Three Thoughts About Hamilton

1. Our family watched Hamilton a week ago (what better program to watch on the 4th of July?!), and still the songs are in my head.  Stating the obvious, Hamilton is an amazing piece of musical theater, and thus far it is the best cultural thing my daughters have introduced me to (through their endless listening to (and singing of) the soundtrack, even though I was only up for listening a few dozen times). 

2. Hamilton is musical theater, not history.  As history it is flawed on many levels.  I won't link to articles, as you should google "historical inaccuracies in Hamilton" or something along those lines and start your own investigation (it's good for you).  In your investigation, you'll see errors of several types.  First, there are the simple chronological inaccuracies -- for example, Philip's duel happened after the Election of 1800, not before.  Second and more significantly, there are inaccuracies that advance the story but which are partially or completely fictitious.  For example, Burr and Hamilton weren't friends and rivals for all those years -- there's no evidence they knew each other prior to the end of the war when they both were lawyers in New York.  Also, the Election of 1800 was far more complex than portrayed by Hamilton (it started with Burr being Jefferson's running mate, not opponent), and while Hamilton helped broker Jefferson's victory, his wasn't the decisive vote (heck, because he wasn't in the House of Representatives, he didn't even have a vote) -- it was Rep. Bayard from Delaware (it's ok to say "who?").  A third type of inaccuracy involves the omission of facts to portray Hamilton in a better light.  Perhaps the most noteworthy is the whole penniless immigrant characterization that occurs throughout the play (aided by his being portrayed by a POC), which, together with the noting of his involvement with an anti-slavery organization and his friendship with John Laurens, obscures Hamilton's more complicated relationship with slavery.  [Ok, I lied -- one link].  Fourth, there's the matter of how the portrayal of Hamilton is affected by Miranda's choice of source material -- Ron Chernow's book is quite popular, but it's also controversial among historians.

3. If your kids are old enough to watch Hamilton, they're old enough to learn about the play's historical shortcomings.  Share what you learn about the actual history with them (or look them up together) -- critical thinking is one of the most valuable gifts you can give your children, and for me it's the best way I know to repay my daughters for introducing me to Hamilton in the first place.

Bonus thought -- Today is the 216th anniversary of the Hamilton-Burr duel.  Hopefully your research will lead you to understand why the Election of 1800 wasn't the principal reason behind a duel that occurred nearly four years later.

2017 in Music

I can't help myself -- once again I've assembled my favorite albums of the year, headed by what to me was a clearcut winner, Antisocialites by Alvvays.  I've also put together a lengthy Spotify playlist filled with favorites from those albums and others.  Without further ado:

Honorable mention (in alphabetical order)

