Rothbury 2008 (or These Rothburys Taste Like Rothburys): Saturday

I awoke rested and opened the smoothie booth bright and early on Saturday morning. Our first customer of the day put a dose in the tip jar. Our second customer of the day looked a little messed up, so I jokingly asked him if he wanted some molly in his smoothie. He replied that he just took his medicine and then stuck out his tongue, which had no less than 10 doses on it! I also met my first reader, Chris, who stopped by and got a smoothie (extra molly on the house of course).

For some reason I swear I kept seeing the Disco Biscuits walking around the festival all weekend. Pretty much every generic looking Jewish person could pass as Brownstein.


Add a jew-fro and you’ve got the Barber.


And Magner, well he just looks like any white person that would fit in a Dockers commercial.


We got out of the booth in time to catch the Emmit-Nershi Band, which was really great. Drew Emmit (of Leftover Salmon) and Billy Nershi (of String Cheese) basically went back and forth the whole show trading licks. The show also read like a highlights list from any Cheese show: "Good Times Around the Bend" "Restless Wind" and of course, "Texas". This was just a really fun and upbeat set, even when it sounded a little sloppy. The band also announced that they would be playing a secret show in the woods later that night, but unfortunately they didn't say when, so we were never able to find them.


Texas:





We served some smoothies to one of the artists and the manager of a group called "Gandalf & the Hobbits" who simply described their sound as "Hobbit Rock." I eventually traded them a smoothie for a CD, but the CD seems to have misplaced itself at the moment. We caught a little Derek Trucks, which was alright, but I just couldn't seem to get that into it for some reason. I guess my expectations were just too high for someone who has been touring with the Allmans since he was 12 or something like that. Considering that I hadn't seen any real shredding since the Disco Biscuits, I was definitely in the mood for some, and the whole soul stew thing just seemed to me like a lot of horns and not a lot of shredding...

We worked the booth during Dave Matthews and waited for Sound Tribe, which ended up being more than worth the wait. I've only seen STS9 a few times so I don't have much for comparison, but this was a great show. One of the great things about this band is that they take all sorts of other styles of music and fuse it into electronic dance music. In the 4 or so hours they occupied the stage, we heard elements of rock, funk, jazz, classical, and pretty much everything else (except for Bluegrass). Take "Breathe In." This was the song I enjoyed the most not because it had the best beat or the best guitar solo or the coolest effects, but simply because it evolves into such a melodious, pretty piano song for the last couple of minutes.



Unfortunately, I forgot to charge my camera before this show and so I don't have any pics or videos. My final thought on this show that this was such a good show that I went out and paid for the download rather than waiting for it to rear its ugly head on the net.

As I finally went to bed after STS9 I was excited. Excited that we had made some money slinging smoothies. Excited that I would be seeing at least 1/2 of Phish the next day. And of course, excited that there was only one day left...