The Eye of the Hurricane

Sake Of The Song Festival – 2009

Let it be known that John Dickson knows how to throw a party. This is the 4th year that Dickson Productions (also known for putting on the MusicFest in Steamboat, etc..) has put on the Sake Of The Song festival in conjunction with The Randy Rogers Band. These guys do an amazing job of putting on a great festival and choosing bands remind us why songs were written in the first place.

Friday night started off with an acoustic song swap with Randy Rogers, Hal Ketchum (yes… that Hal Ketchum), Kevin Welch, Adam Hood and Adam Carroll. What was amazing about this lineup is that these aren’t guys you ever see on the same stage at one time. Each person there, is at a vastly different point in their career… but what each person brought to stage was a phenomenal gift for song writing and performing. Following the songswap, in usual fashion, a Q&A session popped up with questions for each artist about their songwriting. This is a great experience for the fans to hear more from the musicians and they responded by respectfully hanging on every word and every answer.

Next up on stage was Modern Day Drifters, which is a fairly new band on the scene, but the crowd seemed to really love the set and didn’t wander out the door just because the big names had left the stage. Closing the night was The Trisha’s, which put the crowd into 2 categories… people that have never heard of them and people that came only for them. They are a band that was put together from 4 girls that each are easily some of the most talented musicians I’ve seen on their own.. much less all on the stage at once. Watching them onstage was refreshing… much like cold water quenching a throat that I didn’t even know was dry. I may have even “allegedly” helped 2-3 fans sneak into some of the empty preferred seating because they couldn’t stand to be that far away from The Trishas when they were singing and playing. All our crew stuck around till the end shuffled out the front gate to our shuttle that would take us back to camp.

That’s right, I said camp. The Sake Of The song festival is about so much more than just going to a venue to see music. For us, we make it an annual event, rent some cabins, float the river, listen to music, cook BBQ, catch up on life and laugh like we’ve never laughed before. After a late night of swimming in the Campsite/RV Park/Cabin Area’s pool we woke up bright and early-ish and headed for the river. Trying to organize 20 people, in tubes can be a mess but we eventually got on the river and had a long slow float in 100+ degree weather in some of the coolest water in Texas. There is very little that is more rejuvenating than floating with with 20 or so friends and turning off the outside world for a few hours. It was completely relaxing… that is until we realized as we stepped out of the water that is was 6:00 and we had to be at the venue at 7:00 to see Jason Eady. (To keep this clean, I’ll just omit how aggravated I was to have to miss The Gougers that played at 4:00).

With more laughing, joking, showers and eating a few chips to tide us over… we were back on the shuttle to Whitewater Amphitheater in time to see Eady setting up. With a quick introduction by Randy Rogers, Jason Eady dropped the hammer and had the early crowd moving and swaying to both his old and new stuff. Following Eady was Jonathan Tyler & The Northern Lights, who put on a good show and kept the crowd engaged and rowdy as daylight turned to dusk. The darker it got, the thicker the crowd became… all cramming in to get an up close view of the RRB set. It’s been January since I’ve seen the RRB, so I was really looking forward to catching the show and see more of what I’ve been reading about for the past 6 months. And they did not disappoint one bit. It’s no wonder they’ve made it as far as they have… they just have flat out, all around, talent. The sold out crowd was in full effect and with the backdrop of the Guadalupe River, the RRB closed the show in perfect form.

Out of gas and needing food we wandering back to the camp for some late night snacks and recounting of everyone’s stories of the weekend. There were some guitars out and some familiar voices ringing throughout the campsites as even the artists got time to kick back and sing some songs together till the early hours of the morning.

It’s for the sake of the Song that sparked this festival to be born 4 years ago. It’s the Song that is the common bond the binds us all together as friends. It’s no wonder that when the Song is the central theme to a festival that we have the most fun as fans and friends. I just can’t wait till Dickson turns it into a 3 day festival so I can have more of an excuse to extend my mid-summer vacation. See everyone next year!

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