Phoebe Bridgers - Stranger in the Alps

Julie Byrne - Not Even Happiness

Cayetana - New Kind of Normal

Jen Cloher - Jen Cloher

The Districts - Popular Manipulations

Ron Gallo - Heavy Meta

Rhiannon Giddens - Freedom Highway

Ha Ha Tonka - Heart-shaped Mountain

Hurray for the Riff Raff - The Navigator

Valerie June - The Order of Time

Kacy & Clayton - The Siren’s Song

LCD Soundsystem - American Dream

Jessica Lea Mayfield - Sorry is Gone

Mondo Cozmo - Plastic Soul

Moonrise Nation Glamour Child

Kevin Morby - City Music

Mountain Goats - Goths

Offa Rex - The Queen of Hearts

Anders Parker - The Man Who Fell From Earth

David Rawlings - Poor David’s Almanack

Son Little - New Magic

Stars - There is No Love in Fluorescent Light

Susto - & I’m Fine Today

Sylvan Esso - What Now

Yawpers - Boy in a Well

Top 25

25. J. Roddy Walston & The Business - Destroyers of the Soft Life

24. Aldous Harding - Party

23. Trevor Sensor - Andy Warhol's Dream

22. Waxahatchee - Out in the Storm

21. Broken Social Scene - Hug of Thunder

20. The Sadies - Northern Passages

19. Richard Edwards - Lemon Cotton Candy Sunset

18. Ryan Adams - Prisoner

17. Sean Rowe - New Lore

16. San Fermin - Belong

15. Tristen - Sneaker Waves

14. St. Vincent - Masseduction

13. Jesus and Mary Chain - Damage and Joy

12. Courtney Barnett & Kurt Vile - Lotta Sea Lice

11. Palehound - A Place I'll Always Go

10. The War on Drugs - A Deeper Understanding

9. Dan Auerbach - Waiting on a Song

8. Conor Oberst - Salutations

7. The National - Sleep Well Beast

6. Diet Cig - Swear I'm Good at This

5. Big Thief - Capacity

4. Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit - The Nashville Sound

3. Laura Marling - Semper Femina

2. Chuck Prophet - Bobby Fuller Died for Your Sins

1. Alvvays - Antisocialites

What to Do About RateBeer

I've been a member of RateBeer for over 15 years, and I was for quite some time a major contributor to the site as one of the leading volunteer administrators. Over the years I've pulled back considerably from involvement, but it's still been the site where I enter my beer ratings, and what I use to look up beers and places.
  
Anheuser-Busch InBev (ABI) is the parent company of Budweiser, and has long been accused of anti-competitive practices. It's the reason why I refuse to buy any product they make, including beers produced by the many breweries they've purchased in recent years (e.g., Devils Backbone, Wicked Weed, Elysian, and Goose Island). Their acquisitions have been targeted such that the breweries are in most regions of the country (nothing yet in the Midwest), with various areas of specialization and style strengths. I'm not anti-big beer, I'm anti-ABI.

Friday's announcement that RateBeer had sold a minority stake to a subsidiary of ABI hit me like a ton of bricks, and while I've made a couple of posts on FaceBook about it, I've still been coming to terms with it, and what my response should be. With 48 hours to digest everything, I'm pretty sure that I now know my full response.

What concerns do I have about the announcement?

1. It's eight months late. The deal went through in October, and only when an article was about to be published about what had happened did RateBeer finally acknowledge that ABI was already working with the site. There's no telling how long the silence would have continued without that outside discovery. I don't buy the claim that the delay was "because the two sides wanted to get 'points on the board' to prove the value of the partnership without the 'disruption' of making it public." I mean, perhaps that's also true, but there are far greater benefits of silence, including:
• ABI access to the data without anyone getting upset and potentially leaving (as users are now contemplating doing); 
• No potential walkout of brewers from the big beer festival RateBeer holds in January; 
• No association of the change in the Terms of Service last Fall with the corporate investment; and of course 
• No scrutinizing what's going on at the site for the time folks were unaware.
2. It's a huge conflict of interest. Consumer Reports is wholly independent for a reason -- would you trust their reviews of dishwashers if Maytag were a minority investor? It's slightly different here, because the users provide the reviews, not RateBeer. But given that RateBeer compiles the data, and decides how to weight the data, certainly the potential exists for shenanigans, and I'd feel that way if any brewery acquired a stake in the site. I don't think they ever would do something illegitimate given the backlash that would follow if it ever came to light, but to say it looks bad is putting it mildly (and brings into question every shift in data weighting going forward). For similar reasons, I'm not as concerned as I originally was that ABI already may have an option to buy a majority stake/sole ownership -- I believe it's in their best interests to present RateBeer as majority-owned and operated by an independent entity, as I believe it's in their best interest that ratings continue to pile in. Which brings me to...  
3. What's in it for ABI? Lots of speculation on the RateBeer forums on this one, some even suggesting that it's simply a way to make money. For me, I think it's pretty simple. Joe Tucker, a friend and the person behind RateBeer, states, "The API is being expanded so journalists, other breweries, industry watchers, as well as app makers, academics, scholars and researchers will have better access to the same data that ZX [the ABI subsidiary] has access to." I take this to mean that ABI is helping to improve the data the site produces, in exchange for making all that data publicly available. RateBeer data isn't going to help ABI on its core Budweiser brands, because RateBeer users aren't interested in those brands (and routinely pan them). Instead, I expect that ABI wants the data to assist in making greater penetration in the craft brew market. With its numerous acquisitions, ABI is uniquely situated in the marketplace to take advantage of the information gleaned from the site's data, and I feel this is why ABI bought its stake. Further, I suspect that ABI has little concern with sharing the data with non-commercial interests, or even with competitors that aren't as well situated (especially when ABI had an 8-month head start on accessing the data). To say that the data is available for everyone isn't particularly meaningful when no one else possesses remotely equivalent resources to utilize the information within the data.

