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The weekend I spent at moe.’s upstate NY camping festival in the summer of 2003 totally shouldn’t count as a ticket story (or three), as I was there solely in my capacity as a band manager and was thus at work, and who wants to read work stories? However, I did manage to see a bunch of bands and absorb a few wafts of rock and roll shenanigans while I was there so what the hell, let’s take the ride shall we?
I’ll peg the date as August 29th, which was both the opening day of the fest and the day that the band I was working for played their set (in the beer tent). It seems to me that we’d had a warmup gig somewhere in the area the night before – a brew pub that we had never played before or since is trying to jar my memory – so we probably didn’t arrive too early. Or perhaps we drove to the ski lodge after the brewpub gig – which may or may not have been an afternoon set – and got our bus parked and tents pitched* the night before? I do recall us being corralled into a room with the other beer tent bands so moe.’s road manager Skip (I think his name was Skip) could go over the technical aspects of the weekend. I’ll never forget it, because when he walked into the room I thought he was moe.’s lead singer/bass player Rob** so when he introduced himself as moe.’s road manager I guffawed loud enough to turn every head in the room. I quickly realized something was off and when that happens it’s generally me, so after a beat too long I tried to cover myself with a couple of loud, comically transparent throat-clears before the room’s attention turned back to Skip. I felt like an idiot despite thinking I might have actually gotten away with my faux pas, and Skip (or whoever; I’m not great with names either) always remained wary of me.
Now I think it’s fair for me to back up a little bit and explain how ecstatic I was that we had landed this gig. Aside from the guys in the band being fans of moe. to varying degrees, this festival came very early in our attempt to get the band happening in the USA and the hope was that playing for a sizeable targeted crowd would give us a step up from playing nearly empty off-night dive bars every time we crossed the border. And so it was that we had arrived at moe.down with a mission: it was nero’s job to play their butts off and impress the hell out of the American jam kids while it was my job to find moe.’s manager Topper and schmooze him into booking us as an opening act.
(I had heard through our agent that moe. was planning a Montreal-Ottawa-Toronto run on their next tour and I was hell-bent on convincing Topper that having nero open those shows would guarantee sellouts in all three markets, and while we were at it we might as well stay on and open a bunch of moe.’s American arena plays. We would have been a shoe-in except for one small problem: Halifax jam heroes The Jimmy Swift Band were also playing moe.down that weekend and bandleader/booker Craig Mercer would surely be making the very same pitch to the very same man.)
The internet tells me that Vorcza Trio and Antigone Rising were the first two bands up on the main stage so it makes sense that nero’s beer tent ‘tweener set was up after that. This would also explain why I have no memory of seeing either band; I would have been busy being busy before nero played. One thing I can tell you for sure is that it rained just before nero’s set, which meant that every single person at the main stage raced to the sidestage tent for shelter just as the band started to play, which was wicked-awesome for us.
I suppose I should mention that nero was an instrumental trio. No vocals; just guitar, bass and drums. It was jammy, groovy, dancey, and pretty edgy. I thought the band was fantastic, and so did most jam kids who saw them on a good night. And this was a good night (though I believe it was still daytime; I remember it still being light out when nero played though I could be wrong about that).
Partway through nero’s set I had to make a run to the bus for some reason or another. By this time it had stopped raining, and as I was rushing back to the tent I stopped dead in my tracks. nero had just segued out of one of their tunes into a cover of Pink Floyd’s Run Like Hell and the crowd was freaking out. I gaped across the soggy field at the big white wedding-style tent and it was simply bursting with patchouili children hell bent on jumping through the ceiling. I mean it was mad; there must have been eight hundred people crammed under that tent, maybe more, and everyone was dancing their asses off.
I afforded myself a moment and stood there revelling in managerial glory. This was it, man! The joyous mass of American jambandfandom that I was looking at marked the beginning of our everything in the US. We’d gone through the hoops to acquire a year-long P2 American work permit, we’d secured a totally legit, professional US booking agent, and now one of the premier jambands in the US had given us a shot and the band was killing it. I stood and gaped.
