2006-06-06 - 12:19 p.m.
The June tour kicked off at the State Theater in Falls Church, VA. We like the State. It’s a mid-sized theater holding around 600 - 700 people. It was hot as hell when we pulled into Falls Church at around 3:30PM. I had a great Thai dinner with some old friends and then on with the show. We had played the weekend before with Ween at the Jam On The River in Philadelphia and played well. We haven’t played much in May except for a week of rehearsals and we clearly were kicking the rust off. I had fun, but I almost always do. It’s great to make a living (sort of) doing something you’d probably be doing anyway!
We drove through some crazy rain storms the next day on the way to the Blue Plum Festival in Johnson City, TN. This is one of those city festivals that they close off the downtown, set up a stage and have a party! It’s a free event but one way they make there money is by charging $2 for a wrist band that enables you to drink on the street! Could you imagine that happening in New Jersey? We ate and headed down to town to check out what was left of that evenings entertainment. We found our way to the stage only to find it shut down due to the torrential downpours that were going on off and on all day. The music was now happening in a bar up the street called “Gatsby’s”. So we went up to check it out. The place didn’t look like anything like a place the Long Island millionaire socialite Gatsby wound be caught dead in. Steel String Theory from Asheville, NC were just finishing up their set. They were really good but the sound ws awful. Tennessee is still a state that like my home state of Pennsylvania, still allows smoking. It seemed like everyone in the joint was doing just that. It sucked because I kept having to go outside to actually breath. Drew Emit was up next and since he was using Salmon’s old sound man, the sound for him was much better. I’d seen Drew’s band once before. He’s a great player. I didn’t realize until now how much he sings like John Cowan. They played a energetic set to a young and loud group of party goers.
We were set to close the festival on Saturday. Some of us went downtown early to catch our friends the Hit and Run Bluegrass Band from Boulder, CO. They were great even though they had replaced half the band with players I didn’t know. After their set they brought out a Tennessee Highway patrolman to give a safety speech. We had noticed him pacing nervously around backstage during Hit and Run’s set. After his little spiel, he says ... well thanks for listening that’s my girlfriend (forgot name) there in the front row and...off comes the hat... and well honey... will you marry me? Thank goodness she said yes and there was much rejoicing. A little piece of small town America. I love it!
The Waybacks were on before us. I hadn’t seen those boys since we did a tour of the Pacific Northwest with them 2 years ago. Chojo, their old fiddle player, was no longer with them. Now they have a young phenom (oh great... another teenager who shreds!) from Austin Texas on fiddle and mandolin. They ripped it up! Check them out when you get a chance. When we got on stage you could look up the main drag and see the streets were absolutely packed. The stage was backed up against railroad tracks and sure enough the trains started going by at regular intervals once we started playing. I hadn’t seen one go by all day. The horns were so loud that they obliterated the sound of the band completely! At one point one went by just as we finished off the intro to “Head”. Andy held off on playing the banjo intro until the train went by and then kicked it into gear as the train howled off around the bend. The band was in good form; none of the rust from the previous show seemed to be sticking. I’m here to say that Johnson City TN is cool little town and the Blue Plum Festival is the most fun city festival I’ve played with Railroad Earth.