So what am I going to do about it?

I've given this a lot of thought over the last 48 hours or so, and consistent with my approach of not buying any ABI products, what I've decided is that I'm not comfortable providing any help whatsoever to ABI's desire to expand further into craft beer. This makes continuing to enter ratings on RateBeer problematic. Unfortunately, it's not as simple as finding another site for my ratings, because my existing ratings aren't readily transferable, I'm used to rating beers in the RateBeer format, and no other site has the information as readily able to be compiled as RateBeer (there's a reason why I've stayed with RateBeer all these years). Perhaps as importantly, what's to stop ABI from making an acquisition of another ratings site?

So with no good alternative to RateBeer, and discomfort with continuing to use Ratebeer, I'm left with the solution of taking my ratings private and independent, just like I was before I joined RateBeer. It's not that big of a deal -- the primary reason for entering my ratings has always been to compile my ratings, and these days it's not so hard to do so in your own file accessible from anywhere you have an internet connection.

As I'd like to have all my existing and future ratings in one place, fortunately RateBeer lets you compile your ratings. And even though it does so in blocks of 1000, and the data is wonky as Hell, it's about as good as I'm likely to get. So I've downloaded my old ratings, am in the process of cleaning them up and converting them into a single file, and will enter new ratings into that file.

Goodbye RateBeer, and good luck to Joe and all the folks still active over there.  I'm fortunate to have made many friends through the site, and over the years have connected with many of them on Facebook and in real life -- I look forward to seeing you/them in the years to come.

2016 in Music

What's lazier than not posting on a blog in over a year?  Making the post a list without any additional explanation.  Yep, here's my list of best albums in 2016, a Top 25 + 25 Honorable Mentions.  Bonus is a link to my Spotify playlist of some of my favorite songs of 2016.  The irony of my devoting dozens (hundreds?) of hours to deciding what albums and songs make the cut, only to just throw the "winners" out here when I'm done, is not lost on me.

25.  Outer Spaces - A Shedding Snake

24.  Escondido - Walking With a Stranger

23.  Matthew Logan Vasquez - Solicitor Returns

22.  Lumineers - Cleopatra

21.  Okkervil River - Away

20.  Matt Kivel - Janus

19.  Haley Bonar - Impossible Dream

18.  Shovels & Rope - Little Seeds

17.  Robert Ellis - s/t

16.  Little Green Cars - Ephemera

15.  Andrew Bird - Are You Serious

14.  Frightened Rabbit - Painting of a Panic Attack

13.  Sunflower Bean - Human Ceremony

12.  King Charles - Gamble for a Rose

11.  Angel Olsen - My Woman

10.  Mudcrutch - 2

9.  Michael Kiwanuka - Love & Hate

8.  Villagers - Where Have You Been All My Life?

7.  Brian Fallon -Painkillers

6.  The I Don’t Cares - Wild Stab

5.  Quilt - Plaza

4.  Car Seat Headrest - Teens of Denial

3.  Adia Victoria - Beyond the Bloodhounds

2.  David Bowie - Blackstar

1.  Nada Surf - You Know Who You Are

Honorable Mentions (in alphabetical order):

