9/5/09 moe.down, Turin, NY

The trek out to moe.down in upstate New York started out with kind of a stress. Two nights before the show as we were loading up our gear, we find that our van's "Check Engine" light was on once again (see posting from the 8/12/09 show for the previous hellish encounter with this pesky light). Not wanting to drive 1,500 miles round trip with a potential serious problem, we took the van into the shop the next morning. A day's work turned into a day-and-half's work, and Friday's departure time got pushed back a good four hours.

The van was in good shape though, and we hauled ass out to New York, arriving at our hotel well after 3am. We would have to depart the next day by 9:30am to make the rest of the drive and arrive at the festival in time for our noon set, so we were less than happy campers about the lack of sleep, but glad to have made the drive without incident.

Saturday's weather was gorgeous, and festival grounds were set in the mountains, with a chill vibe all around. The "second stage" that we were playing on was actually not too shabby, and was of decent size with killer sound. We were all a little groggy though: While setting up, I thought my amp was broken, but it turned out just not to be plugged in; Mattias and Jordan both had mid-show brain farts with Mattias counting off the wrong song, and Jordan blowing the chords in another; and Adam openly admitted to momentarily falling asleep during the set.

But despite the lack of sleep, we played 2 great sets to a surprisingly big crowd for that early in the afternoon, and received tons of great feedback as we hung out at the festival the rest of the day. Even though we were far from home, it was nice to hear folks calling out song requests during the set and meeting fans afterwards who had seen us at Summer Camp or on our past tours through the Northeast.

The festival also had awesome hospitality, with great a great vegetarian spread, and extras like fresh squeezed orange juice and a secret freezer full of fudgesicles. I was once again the driver at the end of the night, so the rest of the band was obligated to get super drunk, especially Adam, who was in rare form.

Thanks to moe. for an awesome festival, and we hope to be back in future years!

8/29/09 Tanner's, Kimberly, WI

The Tanner's show was a benefit event put on by Organik Entertainment and quite an elaborate production -- great sound and lights, a raffle, vendors, etc. We were well taken care of from the minute we arrived till the end of the night when we crashed in our super comfy comped rooms at the Hilton next door.

It ended up being a very long day and night with the early soundcheck and multiple bands prior to us, but the show was fun. Lots of new and old Wisconsin friends came out, and we stretched out with a long set, in the middle of which Mattias decided to kick my ass with our "Bass and Drum" jam by setting up a wicked fast groove. Thanks, buddy!! I hung in there, though, and will find some way to retaliate.

8/28/09 Urbana Sweetcorn Fest, Urbana, IL

This was our second stint at the Urbana Sweetcorn Fest, our first being 2 years ago. The fest is well-run with great production, but is more of a family event rather than the usual hippie festivals that we play. A different vibe, but fun nonetheless.

The drive down to Urbana went smoothly, but as we were getting set up, the sky became dark and threatening clouds started to roll in. Would this be our third rained out festival set of the summer (6/27 Peoria and 8/9 Denver being the first two)?? Thankfully, the sky magically cleared up within the next 30 minutes or so, and it turned out to be a beautiful evening.

The crowd gathered as we played, with a smattering of our usual fanbase alongside "normal" folk. I knew something was wrong with this crowd when the merch table stats revealed many "Air Jordan" shirt sales and no WWJD sales. ;)

After our set, I got to meet some great fans and enjoy some hella-buttery sweetcorn, and Adam was very pleased with himself for tracking down passes to the VIP section where we stuffed ourselves with free food and beer.

8/20-21/2009 Fat Fest, Wabasha, MN

Fat Fest began with an early departure for the long 6 hour drive up to Wabasha MN. We got nailed with the rain at last year's Fat Fest performance, and the outlook was not boding well for this year either. We crossed our fingers, and while keeping an eye on the sky, got set up and soundchecked, arming ourselves with nearby tarps and towels in the event of a downpour.

We managed to make it through the set with just an intermittent drizzle that thankfully did not blow much into the stage, and the crowd was raging and didn't seem to mind at all. A couple highlights were a sweet "Tutear" > "Trying To Live Up" segway that we magically nailed, and a set closer that started off as "West Egg Party," but melded into "Falling Off the Fence" after Jordan changed his mind midway through the intro. Again, no train wrecks with that segway...Go us! Band photo by Adam (aka "New Adam") Zareczny

Kyle Hollingsworth Band was supposed to follow our set and use some of our gear, but shortly after we finished, the impending downpour ensued and the stage became trashed. Kyle ended up being moved to the other stage, toting along Jordan's vintage Rhodes, while thanking us profusely for subjecting the gear to inclement weather. It was well worth it, though -- Kyle's band rocks, especially the bass player. These guys are on tour this fall...check 'em out!

We partied it up for the rest of the night and then headed back to our hotel, where we received the good fortune of both a 2pm check-out the next day, and coupons for a free hot breakfast at the Perkins attached to the hotel. Ahh, life is good!

