Tour Diary – Snowbird, UT and Santa Fe, NM (July 10 and 11)
Snowbird, Utah (July 10, 2009)
We spent today half way up a mountain at the Snowbird Ski Resort. Not a bad way to spend a beautiful mountain day. Snowbird is just one of the many ski resorts that sit above the Great Salt Basin, above Salt Lake City. Ski resorts like this one all over the country have gotten smart over the years and realized that their chalets and restaurants don’t have to sit empty during the summer months. The growth in summer sports like mountain biking have helped the bottom line and a lot of these resorts have added music festivals to their summer schedules. We usually have the good fortune of playing a couple of these every summer: no pressure gigs surrounded by some of the most beautiful scenery in the country. Snowbird also has the added bonus of “fun time activities”, like a toboggan slide, bungi trampoline, zip line, a climbing wall and other cool stuff for kids and not-so-kids. There is also a gondola that brings you to the top of the mountain so you can look down on the rest of the world. It was a fun day, especially for Ed.
The gig was as enjoyable as the rest of the day: a Friday night crowd, the first night of the festival, a beautiful summer evening…..rock on.
Santa Fe, NM (July 11, 2009)
A long 14 hour drive from the mountains of Utah to the deserts of New Mexico. There is only so much sleeping one can do so we watched some really bad movies on the newly named SYFY channel (apparently Sci Fi was too confusing to us all). We didn’t see one square block of downtown Santa Fe, which is ok by me. I love this area but I find the city a bit too Disney….”visit olde time Santa Fe-land”….but I like the land and I like the light and I like the people.
The gig was at a decent little outdoor venue attached to the Santa Fe Brewing Company: a relatively small space with a good sound system out in the middle of nowhere. Son Volt was not part of the bill tonight. We had a very fun time tonight, it was very loose, with a few technical problems and a few guitar clangs and vocal miscues, but it still had a good feel and lots of good moments. It was helped along by an enthused audience. It was freakin’ hot out there today.