Avett Brothers - True Sadness

Brian Jonestown Massacre - Third World Pyramid

Felice Brothers - Life in the Dark

Fruit Bats - Absolute Loser

Hiss Golden Messenger - Heart Like a Levee

Ray LaMontagne - Ouroboros

Lucius - Good Grief

Junius Meyvant - Floating Harmonies

MONEY - Suicide Songs

My Golden Calf - Perfume Brute

Oh Pep! - Stadium Cake

Esme Patterson - We Were Wild

Iggy Pop - Post Pop Depression

The Record Company - Give It Back to You

Daniel Romano - Mosey

Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeroes - PersonA

Shearwater - Jet Plane and Oxbow

The Suffers - s/t

Tedeschi Trucks Band - Let Me Get By

Vandaveer - The Wild Mercury

Various - Day of the Dead

Weezer - The White Album

Whitney - Light Upon the Lake

Woods - City Sun Eater In The River Of Light

Wussy - Forever Sounds

2015 in Music

It's really quite simple -- listen to about 500 albums, sift and sort them, putting them in the "maybe," "definitely," or "forget it" pile as you come upon them, and then as the year winds down, enter a mad rush to somehow quantify just how much each one is liked or loved relative to all the others, at least among the top of the list, all the while being introduced to albums you need to check out courtesy of other best of year lists.  Identify a top 25, plus 25 honorable mentions, post it, and forget about it.  Take a few weeks off, then start anew with the candidates for the list next year.

I couldn't quite pull it off this year, as I'm left with 29 honorable mentions, and find myself incapable of culling the list any further.

Here are the Honorable Mentions (in alphabetical order) --

Alabama Shakes - Sound & Color

*American Aquarium - Wolves

The Arcs - Yours, Dreamily

Blitzen Trapper - All Across This Land

Mal Blum - You Look A Lot Like Me

Blur - The Magic Whip

Bop English - Constant Bop

Born Ruffians - RUFF

Leon Bridges - Coming Home

Buxton - Half a Native

City and Colour - If I Should Go Before You

Phil Cook - Southland Mission

El VY - Return to the Moon

Eskimeaux - O.K.

Bill Fay - Who Is the Sender?

Fraser A. Gorman - Slow Gum

Modest Mouse - Strangers to Ourselves

*The Mountain Goats - Beat the Champ

Murder By Death - Big Dark Love

Israel Nash - Israel Nash’s Silver Season

Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats - s/t

Josh Ritter - Sermon on the Rocks

River City Extension - Deliverance

Roadside Graves - Acne/Ears

The Stone Foxes - Twelve Rooms

This is the Kit - Bashed Out

Toro y Moi - What For?

Jonathan Tyler - Holy Smokes

Widowspeak - All Yours

And the Top 25:

*25. Matthew E. White - Fresh Blood

24. Decemberists - What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World

*23. Hey Rosetta! - Second Sight

*22. The Districts - A Flourish & A Spoil

21. Avid Dancer - 1st Bath

20. Rhiannon Giddens - Tomorrow Is My Turn

19. DMA's - s/t (EP)

18. Brown Bird - Axis Mundi

17. Jason Isbell - Something More Than Free

16. The Helio Sequence - s/t

15. Lucero - All a Man Should Do

*14. Waxahatchee - Ivy Trip

*13. Kurt Vile - b'lieve i'm goin down

12. Sufjan Stevens - Carrie & Lowell

11. Mikal Cronin - MCIII

10. Sleater-Kinney - No Cities to Love

9. John Moreland - High on Tulsa Heat

8. Houndmouth - Little Neon Limelight

7. Ryley Walker - Primrose Green

6. Courtney Barnett - Sometimes I Sit and Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit

*5. Lord Huron -Strange Trails

4. San Fermin - Jackrabbit

3. Belle & Sebastian - Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance

*2. Father John Misty - I Love You, Honeybear

*1. Lady Lamb - After.  This is the album I have to stop myself from screaming out when I hear it through my headphones.  This is the artist I saw twice in 2015, completely blown away each time.  This was the obvious choice for my album of the year, and I'm not sure why it took me until December to realize it.

Asterisks denote bands I saw live in 2015.

Finally, here's a mammoth 175-track playlist featuring some of my favorite songs of the year (limited to one per artist):  

Three Things that Made the Matthew E. White​ Show Last Night Great

1. They served up an excellent performance, but they didn't play the album version of the tunes -- an all-male lineup with two lead guitars, a bass and drums means no piano, horns or backing female vocals.  But instead of that limiting their selections, the band reinterpreted and jammed (something that rarely happens when a band is backing an album that's only been out for a month), and did so to great effect -- there was some great musicianship up there.  As White said when telling about his albums for sale, "I think they're great albums, but don't buy them thinking they're going to sound like we sound tonight" (paraphrased).  He was right, on both counts.