Then Dave hit that big old F chord that follows the riff and the crowd shocked me (and doubtlessly the band as well) when they started singing the chorus en masse. “Run! Run! Run! Run!” I shook my head in wonder. The band used to cover the song fairly often and this had never happened before, much less to a raving, pulsating crowd of close to a thousand happy sweaty festival hippies. It was totally unprompted and utterly beautiful. It remains a standout rock and roll memory in this little life of mine.
What a great night.
Rusted Root would have been up next on the main stage, though it’s possible that nero actually played in the “headlining” sidestage slot after Rusted Root, but I don’t think so. Regardless, I would have seen (or at least paid attention to) only the barest snippets of RR’s set, due either to preparation for or in celebration of nero’s set. moe. closed out the night (as they would all three nights) and I filled up on backstage beers and stood near the stage with a pile of my Ontario friends and tried in vain to absorb some of their enthusiasm for the band.
Oh, I forgot to mention that tons of people had come to the festival from Ottawa, Toronto, and even the east coast. moe.down generally drew a healthy amount of Canadians but this year’s booking of Canada’s top two jambands (nero and JSB) had paid off well and we were surrounded by good friends all weekend. It was awesome.
Now, moving along with the rest of the weekend I will stick to just a few main highlights, for example standing toe-to-toe around the backstage keg with Wayne Coyne following an over-the-top performance by his incredible band The Flaming Lips. I must admit that I found their set very odd – controversial even – though the part where Wayne sang Happy Birthday a cappella whilst squeezing a tube of fake blood onto his head was pretty avant-garde cool (the bigscreen images of eyeball surgery and runny egg yolks, not so much), as was his confirmed habit of not washing his blood(+)-stained stage tuxedo for the entire tour. Friendly guy though, and a good drinker.
This was my first time seeing Umphrey’s McGee, and I thought they were great. I was amazed that one of the guitar players just stood there and nonchalantly doubled (in harmony) every blistering rapid-fire note that flew out of the other guy’s guitar. Great band. They must rehearse a lot.
It was also my first time seeing Yonder Mountain String Band, who followed Umphrey’s and didn’t impress me nearly as much. OM Trio played the sidestage and were quite good. moe. played an early afternoon set in addition to their closing set. (There was certainly no shortage of moe. at moe.down.)
The final day of the festival featured Reid Genauer & the Assembly of Dust, who I knew mostly because my friend Kyla was nutty about them and because Reid was at the time working for a company the nero was involved in – I believe it was the HomeGrown Music Network – so I spoke to him on the phone once in a while. I don’t recall their set much if at all.
I do, however, recall They Might Be Giants with great clarity. I have loved every smidgen of their Flood album since my early university days and this stands as the only time I’ve seen the band. And they were great! I stood very, very close to the stage with a gaggle of good friends and sang along with fevered joy to astounding non-hits like Birdhouse In Your Soul and their cover of Istanbul (Not Constantinople). It was glorious.
But not nearly as glorious as standing in that field watching nero tear it up for a thirsty crowd of brand spankin’ new fans. I tell you, when I think back to this weekend it is hard for me to think of anything other than that wonderfully swollen beer tent. Run, run, run run!
For the record, as far as I could tell nero’s set (along with The Flaming Lips) was the talk of the festival all weekend, and Topper did indeed book nero to open their Canadian run and some more of their US dates as well.
So all in all it was a pretty great weekend. Come Monday we packed ‘er all up and rolled on to the next gig.
*Although we pretty much always slept on the bus we sometimes set up tents for festivals. Especially festivals where the guy’s girlfriends joined us, as it was for moe.down. I know 100% that I was sleeping in a tent because on the last night of the fest I was so cold that I bailed on moe.’s sets altogether and listened to the show from our campsite, where I tucked myself into a small pup tent and curled up in my down-filled sleeping bag. I remember it so well because the band was absolutely on fire – as a matter of fact it was the only time I ever really, really enjoyed moe. – but I just could not pull myself out of that tent. I tried once, but the moment I stepped back out into the unseasonably frigid air I turned right around and rezipped myself back into my cocoon of cozy.
**I have self-diagnosed prosopagnosia (aka face-blindness), which means I have a hard time distinguishing between people that have similar body shapes, hair styles, or clothes. Two blonde women in the same movie? I won’t be able to follow it. Bottom line is I often think people are other people. It doesn’t make me a lot of friends, but a lifetime of trying has taught me that I can’t seem to do anything about it.
Todd Man Out 