Wednesday, August 08, 2007

DMB in Philly

Philly has offered us some of our greatest highs (Live 8, U2 shows, etc) and also our…I wouldn’t call them lows, but our most…challenging dates. There is a tailgating culture that is wholly unique to the Philly/Camden area, matched only perhaps by New Jersey in its robustness, and tailgating tends to only mean one things: severe inebriation. That said, the Dave shows that Jessica and I braved the past few days were quite productive – we got lots and lots of people signed up involved with ONE, met some very cool people that are now on our list to be volunteers, and we got to experience both Tattooed Mom’s and Chickie and Pete’s, two of my favorite places in Philly to hit up when on tour.

Dave Matthews Band fans join ONE in Philly

Monday was Jessica’s birthday, so I took her out for sushi, then we hit up Tattooed Mom’s, a great dive punk bar that I’ve gone to for as long as I’ve been coming to Philly. Once inside, it only made sense that we’d run into Curt and . Curt and I had a ‘hey, I know you from somewhere totally different’ moment on the first night of the Dave tour. We quickly realized it was Warped Tour – Curt works for Epitaph Records and it’s very cool subsidiary label Anti, and was there to promote Xavier Rudd, who was opening for DMB on the first few nights of the tour.

The Camden shows were pretty fun, despite the threat of a massive thunderstorm. Jessica and I were able to set up quickly and get to work. We had three great volunteers join us on Tuesday – Brit and I had just met at the Virgin festival four days before. She came out to volunteer with her friend Brent, and we also had Maria join us, rounding out our team. They did GREAT, going non-stop for hours and getting lots and lots of fans signed up. As always, the venue staff at Tweeter was super helpful, and we owe a special thanks to merch guy Bo for letting us steal his hand cart over and over.

Jessica flew home to Seattle this AM, I’m heading out to Pittsburgh where I’ll pick up Carlos, who will be helping me out for the next two shows.

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