2. It was the last night of this leg of the tour, so they were in excellent spirits with good banter and an awesome vibe.

3. I was "that guy" up front.  For some reason no one was standing around me in the very front (like I usually try to be) for the first half of the show, so it was just me up there, dancing and jamming to the tunes.  Between songs early on, White said he liked the way I had my own space up there, and my own angle to see the band.  Later, he pointed to me and said that even though the band had highs and lows, I was bringing it every song. LOL -- if only he had known I was singing and dancing along to prevent my back from tightening up, and so I could stay awake after having been up since 2:30 that morning.

There are so many great bands to check out at Shaky Knees next month, but if the schedule allows it, I'm looking forward to seeing this band again.

Emelia, The Keyboard, and Me

Emelia has a great ear for music. For as long as she's been able to talk, she's been able to recognize music she's heard before. Even covers. So for a very long time, I've encouraged her to take music lessons. We never forced her into taking them -- I figured that if she was made to take them, she'd grow to resent taking them, much as I had when I was a kid. There were drawbacks to this approach -- when she was five, she asked for, and received, a ukelele as a souvenir. On the ride home, she picked at it and sang out the alphabet as accompaniment, declaring that she could play the ukelele. Sadly, that's been the ukelele's high point, as it was strummed more times on that car ride home than it has in the succeeding three years combined.

Last December, I brought up the subject of lessons again, and she "gave in." She wanted to make sure, however, that she didn't have to perform in front of anyone. I told her to pick her instrument, and after a bit of back-and-forth, she selected the piano. We have a curbside special of a keyboard that I came across around the time she was born, so as far as I was concerned, she made a fine selection. We signed up for lessons in January, and as we ended up with a late afternoon Thursday slot, we've made it work so that I sit in with her during the lesson. Steven, the instructor, is absolutely great with her -- he's generally very positive and I've yet to see him lose his patience, even when she starts plinking while he's trying to talk to her. I sit in the back, taking notes on what songs she's supposed to learn, and things to look for/work on as she practices.

During the week, she and I go over her assignments -- maybe once a week she practices on her own, but the rest of the time I'm there with her. Sometimes she gets frustrated, but we work through the parts that challenge her, and so far at least, by week's end she pulls it together. I may not be as patient as Steven is, but I seem to be doing ok. I tell her to stop saying she's sorry when she makes a mistake -- that she only needs to apologize if she's goofing off/not listening/not trying. I'm sparse with my praise, but she understands that when I say it's good, it's significant. And I'm able to let her know when she's made enough progress during a practice even when she's not all the way there.

My approach seems to gibe with her.  She doesn't dread practice, sometimes asking me when we can work on her assignment, and other times playing her assignment on her own after we've gone over it earlier in the day. Without prompting, she has repeatedly thanked me for encouraging her to take lessons, and has said that she loves playing the piano. When in Florida last month, rather than being shy and uncomfortable with playing in front of her grandmother, Emelia called her over so she could perform for her.

It's only been a few months, and of course she'll likely get sick of the piano, lessons, practice, everything. But I'm enjoying not being there yet. My daughter has a tendency to keep working on things she's good at rather than tackle things she isn't -- at some point, I'm going to have to use her experience with the piano as proof that she can get good at something even when she starts off knowing nothing about it.

I have to be honest -- when trying to anticipate the things I'd most enjoy about being a parent, it never entered my mind to think piano practice would make the list. It's nice to know that a middle-aged man can keep learning too.

2014 in Music, Part 2

It's funny how much I agonize over a list of top albums.  Ask me in a month and the sequence would be different -- I'd be wondering what I thought was so wonderful about a couple of them and why I put three of them as low as I did.  Meanwhile, a couple of albums I don't know about at the moment would be clawing their way onto the list (despite my having reading gobs of end-of-year lists in a futile attempt to head off such an eventuality).  Ask me in two years and it would go well beyond such minor tweaks -- I'll be bored with an entire sub-genre represented here and one I reject right now would demand its presence in my 2016 look back at the albums of 2014.  And so, even though I know that this list is just a snapsnot of my brain, one that's unable to stand the test of time, I nevertheless spent weeks weighing every ranking, every inclusion and rejection, as though there's a right answer.

