Milwaukee
(June 24th - 29th)
After a quick trip back to Philly early in the week, we headed up to Milwaukee,
WI. We did two retail events at local Wal-Marts and then worked the weekend
at Summerfest. Friday
night, the eve of our Summerfest events, was an awesome night. We headed down
to do a site visit and then hit a concert. 
A
friend from Universal Records, Victor
Lentini, provided us with tickets to the Jack
Johnson/Ben Harper show. After talking our way into the back parking lot,
and walking through the rear gate of the Summerfest grounds, we 
were
promptly rained on. Rebecca's suggestion, a good one, was to get into the show
as quickly as possible. Delayed by some wrong turns(my suggestions), we made
it inside and probably only missed a song or two. At the show, we met up with
Victor, who offered us passes to the aftershow party. At this point, the show
couldn't even be ruined by the drunk college couple(that had just met) to our
left. The guy sang every word, 10 times as loud as was necessary, if you know
what I mean! And his 'lady' (used loosely), was shaking her hands wildly into
the air - like she was at a Twisted Sister concert. And on top of that, her
top (tube top, that is) was slowly creeping towards the floor. Okay.. to the
good stuff. After the show, we met with Victor and some other guests of his
to go back and hang with Jack, Adam(drums) and Merlo(bass). Having run a few
"meet & greets" before, I felt the need to try to help Victor.
This was unnecessary, as the Jack Johnson "aftershow party" is much
more of a 'hang out' session. It was really cool; we talked with him for awhile,
and Victor took our picture. We met some other nice people who were Milwaukee
locals, and we all had great fun. After everyone left, Victor brought us back
out to the front again. Having had such a good time, we felt it unnecessary
to stick around for the rest of the show. Thanks again, Victor! --Kevin
One
of the things I enjoyed most about our time in Milwaukee was
seeing the sunset as we were finishing the event as well as the view of the
lighthouse on Lake Michigan. These were, to me, much-needed reminders of beauty
after days of work that involve becoming so hot and filthy (see the below picture
of me and the crew holding up our hands after a particularly muddy load-out).
I did not take these pictures. Kevin, who has a great photographic eye, took them. Every time he takes a photo after a long day of work, when I am too weary to notice something, or snatches a shot of something unexpected from the side of the road during one of our long drives from city to city, I become more convinced that he should really cultivate his nascent talent. My close friend, Betsy, described Kevin once as the "guy who always has his camera," and I couldn't agree with her more!
And here are some from the event itself.....
(Since I assume
there will be no contributions, this page has been left intentionally blank!)
(Thanks for looking, though.)