Our second day at Falcon Ridge is hot and hungry and a whole lot of fun. It continues to be full of my favourite things : crossing paths with friends out of context and listening to great music. Over the course of the day we encounter Matt Nakoa’s new trio with Brad Cole and Robinson Treacher and – well, I knew anything that gathered around Matt was going to be pretty special – and I was NOT disappointed. Really great vocal harmonies, a whole lot of power. I was thinking that I might write up a special rider that says “ilyAIMY doesn’t follow Matt Nakoa”, but perhaps inspired by their performance, we do our damndest and play our hardest and sweat out a pretty amazing set ourselves. I don’t know – there’s something about this year where we are UNAFRAID.
Over the course of the day we’re wheeling and dealing multiple appearances – first a set at the Freshgrass Tent (a music festival that alas we can’t attend… THIS year), second a set over at the Lost and Found tent – and then catch the main stage set of Brother Sun just as the full moon rises over the main stage. Listening to the howling of the hill, bathed in silver light and the harmonies of Greg and Pat and Joe – this night is something really, really special. Betwixt the music at the main stage and our late set at the Budgie Dome we wander up to Lounge Camp and swap stories but NO chords (I don’t think I play around a camp fire the whole weekend) where we’re intermittently interrupted by fireworks being launched LOW over the campground.
Though these are now legal in the area, they’re still not allowed at the festival and a couple of security guys come through with really aggressive questions for everyone a couple of minutes later. It turns out that one year a couple of guys brought like a TRUCK of fireworks to the festival – a truck that a couple of kids broke into – they managed to ignite the van and die horribly in the fire and so there’s a LOT of anger at the stupidity of people bringing these things to the festival. Whether or not there’s an argument for the harmless nature of these being shot into the air, there’s NO excuse for the ones that were set off right on top of the main stage’s courtesy tent. I hope they caught the assholes behind THAT but have no real hope of it unless someone turns them in.
Budgie Dome was Loverly, but I got really paranoid as the minutes ticked by and the set that I THOUGHT was going to be at 11.30pm turned into something closer to 2.30am. Though it was fun to do, with an 11am soundcheck for our main stage set the next morning I was genuinely concerned about being my best and was a little irate about the late hour. Cause I’m old? Cause I’m a responsible rock star! By the time I got back to our bed it was close to 3.30 or 4am and stupid things kept me up even later – like worrying that I was going to forget the lyrics to Slight Departure on stage because I was tired and paranoid… this fear had been given real fuel because we’d been sitting around dictating lyrics for our ASL interpreter and I realized that I simply could NOT remember lyrics sans a guitar in my hand… yeah, I think even 5am rolled around as I lay awake staring at the ceiling thinking “oh god I’m going to screw EVERYTHING up and it’s THE FIRST SONG!!!!”
