Georgia On My Mind

As we pulled away from the Echo Project music Festival in Atlanta, Georgia, we lit up the birthday cake and sang happy birthday to Aspen and Daniel. They both turned a year older yesterday, but we couldn’t manage to get everyone together yesterday to do the cake… we are now on our way down to New Orleans, where we will spend three days. Tomorrow is a day off, then we have gigs Wed and Thurs night. The Echo Project was a real success. We rolled in late Friday night, we were hoping to make it there for the Flaming Lips set, but we just missed it. A couple of people jumped off the bus and managed to catch the encore. There was a bit of confusion about where we were supposed to park the bus, they originally had us parked way out and we were going to have to schlep all our stuff to the backstage area, but quickly we realized that was not going to be ideal so we ended up moving to a perfect spot, right behind the stage we were on. It was just my luck that my great friend Judd was our stage manager so I got to see him a lot since we were camped right there. (Judd is in the picture below) Friday night most of us took it kind of easy, unpacked our things, set up tents, cruised around a little, and went to bed relatively early. (Depending on what you consider early, of course) Another thing was that it was unexpectedly cold down there in the south, my breath was a white cloud, and it was about 40 degrees.
---I just looked out the window and saw a sign that read ‘Welcome to Alabama the Beautiful’--- anyway…. Friday morning we had to get up pretty early to be ready for a parade march at 12:00. We started from our camp and went out into the festival grounds, gathering people as we marched around. They loved it! We stopped a few times and did a couple of standing sets, crowds multiplying left and right. One of my favorite moments was looking at the faces as we passed, and seeing this one guy just laughing hysterically. I could tell he wasn’t exactly laughing AT us, he was laughing with pure joy. We made it all the way out to the general campground. Then we marched back in and did another standing set, and slowly marched back to our camp doing ‘temptation’. For the last leg I carried Russ’s trumpet (he plays both trumpet and sax so he had them both out. I handed Uli my hula hoop and pretended to be a trumpet player, it was really fun! Maybe someday I’ll actually make some sound come out of the thing. After that we had the rest of the day off, our stage show wasn’t until Sunday. Saturday afternoon I was excited to see Thievery Corporation, I have loved them for a long time and never seen them live. They actually had a whole band this time, not just two guys on laptops. When I went out to the main stage it was so loud my ears were being assaulted, even with earplugs in. the loudness seemed to distort the sound so it didn’t even sound good. I was super disappointed! I don’t know why they need to turn it up so loud, it is so unnecessary and causes everyone harm…. Maybe the sound guy is already deaf from all the festivals. Wanting to get away from the heavy noise but still desiring to hear the band, I retreated to the back of the field where I stumbled upon a Jerry Garcia art exhibition. Before he was Grateful Dead, he went to the San Francisco College of fine art and these two people were exhibiting and selling his art. (Image Makers Art, Inc. www.imagemakersart.com) Being a hippy from Santa Cruz, this excited me to no end. As I was strolling through the booth, I noticed a little carrier, the size in which you might see a small dog. As I bent down to say hello to the little creature, to my complete and utter delight not only was it feline in nature but also it was a KITTEN!!!!!!!! A cute little medium haired tabby, not older than 7 weeks or so. Uhhhhhhuuuuuuuuuuu…….. So cute! I was playing with her from across the great divide of the carrier when the woman said I could take her out and play with her. My eyes lit up and out came the kitten. Her story was that they were in some random parking lot in Georgia and they found her wandering around lost and hungry, no houses in site. So of course they weren’t going to leave her there. So they named her Georgia and she is the sweetest thing ever. I think I spent about an hour there, just playing with her and she fell asleep in my hands. Finally after dark I bid adieu even though I could have stayed there all night. I then headed over to Cat Powers at the other stage and ran into a bunch of our crew. It was another one of those moments in which I feel so incredibly grateful to be out and about with this amazing group of people, this family. I rolled up to the scene and squeezed myself between Benny and Dave Clay, and we swayed to the mesmerizing voice of Cat while enjoying each other’s company. Then I rolled around the festival with Dave and LaTisha, speaking only in Gypsy speak and interacting heavily with the public at large. At one point Dave and I had a fun little shadow theater on porta potties. Certainly a highlight. That night I decided to sleep on the bus because it was damn cold outside and there was a generator right by us that kept waking me up in the morning. Sunday morning we were roused early again, our stage set was at 12:30. When we marched in to the show the crowd was pretty minimal, but by the time we had done the first few songs the place was packed and the crowd was amped! I think this show was the best one I’ve been in so far. The stage was big, ample room for dancing, the lights were great and the crowd was so energized and practically drooling! I think when we roll into a jam band scene people are so surprised because we rock the place down. I had so many people come up to me after the show and shower the band with compliments. I look forward to playing a main stage where you can hear it all over the festival; they’re going to go crazy! After our show we went over to this photo tent and we got some professional photos done. Then we were free of all musical responsibility and everyone scattered in all directions.. I decided to take it upon myself to find a water source to fill our big 5 gallon jugs. I found a kid with a gator and he drove me up to this barn on the other side of the property. I felt lucky I got to take a tour of the grounds; it was so beautiful with rolling hills of grass and huge lakes. Apparently it is private property and it is 350 acres in total! It must be near the Atlanta airport because planes were flying over in all directions. Not low enough that you could hear them but definitely in taking off/landing mode. Then I got a ride to the showers, ahhhhhhhhhh! I was so filthy. Layers of sweat and dirt washed down the drain. I started to feel a pull towards the kitten again, so I hopped on over there and visited for another hour or so! I missed the Dirty Dozen Brass Band but come on, it’s a kitten… last night I started to feel very done with being at a festival. I wasn’t quite sure what to do with myself and I considered just going to bed but that somehow didn’t seem right. What I really wanted to do was get in my transmogrifier and go home to my bed, watch a movie with Robin and Genghis kitty and eat cookies. I tried to find the darn contraption but I seem to have misplaced it somewhere. For a late late dinner Faith made a huge pot of yummy chicken stew and rice, and we happened to be parked next to Michael Franti and Spearhead’s bus, and they hopped on over and ate stew with us and we had a little mixer. They are super cool folks and definitely on the same page as us. (For all you Sublime fans we just passed Tuscaloosa Alabama) The whole time we were listening to Phil Lesh’s massive 4 hour set, and I loved it! Lots of M4 members like to taunt hippies like me but whatever! 4 hours of Grateful Dead songs, executed in the most professional manner. My heaven, others’ hell. And the sound was perfect at our camp. Right as Phil ended at 11, all the music was over. Well we got kind of a crappy time slot, 12:30 on Saturday (most of the festival is sleeping off the drugs at that point) so we decided to be the headliners… meaning we gathered most of the band together and marched out onto the field, just as all the Phil Lesh fans were exiting. When they came upon us they were overjoyed and immediately we gathered a crowd of about 150, and it just kept growing from there. We paraded them towards the campground and stopped for awhile, jamming along with some of the drummers from Spearhead, and a trumpet player from Afromotive. It was definitely a highlight of the weekend (along with the kitten of course). I had my avocado shaker that Robin and I got at McCabe’s Guitar Shop in Santa Monica, and I was keeping up with everyone. It was super fun to be a part of the music for a change. Last night when I finally hit the bunk I slept soooooooo well. I don’t think I even rolled over; I woke up in the exact position I was in when I fell asleep. I woke up to someone mouth trumpeting Lesley Metal as a wake up call… I love March Fourth! This morning’s prime directive: get the bus cleaned and in order for a 12 hour trip to New Orleans. Current status: filthy beyond words. It took us a few hours but we did it… everything came off the bus and it got a deep cleaning, then everything went back on. I had two lost things found!! Losing stuff on the bus SUCKS. This whole trip I have tried to keep all my stuff together and in my cubby, always making sure to keep track of every little thing and not set anything down anywhere or else poof! It is missing. Well this time I managed to lose my sweatshirt and mug.. I searched frantically for the sweatshirt for like an hour at dusk on Sunday… looking for things on the dirty bus is like searching the bins or bargain barn for your black item of clothing… fruitless and disgusting. You can all breathe a sigh of relief though; I have been reunited with them. Jason and Benny had gone to Jason’s parents’ in Atlanta for the night, and came back wielding the Atlanta Journal entertainment section, with a big write up on the festival, and a half page picture of yours truly, M4!!! We were the biggest picture on the page, and they wrote a whole paragraph about us.

