The desert is hot.
Seriously.
Of course, for the task of giving away ice cream, that bodes well. For the task of being outside enjoying music, you better have a lot of water. Luckily, I had both out in Joshua Tree for the Joshua Tree Music Festival.
Camino set up our presence at the event and all I had to do was roll into town. I wasn’t able to make it out Friday night for the bands that day, including Ghostland Observatory, because I was still waiting for Newt, our new ice cream van to get some finishing touches done. Early Saturday afternoon I rolled into town and set up for Newt’s inaugural adventure.
I met up with Camino and our crew for the weekend and headed to the fest. It was a comparatively small fest with a noticeably laid back atmosphere. With mostly jam bands playing, that came as no surprise. Most of the fest I spent at the van, so I didn’t get a chance to see any bands, but could hear most of them well. We rolled in around 3, so I didn’t get to check out Amy Lavere, whom I was actually the most interested in seeing at the fest. Oh well. We did get to hear the nights most anticipated bands: Dumpstaphunk (for the record, my least favorite band name of all time), BLVD w/ Souleye and Zilla among others. After the festivities and travel of the day I was quite sleepy, so we headed back to the rented house and crashed out.
Sunday started slow. First we headed down to the Crossroads Cafe to get some coffee and breakfast. After getting filled up, we headed up to a little train museum up the dirt road from the house. It was a little spooky, since it was closed at the time and there were no people around, but we got some good shots and got to pretend we were in The Hills Have Eyes.
Once we got to the fest, things went pretty similarly as the night before: relax, listen to music, give out ice cream. We arrived to the “gypsy punk” raucousness of Luminescent Orchestrii which sounded pretty fun. Through the day we were treated to sets from Trombone Shorty, Sol Jibe and the Eric McFadden Trio as well as seeing the delightfully costumed Loyd Family Players who had been playing their percussion explosion throughout the weekend.
Sunday night I was able to head back home to Long Beach to get some sleep and start preparing for the next weekends excursion north for the Sasquatch Festival. Man, the fun never stops.
