365 Days in Cleveland: Nelsonville Music Festival

3 years ago my friend Andy and I started a tradition of going to 1 summer music festival a year. This was basically because we were the last of our friends to be married with kids and wanted to celebrate that freedom and great music. We've been to Firefly in Delaware, the Newport Folk festival in Rhode Island, and this year, since Andy and his wife Kari are going to Ireland, we decided to keep it local and head to the Nelsonville Music Festival in Nelsonville, Ohio. New this year was good old country music loving Gina. I'm so hoping that if I continue to include her, our lives will be a little less "Catfish dinner" and a little more "Baby I'm calling for you"... one can only hope this "My Fair Lady" science project of mine works.

What we learned:

We will never sleep in a Super8 hotel ever again if we can help it. The beds were awful and the independent owners were so far up you a$$ about every little thing that it just came off as desperate. Luckily for us we were only there from 1 am until 11 am.
Nelsonville is a quaint little area with an old timey feel and beautiful scenery. Hocking college, where the festival took place, is a tiny little campus nestled in between forests and foothills. There were lots of plants, trees, and summer allergies. We didn't venture to far from the campus except to stop and get money, beer, and a box of band aids to keep Gina's dry cracked foot together. The poor thing looked like a broken vase and I was afraid a chunk would fall off. Either/or the campus was beautiful and the town of Nelsonville were great hosts for this event.
The first night, Thursday, was by far the best night in my opinion. The headline fun started out with my musical man crush, Frank Turner. This is the 3rd time I've seen him live and I can't get enough of his fun and crowd active live shows. You sing along, dance, chant, pantomime, and clap. You feel like a part of the show and if you don't participate, it takes away from the whole experience a little. It's good old rock and roll with a British accent like the old days and I knew almost every word.

Jason Isbell was next and he came highly recommended by... well Frank Turner at last years Newport Folk festival. He was more straight forward of an act and was a change of tempo from Frank Turner. His voice was great and his music was powerful! Like soundtrack to a "getting shit done" montage powerful. I'm glad I finally got to see him live. He didn't disappoint.

Well that was the end of the headline acts on the main stage for the night but there was one act left on the second stage in a nice little opening surrounded by olden day cabins and hippie merch booths. We made the best decision ever to go check it out before we went back to the hotel for some much needed sleep on our slabs of concrete. What we saw was so good, it deserves it's own number...
Say hello to St. Paul & The Broken Bones... the most fun and entertaining band of the whole festival...

This includes (and I can't believe I'm writing this) Frank Turner and the Avett Brothers who I would normally rank up there as far as fun and entertaining live shows go that I've seen. Gina and I sampled some of their music and it had a great soul sound to it mixed with a bit of gospel. We both liked the music right away... but that didn't prepare us for the explosion that lead singer, Paul Janeway, ignited the second he stepped on stage. First, the band came out and started playing a cool little ditty with some accompanying brass. I wondered how the lead guitarist was going to sound singing live because he looked nothing like someone who could make the vocal sound I remember coming from my laptop just a few days prior. Yes, it was a prejudging of vocal talent based on look but I was just starting to form initial opinions on very little background. Then out from behind the stage stepped a blondish haired man in glasses wearing a suit. As soon as I saw him dressed differently from the rest of the band I knew he was the guy... except he looked even less like a southern soul man. My goodness was I wrong. He was an entertainer with a massive set of tools to work with. He had the voice. He had the moves. He had the mannerisms. He had charm. He lit that stage up and sent the crowd into a frenzy. He knew when to smile and when to be bashful. He made it so you couldn't take your eyes off him because you wanted to see exactly what he did next. The music was soulful and his booming voice was selling you on every emotion that the lyrics painted in your imagination. As a crowd, when a new song revved up, we were so happy to know that the previous song wasn't the last... and when it was the last song, we demanded an encore and were relieved when one came! It was all we could talk about on the way to the cars once it was over. I told Gina, I felt the same way when I first saw Mayer Hawthorne... this isn't something you'd come across unless you demanded it so much that you went out looking for it. God bless music festivals like this that show us that radio has failed us all by not featuring acts like this.

Suntan lotion. Suntan lotion. Suntan lotion. I am as red as red can be in some places but it was worth it because we got great weather all weekend! I keep saying it but thank goodness summer is finally here.
The Avett Brothers are awesome live. No shock here.

So all in all the weekend and the festival was a success. Were they all great bands? Mostly and that's always a pleasant surprise when you know about 10% by name and are still excited about hearing new music and experiencing new things. Here are a few pics from the weekend: