive a limited edition “Rothbury” poster. The rain-or-shine festival will also feature buskers, a progressive circus and “New World Cabaret.”

In a summer filled with outdoor festivals like the new 10,000 Lakes Festival in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, Lollapalooza in Chicago (which grossed $9.8 million in 2007) and Bonnaroo, “Rothbury” is the first to take on a green program of this magnitude at an around-the-clock (camping) concert in the United States. “Rothbury” will have an on-staff Greening Chief and it will be replacing disposables with 100 percent compostables, recycling and offering clean energy and carbon-offsetting options.

The ticket prices are green, too. Weekend tickets are $244.75 per person (including camping access) and a VIP weekend ticket is $475 per person, which includes VIP parking, camping, viewing areas, and probably most important, access to air-conditioned bathrooms and shower facilities.

Late country singer Waylon Jennings and noted beer drinker George “Cheers” Wendt visited the Double JJ Ranch back in the day. The Double JJ is West Michigan’s only four-season full-service resort. And “Rothbury” is not the ranch’s first experience with live outdoor music. In recent summers the Double JJ has hosted “The Sandy Corley Memorial Run” a fundraiser for the Hackley Hospital Cancer Center in Muskegon. Last year’s headliners in the ranch’s rodeo arena were ’70s rockers Blue Oyster Cult and Edgar Winter.  The annual event draws about 5,000 people, including many Harley riders according to resort owner Bob Lipsitz.

Lipsitz’s son Brian, 24, is a college student in Boulder, Colorado. He attended the 2006 memorial run concert and talked his father into expanding the idea into “Rothbury.” Brian recruited Madison House Inc. in Boulder to co-produce the event. The idea became so big, a second promoter—Los Angeles-based AEG Worldwide (Paul McCartney, Eagles, etc.—was brought in.

“Am I worried about it getting too big?” Bob Lipsitz asks with a laugh. “Sure. At some time the scale tipped but the finest companies in the country are working on this thing. They know exactly what they are doing.”

The Double JJ Ranch features dozens of heated log cabins, 32 hotel rooms and 120 condominiums. They are all sold out for “Rothbury.” The 2,000-acre resort includes three lakes, a ranch, golf course, natural cranberry bog and a private airstrip. About 300 acres of the grounds is reserved for festival camping. Even by early spring, Lipsitz says, five wells were built into the resort landscape and “thousands” of porta potties will be imported for the festival.

“Rothbury” will make a serious dent on the small town. Rothbury’s Grant Township greenlighted permits and will receive a $2 land improvement fee from each ticket sold. “For the most part the community is very supportive,” Lipsitz says. “Obviously an event this big takes cooperation not just from the community, but from the state level on down. It will impact every area of transportation and tourism in West Michigan. Hotels all along the area are sold out.”

“Rothbury” will help Michigan’s sagging tourist industry. At the mid-April Driving Tourism 2008 Conference in Grand Rapids, a forecast from two Michigan State professors predicted the state’s tourism industry is expected to decline by 2 percent this year. “People will be coming early and looking for places to stay,” Lipsitz says. “By mid-April we had between twenty and forty guys on site preparing for this. Through the month of June the number will grow to several thousand staff. Many of those people will have to be considered tourists in west Michigan.”

Lipsitz is 55 years old. When asked how many performers he knew on the “Rothbury” lineup, he laughs and answers, “Not many.” He elaborates, “We went to Bonnaroo last year to get an idea of what we’d be dealing with.”

What did Lipsitz learn?

“I’m a logistics guy,” he answers. “We have a huge infrastructure. Bonnaroo is literally in the middle of a field and they have nothing. They create an infrastructure for 80,000 people and it was staggering to see that. And it goes 24 hours a day, set-up, clean-up and move on, and you get artists in and out. We’re excited about this. Hopefully it will be a huge success for Michigan.”

For more information about the festival, visit rothburyfestival.com.