The next day we headed back to Fat Fest where Jordan and I would be joining the Everyone Orchestra set. A couple notable members of this incarnation included Michael Kang (from String Cheese Incident) and Vinnie Amico (from moe). It was a fun set, with Jordan rocking the keys for the entire show, and me jumping in on bass halfway through. Vinnie welcomed me to the ensemble with a lightning quick drum-and-bass groove that I could barely hold on for. Gee, thanks, Vinnie!!

After the show, my bandmates got super drunk, and it's always such a joy to babysit them...Thanks fellas.

Back to the hotel, then back to Chicago the next day. On the way home, Adam bugged me with his usual catch phrase, "Ice, I'm hungry. What're you gonna feed me?" Usually I ignore him, but this time offered him a SoyJoy nutrition bar (that I was never going to eat because they are so disgusting), under the condition that he had to eat the whole thing. This picture sums up Adam's SoyJoy experience pretty well, ironically quite absent of joy:

Colorado > Arkansas: "Another Day Living the Dream"

We began the long trek from Colorado to Arkansas on Wednesday afternoon. We had about 850 miles to cover, but our set at the Mulberry Mountain Festival wasn't until Thursday evening, so we had plenty of time to cover the drive. Little did we know...

Less than halfway into the trip, in the middle of nowhere in Kansas, we blew a tire on our trailer. And it wasn't just a flat tire, it was a seriously shredded-to-the-bone mutilated tire. Unreal! This wouldn't have been too big of a setback, except for the following complications: (1) Our spare was a little bit shady and not suitable for the 1000+ miles we had to travel to get to Arkansas and then home to Chicago; (2) Due to our remote location, it was over 2 hours until AAA came to our rescue (though we did pass the time watching the meteor shower, which was pretty cool!); and (3) When putting our spare on, the AAA guy informed us that the wheel bearings on our trailer were dangerously loose and would need to be fixed ASAP or the trailer would spontaneously combust, or something terrible like that.


Getting out the spare tire, packed deep in the trailer. Music gear all over the shoulder of I-70 with traffic whizzing by.

We got up and running again, and continued east at the AAA recommended 50mph until we found some civilization...if you can call it that...remember, we're in Kansas, people. So where do we find a new tire and someone to fix our trailer at midnight on a Wednesday? An internet/GPS/cell phone combo attack finds an on-call tire shop about 50 miles from our breakdown site in Salina KS, and a groggy employee met us at the shop and sold us a new tire and spare (for actually way less than we were getting back home, even with the latenight surcharge...score!). We decided to get a hotel in Salina, get up early to get the trailer fixed, and still hopefully roll on to the festival with plenty of time to spare.

Oh, but that would be too easy, wouldn't it?! After solving the tire problem, we got back into the van to head to a hotel and saw that our "Service Engine Soon" light was on and noticed that the van was shaking pretty heavily when idling. Gimme a f*cking break! We now have both van and trailer repairs to deal with in the morning, and making it to the festival is looking pretty grim.

Adam and I were assigned the morning repair duty, getting up at the ungodly hour of 8:30am to start making phone calls to see who could do these emergency repairs and get us on the road. We found a local repair shop that could do both the van and trailer, and after checking things out, quoted us a time frame of about 2-2.5 hours to get the work done. Our festival set was at 10pm, and we had a little shy of 7 hours to drive; this should work. But, 2 hours turned into 4+ hours, complete with much pacing in the repair shop waiting room, and we didn't get back on the road until 3:15pm.

Jordan manned the wheel for the entire drive to Arkansas with expert speed and control but it seemed that all the forces were against us: an attempted gas/bathroom pit stop where all the facilities were closed, a gazillion toll stops slowing us up, a closed road and detour in Tulsa, and consistent 75mph speed limits leaving no room for our clunky rig to get ahead of the GPS arrival time. We rolled into the festival grounds right at 10pm, the supposed start to our 2 hour set, and had a slew of friends and crew waiting at our stage to get us loaded in at lightning speed, along with a bunch of fans awaiting our set and providing a nice warm welcome.

The downbeat was only 45 minutes late, and we played our asses off to a raging crowd for a full 75 minutes. You'd have thought we'd be tired and lifeless after such a debilitating 24 hours, but we ended up being so energized to have finally made it and to have such an appreciative crowd. It was really one of the most rewarding sets in a long time!

Post-show, we finally had a chance to slow down, hanging out with friends and catching some of Lotus' set. We left the festival around 2:30am and began the hour plus drive to our hotel that night. As if mocking us, our low fuel light came on just as we departed, and of course, we're in the middle of nowhere with no gas stations for at least 30 miles on our route of mountainous roads, and who knows if they'd even be open at this time of night. We could have gone half that distance in the wrong direction to get gas, but decided to just take the risk. Running out of gas would be a pretty comical way to end the day, so even the bad end of the outcome would make for a good story.

I drove us expertly through the mountain roads, barely stepping on the gas pedal and using momentum to propel us down the mountain. Driving 32 miles didn't even push the needle below the red line, and we made it to an open gas station with plenty to spare. High fives and woo woo's ensued, and another day of living the dream had come to an end.

