Festival Fun - Country Stampede - Topeka, KS Jun 20-22

Not your ordinary gig weekend. I took a break from my day job to join the crew of Kansas Pro Sound to mix monitors and stage manage one of the side stages at this three day country music event. My group played one of the evening slots on the first night, and this stage alternates with the main stage artists to provide continuous music throughout the event.

All in all I got to check out 12 other fantastic groups/artists on my stage, and other than the ridiculous amount of rain (which leads to awesomely bad mud EVERYWHERE) it was a fun event. Everything got done as scheduled except for the very last act on Saturday, where we got called off because of lightning after one song, and then "got" to enjoy about 60 minutes of high winds, thunder, and sideways rain..whee! Nothing like holding a tarp over a drummer's kit in to keep the rain blowing in from completely soaking it, except maybe spending the next morning crawling around in the mud taking down the stage and loading in in the trailer. (If you wonder why sound/staging rentals are costly, this is an example of that!).


It's always fun to work on the stage side, meet some musicians and chat about gigs and gear, etc. A few pics:

Our little slice of fun for the weekend (pre-mudfest)!


My view from monitor world when I wasn't roaming with my tablet.


Fun cloud...but no bad weather yet.



Jake Owen headlining the main stage!


Day two...uh oh it rained last night...and the wind had some fun.



Hey, whose canopy is this?



The show goes on! How about some southern-rock infused country!



The backline for this group, three half-stack guitar rigs and a (Mark-Bass powered) fridge...yes, they wanted the monitors loud!



Clint Black (one of my 90's country heroes) on the big stage.



Old Dominion on the big stage, their lighting/video rig was spectacular. The headliner each night had their own touring show set up first thing in the morning, all support acts for the festival used secondary stuff.



And I actually have more video than still shots. But anyway, thanks for sharing in the fun, I think I'm still drying out.