Keweenawesomefest 2011

This past Friday, I played at Keweenawesomefest 2011. This is a yearly festival put on by WMTU, Michigan Tech's college station located in Houghton, MI.

Not only was this my first festival, it was also my first gig out of the state of Minnesota. A chance to play to a room full of strangers. And, a Road Trip.

I love road trips. I love getting up and packing up the car, stopping for coffee and hitting the road. Shawn, who plays drums/lead guitar in my little musical adventure, and my husband Matt took off around 8:30am Friday morning. Thanks to Shawn's previous touring experience, we magically fit a drum set, 2 guitar amps (one of which is very large), 2 guitars, 3 backpacks, a drum stool, and 3 people in our Subaru Forester.

We were told the trip to Houghton from Minneapolis would take a varying amount of time. Anywhere from 7-9 hours. Google Maps said 6 hours 20 minutes, and that's exactly what it took.

Houghton is a cool little city. We go to the upper peninsula of Michigan often, but we are always over on the far eastern side. I'd never been to the north western side. It's beautiful. Almost mountainous. It reminded me a lot of Flagstaff, AZ.

The city itself resembled Pittsburgh in a lot of ways (also a city I love). Lots of hills, narrow streets, the river running through. Just beautiful.

I played at the McArdle Theater with 7 other bands also on the bill. It was a really cool room - a Black Box Theater. There were 3 sets of theater risers circling the stage. The room was pitch black. The attendees were very attentive. If they weren't sitting in the risers, they were sitting cross-legged on the floor.

I had a 30 minute set, I played 7 songs.

It was a lot of fun to meet the other bands. I had yet to be in that sort of situation where, besides the 2 people I came with, I didn't know any of the other bands or any one else in the room. All the other artists were from Michigan. They were all great. A lot of fun.

The whole trip made me really excited about getting out of the state more - or even to other places within the state - and playing. I wish I could just pack my car and hit the road for a week or two, but life takes a little more planning than that these days. But it will happen. I will make it so.

Next up: the Commemorate the Date event during the St. Paul Art Crawl. It's going to be a solo show. I haven't done one of those in a while.

The event will be a lot of fun, so you should come!

Setlist

Keweenawesomefest April 8th, 2011

-The Paul Simon Song

-Cast A Spell

-Can't Even Tell

-The Party

-Good

-Here

-Adore

(Kind of getting worried that my setlists have been very similar lately. I might need to change it up next time)