Now THAT Was A Weekend...

Happy Almost August, peoples. This past weekend was home to a festival called BoulderFest here in Rochester. Naturally, since you're dealing with me here, I was one of many musicians pulling at least double duty during the course of the fest.

It all started Friday afternoon. I played drums for Journey of Jasmine late that afternoon (JoJ was the second band to play BoulderFest this year. Not a bad time slot, either). I stuck around to see The Isotopes that night - those guys were awesome. It takes a lot of guts to cover Edgar Winter's "Frankenstein" at all, let alone play it almost note for note perfectly.

Saturday, however, was The Day Of Madness. At around noontime, I took the stage playing percussion for my friend Dan Ball Jr. About three hours later, SMOCK finally took the stage and rocked the crap out of the place. I should know 'cause I definitely had sweat in my eyes a few times during the course of our set. But wait! - it doesn't end there. That night, I was invited to sit in on piano for the band CHEA! for their show (they got the band back together!) outside of the festival. So I did, and beat the crap out of a piano for about an hour and a half or so. At the end of the day, I was exhausted, my hands hurt, my legs were tired, and I probably smelled funny. Such a good day...

It doesn't end there. About 12:30 Sunday afternoon, I got a call from a friend of mine asking me to fill in for his band's percussionist. So, uh...I did. I scrambled down to his place for a quick rehearsal, went to BoulderFest again, and then found out their percussionist was actually going to make the show. But since they still wanted me to play and realized he and I played different hand drums, The Kitchen Sinks took the stage with two percussionists.

So there you have it. Five shows in three days. All in all, the shows went well - Journey of Jasmine especially so - and this weekend was completely amazing. Same time next year?

Home, Home Again... I Like To Be Here When I Can...

Hey all. I JUST got back from a long weekend in Boston, and since the Red Sox were out of town, I didn't have to deal with any of THAT craziness. But the trip was awesome, and I saw Porcupine Tree this past Friday night. I gotta tell ya, if you get the chance to see them play live... take it. There isn't anything really truly fancy about their shows, but they just smoke their material on the stage. During their set, they played every song off the new album, Fear of a Blank Planet (Just as I hoped, the middle section to "Anesthetize" RULED in the live setting), but they also touched on older material in between the new songs, such as "Blackest Eyes" and "Trains" from In Absentia and "Mellotron Scratch", "Open Car", and "Halo" (the last song of the night including encores) off of Deadwing. All in all, an extremely well played show from a band that kicks ass live even the second time around.


Game One of the Stanley Cup Finals is tonight. GO DUCKS!