I want to jot down some notes on my recollections from SBSF5 to see if I can start to synthesize it all a bit and remember more. Another spectacular year there, truly the best festival anywhere in the world for me... it's all about the writing and I love that.

I took the SSBadger carferry (http://www.ssbadger.com) to Manitowoc Friday morning June 5th, I remember now that I started to pack at 11pm the night before and had to get up at 4:30am to get there in time, so the sleeplessness schedule started even before I left. The Badger was kind enough to let me sing for my passage and the 45 minute set on board at 10am was surprisingly good and well-received. I landed in Manitowoc around 11am and hung out at the terminal there until about 4pm just playing guitar and chilling in the summer sun until Mark and Galynne Riggenbach arrived with the "SBSF Transport Vehicle" bless their fabulous generous hearts. I'd purchased a 1990 Toyota Corolla Station Wagon on ebay earlier in the week in Redgranite and M&G were kind enough to drive it over to Manitowoc for me on their way to a gig in Algoma that night. Thank you again Mark and Galynne! You guys are so awesome.

http://www.markondrums.com
http://www.galynne.com

I piled all my gear into the SBSF-TV and headed out towards Menasha to meet up with Andy Lubahn and his merry band of Automatics playing at Cimarron. Andy's Automatics is the finest funnest form of fantastic honky-tonk and I danced with a bunch of die-hard fans all the way through set two. I was pretty wiped out from the late night of packing though so I carved out a spot in the back of the station wagon (now named "Betty Lou") and took a couple of naps. Around 2am the band loaded out and I followed Andy down to Omro to stay at his River Shack for some songwriting and such. We got there and decided to have a beer which turned into an opportunity to try out his back porch hot tub on the river which turned into "hey, all the beer is gone and it's 9:30am." a bit later. All-nighter number one in the books. Pelicans flying in formation over the river, carp roiling the surface, tiki lamps, Avett Bros on the stereo, long conversation and laughter. We stayed up all night partly out of a desire to witness the only sunshine of the whole weekend. Totally awesome way to kick of the week.

Saturday I climbed out of bed around 1pm and checked my email to find an Indie Band Manager sale had come in overnight so I promptly drove into Oshkosh to buy my yearly SBSF espresso maker at Target and once I got back we made some breakfast and started writing at about 4pm or so. We tried to write a song about Andy's iPhone I think, with some sort of Star Trek reference I believe, and JJ Verner came over to help us finish it but it kind of imploded and we never got it done. JJ left after awhile and we were going to go to bed but then Andy and I started trading songs back and forth from the couches and pretty soon it was like 3am again and we were totally having the best time. I can't remember when we finally went to sleep. We didn't watch the sun come up across the river this time, but it was plenty late.

Sunday rolled around and all I remember clearly was sitting in Andy's living room with my guitar wanting to write a song for Ralston called Fortune Teller. Ralston is my good friend in Grand Rapids (http://www.ralstonbowles.com) who had surgery for cancer earlier in the week. The doctor suggested time might be limited at one point and I thought "holy shit, isn't it always? why'd you have to tell him that?" and all of the sudden I called over to Andy that I wanted to write this song and I was so inspired by the Andy's Automatics set that I just sort of howled out this opening yodel and off we went. We finished the whole thing by the time Bruce Reaves pulled in around 4pm, then I packed up and drove off to Sturgeon Bay so they could have some time together to rehearse their songs and hang solo like only they could do mano-a-mano.

Betty Lou made the 100 mile drive to Sturgeon Bay quite nicely and I pulled into town about 5:45pm which was just in time for the opening songwriters dinner at the Ladder House. I checked in at the Finnerty's house first where I was staying just so they'd know I was in town and then convened with about 40 other writers for vittles, music, and the first bottle spinning ceremony to pick writing partners for the next day. For those of you unfamiliar with the ways of SBSF, it's a tradition that all the writers gather in a circle each night after dinner, a bottle of Jameson is placed on the floor, and the bottle is spun to pick writing teams at random. Wally Ingram did the ceremonial first spin and when the bottle finally came to rest it was pointing at Delaney Davidson from New Zealand. Everyone roared and a murmur went through the crowd at how cool that pairing would be. Delaney then spun the bottle and sure it enough it ended up pointing at... ME. It was like I'd won the freaking lottery. Ridonkulous! I couldn't believe it.

The bottle spinning continued until all the teams were picked and then Delaney got up to perform 3 songs. I'd never heard any of Delaney's stuff so I angled up to the front to check him out. He proceeded to play an expletive laced Leadbelly number with completely off the grid guitar, vocal, slide, and distortion looper accompaniment that just had me screaming, it was killer. I remember running outside afterwards to call Allison to tell her the news and check in and I'm sure she thought I was lit up drunk though I hadn't had a drop. I was raving excited.

Blueheels started performing after Delaney's set and I sauntered up to him at the bar to ask when he would like to get together and start writing. He said "Do you drink? Because I don't and it's really kind of weird hanging out in a bar not drinking, so I'd say let's start now." This was pretty much exactly what I wanted to hear. We spoke with Wally a bit later and made our way over to the Holiday about 10pm or so I believe.

Chris Aaron asked if we'd be the guinea pigs test out the new downstairs studio at the Holiday, helping them get the microphones in place, test the cables, mic the drums, etc... so we started brainstorming out some song ideas in the bathroom of room 121, Delaney sitting on the side of the tub, me on the toilet, and Wally just outside the doorway with his djembe. Delaney quickly came up with a guitar part he had in his back pocket and I showed him another guitar part I had in mine. We traded ideas back and forth on both and he did some really cool looper stuff over the guitar part I showed him. We decided to focus on his guitar part first and proceeded to spend the next couple of hours working out lyric and melody ideas for the song that became "Five Bucks" when it was finished. The music felt like a carnival circus to me so I suggested we base the lyrics on a Italian Comedia dell'arte theater troop coming into Sturgeon Bay (for more info on commedia check this link: http://www.theatrehistory.com/italian/commedia_dell_arte_001.html). We finally finished recording around 6am and we wound up performing the song together a bunch of times during the week. Delaney played trombone on the recording as well as guitar, vocals, and other accoutrements... so many talents in that man.

In any case, 6am had come, the sun was up, and that made two days out of three that I'd seen the sun come up. SBSF had begun.

Coming up: my lost Monday... and more.