Last Weekend's Fests: A Wrap-Up by Dan with Pictures by Dan (Part 1)

So first and foremost, we are chastising ourselves severely for being away from the blogiverse (Is that even a word? Will James yell at me about the spelling?) for so long. That's the downside of being a working band, we spend a lot of our lives working on (less fun) things that are not The Sobriquets, and this makes us forget to do things like update the blog, restring our instruments, check the tubes in our amplifiers (more on that in Part 2), etc.

Let's travel back in time, shall we? Last weekend (March 26th-27th, to be exact) we had the great fortune of playing two festivals in the Mid-Atlantic region.

Friday, 3/26/10: The 3rd Annual Cape May Singer Songwriter Festival, Cape May, NJ

We've been doing this fest since its inception in 2008, back when we were a lowly three-piece with one record to our name and severe lack of back beat. It's a great fest, put on by the same people who do the Millennium Music Conference in Harrisburg, PA, and they do a superb job every year of keeping things running tightly and on schedule. They offer up two days and nights of bands as well as some great musicians' panels where independent artists get together and talk about all the nuts-and-bolts of being an independent musician (marketing, booking, branding, production, distribution, and so on).

James, Josh and Nick arrived in Cape May early on Friday to partake in panels and general knowledge gathering. I had to work (big surprise), but met up with them in the evening in time to play our set at The Ugly Mug in downtown Cape May. But first, we ran around the rather chilly beach like fools for a bit.

We got to play with a handful of really great acts, like Kelly Carvin and the Future (who featured an absolutely astounding guitar player that they apparently met that day at the hotel and asked to sit in), True Witness, fellow Philadelphians New Liberty and The Dead End Cruisers (who we would hang out with the following day at Fetzer Fest). Everyone played a great set, and it was refreshing to do a show with so much camaraderie between bands who had just met each other that day. We all came from different places and we all approach playing music differently, but it's great to be amongst high-quality musicians who are supportive of one another, rather than being spiky and cold to each other. Warm feelings all around!

I would also like to note that it was the first year at Cape May where it did not rain biblically on us. That's the risk you run doing a fest at The Shore in March, and we were happy to be able to be outside for parts of it.

More pics and video will be posted via The Sobriquets on Facebook as I get them finished up. Not a fan of The Sobriquets on Facebook? Make it happen, you can see all kinds of documentation of shenanigans on the road, as well as some of the serious work (playing music) as well.

-Dan

Coming up: Part II of the Fest Weekend featuring Fetzer Fest in Allentown, PA.