I know I always take a long break from blogging and say I'll come back with more updates than ever, but the truth is my life is busy, and I don't always have time to photograph it, at least to the extent I'd like to. Anyway, I don't know if now's the time to talk about Stay Sweet Fest, after I've already been writing 9 hours for work, but I feel like I need to update at least a little bit. So I'll try to start from the beginning.
I left my house in New Jersey at 10am, swung all around New York to pick up my friends and the rest of
the band, and then sat in what was the worst traffic I ever seen. Bumper to bumper for 10 hours. I was pretty sure we were going to miss the Friday night show all together but I managed to show up in just enough time to help polish off one of the band kegs and see Slingshot Dakota play.
That night was really the most coherent and planned out. We walked back what seemed like miles to our friends' (who are in the band This Is Your Life) house. Stayed there with the dudes from Timeshares. Slept on a floor. Woke up at 10am. Pulled myself out of my sleeping bag, just barely. Threw on some clothes and headed for day two in Timeshares' beat up van. It was pouring. My hair was ruined.
Timeshares' van, god bless it's soul, is the kind of car punk rock dreams are made (despite the fact that it continuously breaks down). They've had terrible luck with cars and I'm crossing my fingers that my comfy mini van doesn't follow suit, even though I'd do whatever it took ensure the security and sanctity of our relationship. Anyway, I'm almost positive they started it with a wrench instead of a key and the sides of the doors were plastered with stickers and magnets from places they'd been together. It was like a scrapbook or blog or something.
That day we played to the biggest group of people we've maybe ever played to. It was really nice knowing that hours from home there were people there who cared about us, singing the words to our songs, and not just caring about us as a band, but as people. I was nervous because a couple of hours before, the article I wrote from my last entry was published in punknews, and reading a slew of negative comments debating the level of our talent really isn't something I need to read before we go on. Lesson learned. Regardless, that nervousness faded in .02 seconds with a cup of beer and some good friends.
The rest of that day is kind of a wash. We drank, we made friends, we sang, we danced, I even helped someone do a keg stand which is new for me, and somewhere between wandering around Richmond at 3 in the morning eating Doritos and waking up sick my stomach, I fell in love with that city and the friends I had met.
Some notable things: Sundials', The Front Bottoms', and Tigers Jaw's sets. Everyone was great, but they really killed it. The way it feels to be so tired that you're fearless. Oh, and Timeshares and This Is Your Life wrote me a song. They wrote it to wake me up when I was dead asleep in another room. The lyrics were in Spanish and I was told it was some sort of flamenco feel. I was so tired I barely remember it, but it's good to know I have friends who are so good they would play in my ear as long as it took to be sure I was awake.
