July 12, 2012

One Hell of a Hoedown

Holy Grass of Blue!... The Pijnackerplein Bluegrass Festival was INCREDIBLE, Y'all! I mean it was two weeks ago and i swear i've just recovered from it. Not sure about our neighbors though. YIKES. But, getting back to the fest... such amazing bands, wonderful musicians and fun people both playing and attending the fest. It was an all day, all night, and all day again musical throw down.

The Pijnackerplein is this amazing little square in Rotterdam North with this beautiful old fashioned band stand. Our store, "The Jumping Flea", is right around the corner and served as the backstage for the festival. We had about 80 people through the door. One of our awesome buddies, Nor, was in the kitchen whoopin' up some amazing chow for everyone all day and all night long. After the festival we came back to The Flea for a jamsession that lasted until 7AM in the damn morning. This party was OFF THE HOOK! Man, what a DAY. We had our hands full leading the jamsession in the morning, performing with our other band 'The Fournicators', running a market stand, hosting all the musicians and crew in 'The Flea' and we also had a handfull of musicians sleeping at our place. Whooodoggy. What a beautiful mess it all was. So what was the high point of the day? Dang, hard to tell. The whole damn day kicked ass. I guess i would have to say musically it was when it started raining and the whole audience joined Morgan O'Kane on the bandstand. Freakin' ROCKED! Besides that, just hanging out and jammin' with everyone. AMAZING. To get an idea of what a beautiful day it was, there are tons of photographs for your viewing on the PBGF Facebook Event Page and video is coming up soon too. So, if you're interested you can take a look here. To the right i've chosen a few of my own favorite photographs of the day. All of these images are from the fabulous Paul van der Blom except the last one which i took myself.

Open image in a new tab to ZOOM!


From left to right: 1. My good lookin' dude, Marko playin' the longneck during our set as 'The Fournicators', 2. Morgan O'Kane backstage with The Jolenes. 3. Morgan O'Kane with his crew Ferd Moyse (fiddle) from Meridan, Ms. and Liam Crill (spoons - check out the spoons on his shirt! I liked spoon dude.) 4. Zeke Healy, Morgan's guitarist, relaxing backstage with a bit of uke at the Flea. 4.Elma Plaisir & Rikke Korswagen of Halfway Station. 5. The gorgeous bandstand on the Pijnackerplein and if you look real close, i'm on stage with The Fournicators. 6. Rocco punchin' the ever-lovin' hell of a high score out of the punching ball BAM! And lastly 7. Guido de Groot, the super organiser of the festival and Edith Vijfwinkel the kick-ass stage manager.


2 comments:

superheidi said...

Well, I sincerely hope this will be an annual event and keeping it more or less the friendly size it has.
And that lovely band stand needs to see more use. :-)

Shelley Rickey said...

Yes, me too. Talked to Guido yesterday. He really wants to have another bg fest next year. I also love the size of the festival. So charming.