macrock, you are a BEAST!

this weekend was the epic musical event known as MACROCK. each year, a ton of bands descend on harrisonburg in our tiny little virginia version of SXSW. i hadn't been in a few years, so with some convincing from kenny, i decided it would be a worthwhile adventure and a chance to get out of town.

the day started roughly. friday night's late night shenanigans on the rooftop resulted in both kenny and i getting only 4-5 hours of sleep. we did our best to rally, energize, and then hit the road. the road to harrisonburg is long and shitty and only gets awesome during the last 45 minutes when the mountains come into view. we stopped in charlottesville for taco action, made a bunch of disparaging remarks about the town, and then sped on our way.

upon arriving in harrisonburg, we checked out the label expo and panels. in our foggy AM stupor, we were unable to leave early enough to catch any panels. bumout. the label expo was a bit spotty this year. a few cool booths, but overall nothing thrilling. after that, we kicked things into awesome-mode by meeting kevin and chad for drinks at the rooftop of dave's taverna. i'd never been up there before, but it was the ultimate springtime beautiful day chillspot. so perfect.

we headed over to the artful dodger to start watching some bands. we bumped into all our richmond pals there and had a good time catching up and laughing. some great bands played including algernon cadwallader, which was a big highlight for me. my pals in worn in red played and did a fantastic job as well. after that, i ran over to the court square theatre to catch my friends in the cinnamon band. they had an awesome set and i picked up their new CD EP and a t-shirt. i was a little bummed knowing that i wasn't going to be able to put out their record on vinyl, but it sounds like big things are starting to happen for them, so i'm thrilled for them.

sarah, kat, and i hit up dave's taverna again for dinner and beers. we opted not to go to the ONE BIG SHOWCASE that EVERYONE was going to. the line went around the block and it just seemed like a big waste of time to stand in line for 30 minutes and then be inside a sweaty hot venue where it's impossible to get beers. so we opted instead to go to this new bar that had just opened called "jack brians". i called it "wooden bar" because you could tell they just put all the wood in and it had this "lumber" smell. it was actually pretty awesome. i felt like a lumberjack as i drank my cheap beer.

i had a bunch of random conversations with random people. i was accused of being a "hipster" twice, which made me feel awkward and uncomfortable, especially considering that this was a topic we recently covered here on the blog.

after the show let out, we all headed to this ridiculously huge house and proceeded to drink copious amounts of beer, talk to even more random people, and marvel at the hundreds of people crowding every corner of the house.

i had a conversation with a girl who was getting an international business degree. she was saying she didn't know what to do with her life. i told her even if you think you know what to do with your life, you never really know. then i told her we'd meet in that kitchen in two years at macrock 2011 and tell each other what we'd figured out in the meantime. i told her i'd probably have a kid. and that his name would be roscoe. let's hope that's not actually what goes down.

at 4:00am, i managed to sober up to a point where i realized we had no sleeping bags or places to sleep. i corralled a very drunken kenny and an also drunken sara and got us in a cab and then off to the beautiful DAYS INN. once we arrived in the room, i immediately got in my bed. i put in the headphones and reveled in the joy of finally being able to sleep after fighting it off all day.

today we awoke, groggy and still somewhat sleep-deprived. we made our way to little grill, for a macrock tradition that i was fortunate enough to tag along for. there was a bit of a wait to get in, but once we got our food, i was in hippie vegetarian heaven.

the drive home totally sucked and i was a shitty passenger, nodding off on the regular while kenny was trying to hold it together and not fall asleep and kill us both. thank you kenny for driving.

i came home desperately craving the nap i so deserved, but instead i went to go see bill's piano recital. it was his first one ever and it was actually really cool and i'm glad i was able to go.

all in all, a great weekend. and apparently, it made for quite the long blog. if you even made it this far, i applaud your patience. perhaps i should have released this in installments or chapters.

anyway, the gist is .. macrock = good. harrisonburg = missed. live music = good + missed.