DeKALB | Five years ago, Jacob Miguel, David Click and Carl Nelson, front-men of local psychedelic band Astral Guard, weren’t digging the sickly sweet vibe of the summer music festival scene.

“We went to music festivals and it was this weird hippie jam thing that really wasn’t psychedelic music,” said Miguel, who graduated from NIU in the spring. “At a new music festival, everything is really happy and everything is written in 4/4 time. It’s like listening to freakin’ disco.”

So they got a keg, some close friends and a handful of local bands. Using the cement foundation of a demolished barn as a stage, they played their Pink Floyd/Mars Volta-inspired riffs to a crowd of 45 people. They called it Stompkee, a play on the street name where the farmyard mini-Woodstock was held.

“At the beginning Stompkee was to kind of revive the music that we loved that we didn’t see anywhere,” Miguel said.

Six festivals later, Stompkee is a beast: 75 artists, four stages and up to 3,000 people at Stone House Park, 3719 Suydam Rd., Earlville. The event cost $25,000 to put on, and tickets – which include a weekend of camping, swimming and fishing on the 100 acre grounds – go for $50 or $40 in advance.

Aside from its classic Psychedelic Stage, Stompkee now totes a Punk/Rockabilly Folk stage, an Electronica/DJ stage, and an insanely large Hip-Hop/Skate Shop stage. Sponsored by DJ Jay-Sun and SMLTWN Skate Shop, the Hip-Hop stage will hold half-pipe skateboarding competitions Friday and Saturday morning as well as a graffiti demo from Momentum Arts.

“The hip-hop stage is probably the coolest thing happening this year,” Miguel said. “We’ve got these people who were so onboard to get a hip-hop stage at a musical festival going that they really busted their ass to help us out.”

Oh yeah, and they got Kool Keith, the Brooklyn indie rapper whose 2001 album, Spankmaster, hit 11 on Billboard’s Independent Albums and 48 on R&B/Hip-Hop Albums. Kool Keith Thornton is best known for his multiple outlandish doctorate-holding personas: Dr. Octagon, Dr. Octagonecologyst and Dr. Dooom. But those outside the scene may know him for “Grandma’s Boyee,” the theme-song to Happy Madison’s film Grandma’s Boy.

“I was looking for a national headliner, and I went on Twitter and saw Kool Keith had posted something about sitting in his underwear in his bedroom for a couple of days because of bad weather or something,” Miguel said. “I twittered him, and he sent me his direct home phone line.”

The festival is a chill BYOB, but as an 18+ festival they’ll be cracking down, said Miguel and Nelson. ID’s will be checked, bracelets will be distributed and parking costs $5 to encourage designated drivers. Breathalyzers will be administered to anyone attempting to drive drunk. But you really shouldn’t need to drive: Stompkee promises 48 hours of music.

“Just because the line-up is over has never meant the music is going to stop,” Nelson said.

Although Stompkee has consistently doubled in attendees each year, with acts coming from all over the country, Miguel still sees the festival as a local effort.

“Really the only difference between what we’re trying to do and what Lollapalooza did is we’re not Perry Ferrell we don’t have millions of dollars,” Miguel said. “We’re still trying to keep it local: We really respect a lot of the music that happens in DeKalb.”