The Chicagoland weather forecast for Summer Camp 2011 included the infamous 50% chance of rain and sunny skies all weekend long.  What we found were marriages of rain and shine, glamour and gladiator, nature and music all tied together interconnected.    If you buy into numerology, the answer is in the numbers here folks.  Last year we brought attention to the

“Happy Earth Day!  We burned a bunch of gasoline to get all these people into this room, but we try to be low impact once we’re here.  I suppose we could have been super environmental and not played but… Hey! It’s 12:31 am! It’s not Earth Day anymore! Yeah!

It was over a decade ago, when I was barely of legal age to gain entry into a bar, that I used to frequent a small, smoky bar in my native Long Island, NY, and used to catch the house band that played every Monday night. The house band was a blues, funk, and roots-rock outfit that played a wide array of music, and was known for the stellar musical prowess of its members. Anchoring this band was lead guitar player and singer / songwriter Andy Falco, whose slick bluesy electric guitar solos were an oft anticipated segment of each song.

Railroad Earth always attracts a massive crowd, and I had to soon forgotten the multiple block lines that can accumulate beside the Ogden on a big night.

“Get Lost in the Great North Woods” is the perfect way to describe Hoxeyville Music Festival.  The 8^th annual festival was held in the Manistee National Forest in Northern Michigan.  Each year Hoxeyville has grown and improved this year followed suit and featured a bigger and better lineup than ever before, cleaner and more organized festival grounds, and the largest crowd to date at around 4,000 people.  One of the greatest things about Hoxeyville is the family atmosphere, whether it was a grandparent and grandchild watching a mid-day set, lon

Greensky Bluegrass has had an incredible summer so far.  The Kalamazoo, MI-based ‘newgrass’ quintet tours nationally and were recently featured at the Rockygrass Festival in Lyons, CO, on the main stage at the legendary Grey Fox Festival in upstate New York and performed in front of an audience of thousands at the All Good Festival in West Virginia.

There’s something inherently ‘good’ about Del McCoury. I say this, never having met the man; although I’ve been close enough to photograph him on a number of occasions, and to have briefly exchanged pleasantries. But that doesn’t count, and I know it.. Yet, here I am – insisting that I have perceived enough about the man to proclaim him thus.