Monday, August 10, 2009

Tower Park Festival Marathon Weekend

Who has time to work?

So much happened this past weekend that I'll have to break it up into separate blogs!
The Tower Park Festival in Peoria Heights was the big event and man if you missed it you really missed out!
Hannah and I didn't want to miss anything!!

Nick's band DriveTrain was headlining for the 4th straight year and it's always a good time.
Great food, music and fun people.
I love how easy it is to get to and there is so much to do in the Heights.
Funky Brian and Nick, we miss you boys!!!

Here is Paul and Dottie Weddle & Bob chillin' with Robin Crowe.
Yeah, be impressed. That is me with Jay Goldberg who brought his friend
THE MAYOR of Peoria, Jim Ardis.

Not only did he bring important people to hear Nick play but he even bought Nick's newest CD!Here is my nephew Jon who is desperately trying to look cool.
Barry Cloyd's Band played right before Nick's Band and was great as usual.

This is Michelle who used to babysit for Nick when he was just 1 year old! Now SHE has a baby of her own. My how time flies!


Roy Ponce and BrainChild goofin' with DriveTrain
The were incredible on stage!
Remember the olden days at the Silver Dollar Saloon and the Wed. Night Open Blue Jam? Let's make them bring it back!!

Here's Rooster Alley, speaking of the Silver Dollar Days.
All these guys used to play together.
It's where Nick learned so much about music!



Julie Vonachen, Dottie Weddle and Tony and Robin Crowe.


Five Guys named Moe were so much fun!
They worked the crowd.




We listened to the great bands on Friday to warm up for Saturday's big performance.
Pictures to come!


Saturday morning my husband Tracy and I went road tripping to Ringwood, near Woodstock Illinois, which is near Chicago....well, sort of, to pick up Tracy's dad Bob Boettcher. Bob has moved from Las Vegas to Ringwood recently and has never heard my son Nick play any of his music. UGh! Can't have that!
Left at 6 am, got there around 9:30, made it back by 2:30 so we could set up the merch table for the musicians and hear almost every band. It was like old home week! I loved it. Since Nick lives in Chicago now it's hard for him to get time to come back to play so all his fans, friends and relatives came out to cheer them on!
I don't have all the pics yet. It took 2 cameras to get all the people there!




Okay, uuhhmmm.... you probably noticed rather quickly that my daughter Rachel didn't get her photog skills from me. HUH. I'm so mad at myself for not getting better pictures but we were having too much fun to take the time to really set up.
Sorry folks. You'll just have to use your imagination on some of these.

We closed out the show around 11:30 and came home to crash and eat yet again. The fair food was tasty but just didn't do the trick after dancing around for 16 hours.
Up early for Bob to take a tour of P-Town and then like Willy says....
On the Road Again...
We drop Bob back to his humble abode and race to Chicago so Nick can make it to Aberdeen's
to play yet another gig! We get there just in time...to find out the air conditioning went out because it's been so hot there this weekend! They were closing early.
:( Sad, sad face.
We didn't get to hear Nick do his solo acoustic gig this time.
But, we did have some fantastic food and great service and I might even have gotten a painting gig out of the deal!
So after a pat on the back for a job well done we sent Nick and all of his beautiful guitars home...which is conveniently across the street at Ave N. Guitars.
Yes. That's right. Mama didn't raise no fools.
Nick is smart (lucky) enough to not only get a gig right across the street from where he works but also WHERE HE LIVES.
He is living the musicians dream. He works and lives IN a guitar store! Okay, not actually lives in there, Upstairs in the same building and he does sometimes teach in his big beautiful amazing apartment. The kids is brilliant.
You will notice in the pictures above that Nick is playing 3 different guitars at this Tower Park Festival. That's what happens when you are a kick ass guitarist I guess. People actually handed him amazing works of guitar art and asked if he
WOULD PLEASE PLAY THEM ON STAGE!
Nick being the nice guy he is suffered along and obliged them. (ha ha)
That beautiful golden guitar is about $9,000 and the black guitar was hand made by his friend Dave, that works at Ave N. and is originally from Peoria. The sound on it was fantastic and it looks pretty too!

Sorry, sidetracked....
We jump back in the car to hit home about midnight again.
I have glossed over many many details for the sake of time but when I get the pictures I will fill in.
More excitement to come!

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