5/01: Bobcatfest and Mixers in Bozeman

Quick summary:  Dillon was NUTS!

Now, on to our Friday night doubleheader.  Montana winters/springs are tricky.  For one, it’s oftentimes difficult to tell when one ends and the other begins.  Case and point: I spent 15 minutes scraping the ice off of my car last Wednesday morning, which was April 29th.  ”Ice,” “car,” and “April” typically don’t belong in the same sentence, unless you’re saying something like “People don’t need to scrape off the ice on their car in April because there isn’t any.”  Our odd weather makes it very tricky to schedule outdoor events.  Looking at the calender in March, you’d think that everything would be just hunky-dory by May 1st, right?

Not always.  On Wednesday, not two days before our first outdoor show of the year, Bozeman was covered in snow.  It was ridiculous.  We had a handful of decent days and were then bombarded by several consecutive days of crap.  I thought the show would be postponed and/or cancelled for sure.  But guess what?  The weather was beautiful, albeit a little chilly, and the show went on.  On top of that, it turned out better than I think any of us could have anticipated.  It was essentially a miniature Music on Main, but everyone made their way to the front of the stage instead of leaving an open area for jitterbugging or bumping and grinding.

It was refreshing to see a younger generation of college students–meaning kids who are much younger than us–dancing and singing along to just about every song on the setlist, which basically covered the band’s entire career.  The band first became popular through the dedication of the college students across the state, and it looks like current college students will continue to give us life.  That’s a good feeling.

After our set, we loaded up all of our stuff in the trailer and busted ass over to Mixers, where we were playing yet another show.  It was madness.  Unloading all of our equipment and setting it up inside can take a bit of time, especially when we have to use our own sound system like we typically do at Mixers.  By the time we began our set, we were all somewhat drained from getting Casper the friendly ghost out of our new mixing board and the unloading/loading/unloading from earlier that evening, but we still gave it every drop of juice we had and delivered for the Mixers audience.  I had originally written a set list for the night, but we kind of threw it out the window toward the end of the first set and just kind of played whatever popped into our head.  I’m pretty sure the four of us were about as efficient as a couple of slugs during takedown.  I was, anyway.  

Highlights:

–Western Skies lead singer/guitarist Mark Longie joined us onstage for a few tunes during our second set on Friday night.  It was mass rad.  That dude can play guitar.

–After singing the “Jesus” lyric, “Piss drunk on a roof and I don’t know how I got here” at Bobcatfest, we looked at the rooftops and noticed some people who were–you guessed it–piss drunk.  I wonder if they knew how they got there.  Heh!

–Holy Jesus, was Dillon bonkers!

Setlist for Bobcatfest:

Three Day Bender
Real Man
Undercover
LMP
Save the World
Chimney
Alright Tonight
College Daze
Baltimore
Free Ride
Jesus

Setlist for Mixers:

Like I said earlier, we deviated from this setlist pretty heavily.  Here are some songs that we played in no particular order:

Little Miss Perfect
Free Ride
Walkin’ on Air
Chimney
Dub-T Bootay
Save the World
Fan of the Bean
Leave Me Alone
College Daze
Abercrombie Jeans
Gimme Three Steps
Tush
Alright Tonight
Spiderman
Jail
Grinnell
Hands to Self
Dust on the Bottle
Birthday Suit
Friends with Benefits
Leave Me Alone