This was my phirst show - I'm listening to it now, exactly a decade later, remembering the circumstances of the day and of the weekend. Two of my friends and I had signed up to volunteer as a means of getting tickets for free; we ended up working one 13.5 hour shift, ostensibly helping space cars appropriately as they arrived to set up camp. Our advisors ended up taking their golf cart and going to smoke in the woods. We never heard from them specifically again and spent most of the night wandering Pod 2, our designated parking assistance area. Eventually, we snuck back to camp and slept for a few hours before returning to Pod 2 in time to be picked up for the shift rotation. When we got back to camp, the other volunteers and coordinators were all pretty relieved ("You were the guys from Pod 2? Wow, sounded like a nightmare out there."), and we ended up receiving meal tokens for having been apparently forgotten about. We didn't have to work our next scheduled shift the following night, either.

Exhausted from the rest of the weekend already, I spent all day posted up at the fence line, the closest you could get without having to cycle out between acts, which is what was happening in the pit. My friends didn't want to spend all day rail riding, which I don't blame them for, and they weren't that far behind me anyway. I watched Gary Clark, the Beach Boys, Bon Iver and, finally, these guys. One thing I really like about festivals is that the artists themselves become fans - seeing Trey on the side of the stage geek out during the Beach Boys' set is one of my all-time favorite concert memories.

Anyway, the show itself is not as bad as some of the comments make it seem. In particular, criticism over them repeating stuff from Worcester seems misguided at best; it's a festival, so they'll play a festival-friendly set. I know the crowd was grooving to it, and there's no doubt that at least some non-phans came away from this show converted. In hindsight, the timing/fit of the Kenny Rogers appearance following Axilla could have been better, but it was such a joy to see them kick it with Kenny either way.

The second set is when they really hit the groove, in my opinion. Golden Age is killer, 2001 was primo and the CDT was tasty, if not quite as raucous as it can get. Carini did some work, and then, sure enough, the Shafty bust out. What a trip. Rock and Roll->Rocky Top was a nice run of songs to close out the sets; we were already making our way back to camp to try and beat the rush during the encore, but we could hear it, and closing with Tweeprise was the only way to wrap up the festival.

I used my final meal token to buy a quesadilla that I ate during this show's Hood. Best quesadilla I ever did have.