Quote from Atlanta Journal:
 ‘Back on the other side of the site, things were getting a little crazy. For sheer foot-stomping, joy-making fun, you couldn’t beat the MarchFourth Marching Band from Portland, Ore. It was a blend of burlesque, vaudeville, horn-driven funk and marching band madness. The costumed horde, many of them with their faces painted and several on death-defying stilts, made for the kind of spectacle that deserves the word awesome. At the end of the show, the entire entourage - and it was a probably a couple of dozen - trouped into the middle of the crowd at the Eclipse tent and it was almost like the shouting, chanting fans were part of the band.


Here is the link to the picture that was in the paper:
http://projects.accessatlanta.com/gallery/view/music/echo1014/
#11 is the one that was half page… that’s Aspen in the middle, he was one of the birthday boys…and if you go to #13 there is another picture they took that is just on the website (that’s me behind the heart. To my right is my M4th twin, LaTisha, and to my right singing is Alix jumping in on Pilot Erect, her sexy sultry voice echoing throughout the tent) :


We all hugged Andy and Sabrina goodbye, as they were finishing their tour in Atlanta, I hugged Judd and we were off, stopping at the barn for water but only finding a box of cold beer *shrug* guess they left it here for us…. The M4 way……and through the fair state of Alabama, stopping at a gas station/mini mart and thoroughly freaking out the workers and other shoppers. I think they were happy to see us roll away.

One thing I have consistently enjoyed on this tour is the one on one time I get with everyone. Even though we all swarm together as one big ball of fun, there are plenty of opportunities for bonding with single members of the band, and they come in unexpected moments whether it is eating fish out of a tin in the Trader Joe’s parking lot somewhere in Georgia with Ethan, playing Frisbee with Cymbal Dan at a rest stop in Alabama, or sitting next to Halfrack on the bus, waiting for our photos to upload, it is always amazing and really real. Even though I have been in this band for over a year, I feel like I know everyone a lot better now. Again I will say that I feel so grateful for this opportunity. My immediate world is so inundated with the band; they are even infiltrating my dreams! I almost can’t remember what it was like before this tour……
So for now we are on to New Orleans, I have used up a few hours of the drive writing this blog, now a couple more for the pictures (uploading is slow with all the users online) 301 miles to go….

Thanks for reading about this tour from my point of view. You are a trooper if you have gotten all the way to the bottom of this verbose collection of thoughts. I also want to let you know that I have added pictures to my previous blogs. Hopefully as soon as I can figure out how to batch reduce photos in photoshop I will create a flickr account, as I have taken about a million pictures and I’d love to share them with you.