Rothbury Festival Report?

[Admin]

So, this gig went mysteriously uncovered. Did anyone attend/know when they actually played?

[brian1766]

At the very least rick went - see thread below. I hate to put it all on rick to give the report but please, rick, please...any info?

www.theholdsteady.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=steady&action=display&thread=1470

[sactochris]

I am by no means a festival guy at all, but Rothbury woud have been the one that I would of liked to have seen.

[Admin]

Jul 6, 2009 12:22:23 GMT -5 sactochris said:

I am by no means a festival guy at all, but Rothbury woud have been the one that I would of liked to have seen.

You're a Deadhead, no?

[sactochris]

Jul 6, 2009 13:15:18 GMT -5 Admin said:

Jul 6, 2009 12:22:23 GMT -5 sactochris said:

I am by no means a festival guy at all, but Rothbury woud have been the one that I would of liked to have seen.

You're a Deadhead, no?

I'm a recovering Deadhead. Even back then though, I hated all that earthy hippy bullshit. I had no interest in seeing The Dead at Rothbury, It was the combo of Bob Dylan and The Hold Steady that I thought was cool.

[1664]

So, didn't think I would end up going to this, not until I saw one day tickets for sale. Dylan and THS on the same night was a bit too much to pass up...anyway...on to the the report you asked for:

As expected, hippies were everywhere. As soon as I pulled into the day parking lot I was greeted by two of them, ass naked (not pretty). Beautiful day.

THS were on the second largest stage, maybe like 6 feet high. I got there kind of early and caught Guster (I think) who were pretty awful for the most part. There were, however, two redeeming parts of their set: 1) Cover of the intro to "Don't fear the reaper" which was unfortunately not finished in favor of some of their original songs AND 2) the time their set gave me to drink more before THS. After Guster finished, most people cleared out of the area.

THS came on shortly thereafter to a surprisingly small crowd (though more did show up throughout the set). I guess hippies are not into THS. Craig mentioned that everyone looked pretty good for day 4 of the festival and they tore into a quick 1 hr 13 min set. It went the way of most of the THS festival sets I've seen, pretty quick and tight without too much banter between songs.

Most of the usual suspects got played along with "You gotta dance" and "Girls like status." Pretty nice.

What was played (from memory, by no means comprehensive): The swish, multitude, HARRF, SP, Sequestered, constructive, slapped actress, southtown, party pit, massive (all ages JAM BAND matinee shows), chips ahoy, stations... the two above and probably a few others. Sorry, I was drinking, I did my best.

It did feel a little strange, maybe it has something to do with the west side of MI (the calvin college show was a bit odd too). Didn't really appear to affect the band much, they all seemed to be having fun, enjoying the weather.

I guess they were good enough for a mention here:

www.mlive.com/rothbury/index.ssf/2009/07/the_best_of_four_delirious_day.html

After THS, Bob Dylan was pretty awesome. I was fortunate enough to get pretty close. His voice sounded better than I though it would (even though I was in a pretty bad spot for the PA and couldn't make out all of the lyrics). Maybe not quite as energetic or compelling as Springsteen, but it's not too often you can see an American icon like that in person.

Great day.

[lilhan]

glad you had fun, 1664!
butt-naked hippies are never something to see before you even get to the site.
glad you at least survived that!

[brian1766]

Thanks for the report 1664.

rick - I would still be interested to hear how things went for you if you read this.

[mcstevepants]

Hey kids. I'm new here...became obsessed with THS over the past few months.

I was at Rothbury and had a fuckin' blast, yea the crowd was small for THS but the small cluster of us that were rockin' out up front had tons of fun(or at least I did)

A couple videos I took are found here:

www.youtube.com/mcstevepants