Bleeding Kansas

I was just outside of Lawrence yesterday for a bizarre little back water festival in the woods. This was an encouraging thing to see first thing in the morning.
















I don't know how well poison ivy climbs, but to me this all looked like poison ivy.














The stage was situated right on a riverbank. It was a pretty ideal backdrop.




























The temperature hit 101 degrees with a heat index (I have yet to hear a satisfactory explanation of what a heat index might be) of 107. The conditions were pretty brutal if you were a kid coming to see the show, and considerably worse if you were working. This was our second day of outdoor festival madness in roasting heat. Just for perspective, none of us had showered in two days either. It was a career-evaluating day for sure.
This is Justin. He volunteered to climb the truss and focus lights for me in the middle of the blazing hot afternoon. Here he is pouring sweat while Murder by Death is playing about twenty five feet below him. When I asked him if he was up for it he claimed to be willing to do anything for rock and roll. Well, have at it my friend.















The only way to stay comfortable was to drink lots of water and wear as few items of clothing as possible. Normally we would have a bus to hide on or a dressing room to cool off in, but the dressing room was a tent which, amazingly, amplified and concentrated the heat. Oh, and the A/C on the bus took a shit right around noon. Jesse, one of our backline techs made himself a dangerously short pair cut-offs and turned a bit of discarded denim into a headband. Someone also gave him a shirt that read "Chicago Gay Games 2006." It was a tie dye.

















He pulled off his look for most of the day because, I think, of his innate nonchalance. It was pretty ballsy considering the caliber of stagehand that was floating around most of the day.















I don't mean to pass judgement, but I'm pretty sure that most of these guys don't even own shirts. They did, however, all ride Harleys. Here's an example: This guy clearly decided to give himself a haircut halfway through the day.
















There was a great deal of concern over how well this show was selling. Like our show a few days earlier in Penn State, Lawrence is a college town, and most college students are elsewhere. A few bands pulled out when they heard that the festival had sold 1500 tickets in advance. I'm sure some turned right around when they heard that Keane was playing as well.

There are more band members than audience members at this hour. This is the first band on the stage, playing to four people, and that's counting the two security guards facing in the opposite direction.














It all went off without a hitch and, while retaining a bit of the county fair vibe, the festival was pretty great. This is my on-going effort to defeat mother nature.















Everyone dealt pretty well with how inefficiently, at times, things were run mostly because the promoter and organizers hearts were really in it. Around dusk they lit hundreds of candles in paper bags to light the single dirt road in and out of the place. I thought that this was much nicer than big sodium flood-lighting in such a natural environment. I was thinking this just as I was very nearly mowed down by a passing golf cart because there were no lights on the road.
















If you are ever in the greater Lawrence area, avoid, at all costs, Taco John's. I took three bites of a burrito that was filled with (I'm serious) fried chicken, nacho cheese and tatter tots. The resulting indigestion caused me to very nearly shit my pants halfway through the show. I won't go into any further detail about that little incident.
















I made it though and got to shower last night after two long days. I fell asleep feeling like a new man after watching 15 minutes of 'Master and Commander' which is, maybe, the worst movie that I have ever seen. Worse than those Bollywood things even. That aside, I am in Denver today, at the Fillmore. I am in doors, sitting in front of a fan, dicking around on the information superhighway without a care in the world. I just had a cup of Greek yogurt and honey from the gourmet grocer's up the street and found a copy of The Onion to read. Life is pretty alright.