Many thanks to AAA, Commercial Tire, Oard's Auto Repair, Mike A, Micah, Ronny, Tiff, Kevin, Mike R., the festival stage crew and fans, and the many others who helped give a happy ending to our day from hell.

Colorado Recap: 8/7 - 8/11/09

Our Colorado run started off with a latenight show at Denver’s Dancin’ in the Streets Festival on Friday August 7. We arrived to the festival in the late afternoon, just in time to catch some of Steve Kimock’s set. I scoped out the new bass player and had a nice little reunion with the band and crew. FGC hit the stage around midnight, with Kimock and Kreutzmann throwing down next door in Cervantes. Our set was a random ebb and flow of people as folks filtered back and forth between the two shows in the adjacent venues, so it was kind of a weird scene. But we had a good time, and got to hang with Mike from Lotus after the show, and made a new friend, Drew, who helped us load out and even gave me a tie-dye shirt which I am sporting as I type this.

Saturday’s show was at Mishawaka Amphitheatre in the mountains outside of Ft Collins. We set our GPS to the address on the website and proceeded on the lovely drive through the mountains right along a river. Something obviously wasn’t right when our GPS declared our arrival in literally the middle of nowhere with nothing around, and no cell signal for miles to call for directions or get online. We reset the GPS to the city center of Bellvue, the town where the venue was located and turned around to head 20+ miles back where we came from (a good 45 minute drive on those windy mountain roads). About 5 miles into the backtracking, we pass the only sign of civilization for miles, the Mishawaka Inn, and I suggest we pull over and ask for directions. No more directions needed; turned out that this was the venue...how funny!

This was a very cool venue indeed, with an outdoor stage literally right next to a river and surrounded by mountains. The only drawback was the infestation of bees, and I spent the better part of the daylight hours frantically running from them. After getting set up and soundchecked, we enjoyed some dinner on the patio, the Cubs game in the bar, and the classic rock sounds of the opener, Dead Floyd. We then hit the stage for an extended set, and the crowd was enthusiastic and raging.

Sunday’s show was back at the Dancin’ in the Streets Festival, this time on one of the outdoor stages for a short set during headliner Leftover Salmon’s setbreak. Right when it was about time to start loading our gear out onto the stage, the sky took on a threatening look, and the rain suddenly started coming down in buckets. The storm lasted for only about a half hour, but the rain delay meant no setbreak for Leftover Salmon (thus no space for a “tweener” set for us), and not to mention, the stage we were supposed to play on became completely deluged in water. We were pretty bummed about the canceled set, but still managed to enjoy the evening hanging out with The Heavy Pets and Mike and Chuck from Lotus.

On Tuesday, we headed up to Breckenridge to play a show with Dirty Dozen Brass Band at 320 South. We were particularly excited for this show because the guitarist from DDBB (Jake) was a classmate of ours in music school, so it was cool to reconnect with him. In addition to being the opening band, we were also commissioned to loan some of our gear to DDBB, who were traveling without backline. Adam’s amp functioned fine for our set, but during the changeover between bands, it conked out for some unknown reason, leaving Jake without an amp. A totally lame and random turn of events, but Jake eventually recruited another amp and we got to hear him shred with this legendary band. Mad props to him!




Now we’re headed back across the country, stopping at Mulberry Mountain Festival on the way home. Stay tuned for more reports from the road!

Denver Travel Memories: Attack of the Chocolate Pomegranates

We're currently en route to Denver. Since nothing interesting has happened so far (aside from seeing a super tan and fit 50+ year old woman hula-hooping and talking on her cell phone next to her car at a gas station in the middle of Nebraska), I thought I would tell the story of my last journey to Denver.

FGC did a 5-night run in Colorado last March. I had the luxury of flying out there after doing two shows in Virginia with Steve Kimock, while the rest of the band made the long drive out from Chicago in our van and trailer. While in Virginia, I was given a huge bag of my precious coveted chocolate pomegranates by Dr. Lora, good friend of the Kimock bunch and unofficial chocolate pomegranate dealer. Rather than lug the entire bag on the flight in my back pack, I made a travel-size portion using the ice bucket baggie from my hotel room, and put the remainder of the choc-poms in my checked bag.

During the flight, I broke out the baggie and happily munched on the addictive chocolates while watching some movies on my laptop. When the flight landed, I got up from my row and looked back to make sure I didn't leave anything, noticing a brown smudge on the seat. I thought to myself, "Oh great, I sat on a dirty seat for the entire flight?" Oh well, didn't think much of it.

I made a stop in the bathroom once I got into the airport and was completely mortified to find a huge brown smudge on the back of my jeans. Did I poop my pants and not even realize it? No, a quick (and awkward) sniff revealed foul play by chocolate. How did this happen? I then pulled out the remainder of the choc poms from my backpack to find that the flimsy ice bucket baggie from the hotel had a hole in it, and all the while that I was eating these things on the plane, they were, unbeknownst to me, dropping into my lap, between my legs, and melting all over my ass.

Has this embarrassing incident made me paranoid about eating chocolate pomegranates since, or turned me off of them altogether? Hell no; I am addicted to them as ever. But it has taught me to always look behind me!