Stereopirate Sailing through life, one song at a time...

I don't even really know how to start with my recap of the festival. Since I was lucky enough to be able to attend the inaugural year of Rothbury in 2008, I knew that I had to make this an annual event for my summer break. When they announced the line-up for the 2009 festival, I knew I would be spending my Independence Day Weekend in Rothbury, Michigan once again. With so many great bands to check out, I was just hoping that there wouldn't be too many schedule conflicts so I would have to miss out on some great concerts. It's hard to describe all of the shows and events from the weekend, but I will do the best I can to try to let everyone in on what was probably the greatest 4 consecutive days of my life.

I'll just do a show by show run down of all of the concerts I can remember. If you were in attendence, then you know that keeping track of all of the sights and sounds could be quite a challenge at some points.

I started off Thursday catching the end of the Davy Knowles and Back Door Slam and moved on to check out Keller Williams. After seeing him last year, I knew that seeing him kick off Rothbury 2009 would be a real treat. As expected, he didn't let me down. Playing all of my favorites, I was quite pleased to kick off the festival with some amazing jams from the greatest One Man Band in the world.

Davy Knowles and Back Door Slam [From Thursday]

Leaving Keller a bit early, I was able to go check a completly unknown band called Future Rock. Hailing from Chicago, these guys were one of the most energetic shows that I had ever seen. Following the rising trend of digital electronic synth-rock bands, Future Rock sets themselves apart from the rest by being truley innovative with their music. You can almost hear a structure composition in their sounds, creating an almost synthsized symphony sound. I definitely recommend everyone check them out and try to catch one of their shows if you ever can. I will seeing where I can catch an upcoming show.

Check out a short video I shot from their Rothbury performance at the Tripolee Dome. It's not great, but it sure does show how energetic their shows are.

After the Future Rock show, we headed back to catch a good part of the Lotus show. Being a band I had only heard of a few times, they put on a great show at Rothbury in my mind. After a great Lotus show, I made it over to catch the Cool Kids. Kid Cudi was originally scheduled to perform during this slot, but for some reason ended up cancelling a few weeks before the show. Although bummed I wasn't going to be able to catch my first Kid Cudi show in one of the greatest concert settings ever, the Cool Kids definitely did not let down the fans (including myself).

Following the Cool Kids set, we moved onto the headlining show of the evening, The Disco Biscuits. Seeing them for the first time last year opened my eyes to a whole new sound to music. I had been eagerly awaiting this show ever since it was announced, and once the music started I was taken to a whole new place. For their entire set, they played with non-stop energy and emotion. I had never heard them sound so good together, and everyone else around was having the same thoughts as me. Their show set the bar so high for the rest of the festival, I was actually slightly nervous as to what could possibly compare to such a raw performance of sound and light. As my video clip below shows, the entire place was packed and filled with energy (and tons of glowsticks!) After seeing the show, I became an instant faithful fan and have been spending the last few days downloading a lot of their recent shows off of Archive.org. I promise that once you hear their newer stuff, you will fall in love with them to. Be sure to catch them if at all possible on their current tour, you will not be let down!

After getting mind-trapped in The Disco Biscuits show, I was only able to catch the last few songs of the Cold War Kids. I was pretty bummed to find out that I missed out on a tremendous performance from the Indie rockers. Even though I have yet to see a full concert of them, I am still not that upset since I got to be a part of one of the greatest festival performances ever with The Disco Biscuits. With the first day in the books, my expectations had been set quite high for the rest of the amazing bands still to play during the 4th of July Weekend.

From Thursday