So this weekend I’ll be making my annual trek into the hills of North Carolina for the Merle Watson Memorial Music Festival, or Merlefest. Me and tens of thousands of my closest friends will descend upon North Wilkesboro, NC for some of the finest bluegrass and Americana music the world has to offer. This is a huge vacation for me every year, because I don’t take a computer.
That’s right, I will not be taking a computer to Merlefest. I won’t blog for three days, and I’ll barely check email or look at my Amazon stats (yeah, right!). But this is an opportunity to unplug, relax, commune with nature and music, and generally relax. Obviously I’m looking forward to it, as I do every year, but a little more so this year, because this guy’s going to be performing on Sunday, and he’s been on my list of people to see for, oh, my whole life!
That’s right – Robert F’n Plant is closing out Merlefest with his Band of Joy! And there’s plenty of joy for me with that! I just bought the album off Amazon and have been taking advantage of their free cloud storage and music player all day (wish there was an app for iPhone, but I see why that isn’t likely to happen). If you don’t think that Jeff Bezos is a flippin’ genius, then you’re not paying attention. First the Kindle, then the whole thing with giving free access to all the Amazon tv shows to Prime subscribers, now giving 20GB of free online storage to anyone who buys an MP3 album from them. Crazy like a fox, I tell you.
But anyway, I’m looking very much forward to Merlefest for the weekend. A few days of shorts, Birkenstocks, festival food and great music is just what I need before I come back into town to the craziness that will be RENT technical rehearsals. I started loading in gear for that this weekend, and if I wasn’t already convinced that this needs to be my last show for a while, that did it. I haven’t even really done anything yet and I’m tired! But I think it will be an awesome show, if we all survive the tech process :). I’ll post photos as we get into the process, but that will be a while.
And of course the same weekend that RENT opens, which is already the weekend I’m double-booked at the SC Book Festival, my wife has a show opening! Yeah, Suzy decided to go audition for The Edge Theatre Company’s production of Miss Nelson is Missing, and damned if she didn’t land the title role! It’s the first thing she’s auditioned for in probably 5-6 years, and she gets the lead! I’m so proud of her I could bust, but I don’t really know how I’m going to be in three places at once that weekend. I mean, I’m a big dude, but I’m not that big!
Meh, I need a clone. Or a fat hillbilly look-alike.
