Hello one and all!
This is a little belated but I still wanted to share some of our experiences from our trip to Summer Camp 09.
First off I wanted to start this off with: we had just finished coverting our new bus to an RV and this was it's first official trip! We had the band, me and 4 great friends on the way with us and picked up 2 more at the festival so the return trip was 11 people total! They are all great friends of ours and if any of you are reading this thank you all so much for coming and for your support........We love you very much!
Now then, we won our way into this excellent festival by winning a battle of the bands in Denver in February at Quixote's (on the night of my birthday actually:) As excited as we where to win it we where a little dissappointed to not be playing Desert Rocks ( a festival in Moab Utah we have played the last two years) which happened to be on the same weekend. Once we decided we where definately going to make the trip to Summer Camp we booked 4 shows along the way, the first of which being in Lincoln Nebraska at the 12th Street Pub. We had booked a show here about a year ago but where forced to cancel it when our bus broke down last summer, so where excited to get the chance to go back and play there. Good thing we did! This ended up being one of the best shows of the trip. The venue did a great job of getting the word out and there was a terrific turn out. It was a really fun night: good music and very happy open poeople just loving the music. These people seemed almost starved for music and the vibe in the room was electric! I can guarantee we will be back Lincoln.
A couple days and a couple shows later we arrived at Summer Camp! We got there early on Friday mourning and didn't play till Sunday so we had a couple days to just go see music. This festy had an amazing line up and all the stage locations are so close togeather you can make the short jaunt to any stage in minutes making it really easy to take all the bands in. I got to see great bands like: Umphrey's, MOE, Les Claypool, Willie Nelson, U Melt, Lotus and so many more! Now everyone in the band has different favorite bands and taste and so on, but I can tell you that the Umphrey's Mcgee sets on Friday and Saturday nights where the hightlight of the weekend for pretty much everyone in the band. The shows where amazing and Umph was just on fire! We all also had a chance to go to most of the clinics held: Drums, Guitar, Bass, Keys, Percussion ect. It was a great experience. When Sunday came we decided to set up a small setup of my lights even though Yamn was playing a day set. I will personally tell you my llights didn't look very good but YAMN killed it! An awesome high-energy set! A lot of new people got to see Yamn for the first time and we gave out about 80 CD's. Most notable things about the set for me where Bone broke a guitar string first song into the set. I grabbed him his backup guitar and he broke a string on that 2 songs later. So here I am sitting next to the stage trying to restring Bone's guitar mid set as fast as possible. It was a pretty funny situation but I don't think the music suffered any and Bone did well to keep it as seemless as 2 broken strings in 1 set can be. It was a fantastic experience and a good time was had by all.
The trip home was a straight drive from Chillicothe IL to Denver because Quamy had to be back for his sisters high school graduation(Congrats!!). Most of us slept most of the way and it was pretty uneventful. Not bad, just un eventfull.
Well untill next time,
Peace
PaulWhitehouse