With that caveat, here are my Top 25 Albums of 2014:

1. Strand of Oaks -- HEAL

2. St. Vincent -- St. Vincent

3. Ben Howard -- I Forget Where We Were

4. The War on Drugs -- Lost in the Dream

5. Conor Oberst -- Upside Down Mountain

6. *Woods -- With Light and with Love

7. *St. Paul & The Broken Bones -- Half the City

8. Lydia Loveless -- Somewhere Else

9. Hozier -- Hozier

10. Margot & The Nuclear So and So’s -- Slingshot to Heaven

11. Hurray for the Riff Raff -- Small Town Heroes

12. *Drive-By Truckers -- English Oceans

13. Beck -- Morning Phase

14. Field Report -- Marigolden

15. First Aid Kit -- Stay Gold

16. Hard Working Americans -- Hard Working Americans

17. Jeremy Messersmith -- Heart Murmurs

18. Real Estate -- Atlas

19. Ty Segall -- Manipulator

20. The Donkeys -- Ride the Black Wave

21. La Sera -- Hour of the Dawn

22. Sean Rowe -- Madman

23. Ex Hex -- Rips

24. Jenny Lewis -- The Voyager

25. The Bones of J.R. Jones -- Dark Was the Yearling

* -- Artist I saw in 2014

I finish my year-end summary by sharing a playlist with over 11 hours of my favorite songs of the year (as I self-imposed a limit of one song per album, the list leaves out plenty of tunes I loved).  You'd think that a 172-song playlist would pretty much cover things, but I wish it were a bit longer, as Spotify doesn't have the rights to a couple of tunes that otherwise would have been included -- "It's Over" by Ty Segall and "Compassion" by Lucinda Williams.



May 2015 be as wonderful musically as 2014 has been!

2014 in Music, Part 1

2014 offered up a handful of fantastic albums, together with an incredible number of very good ones.  It was far easier for me to identify my 10 favorites than to figure out the next 15 -- over 40 different albums moved in and out of my Top 25.  Albums that I thought were Top 10 mid-year slipped out of the Top 25 by year's end.  Albums with a couple of songs I absolutely love dropped considerably if the rest of the album didn't measure up.  With so many worthy albums, I decided to lengthen my list beyond the length I normally do.  In fact I'm doubling it.  But for those albums outside the Top 25, I'm sticking with an alphabetical list -- trying to rank within this group proved far too difficult.  Here are the albums ranked between 26 and 50:

Ryan Adams -- Ryan Adams

Damon Albarn -- Everyday Robots

*The Apache Relay -- Apache Relay

The Autumn Defense -- Fifth

*Andrew Bird -- Things Are Really Great Here, Sort Of...

Black Lips -- Underneath the Rainbow

*Benjamin Booker -- Benjamin Booker

Centro-matic -- Take Pride in Your Long Odds

EELS -- The Cautionary Tales of Mark Oliver Everett

Fear of Men -- Loom

FREEMAN -- FREEMAN

The Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger -- Midnight Sun

Greyhounds -- Accumulator

*Hiss Golden Messenger -- Lateness of Dancers

Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings -- Give The People What They Want

King Tuff -- Black Moon Spell

Mimicking Birds -- Eons

The New Basement Tapes -- Lost on the River

Pixies -- Indie Cindy

Damien Rice -- My Favorite Faded Fantasy

*Roadkill Ghost Choir -- In Tongues

Angus & Julia Stone -- Angus & Julia Stone

Sun Kil Moon -- Benji

*Tweedy -- Sukierae

Sharon Van Etten -- Are We There

* -- Artist I saw in 2014

I also want to say how fortunate I was to make it to so many shows.  In 2014, I went to one festival on my own, another two with my family, and 15 other concerts.  My favorite sets were offered up by Charles Bradley, Courtney Barnett, Frank Turner, Drive-by Truckers, and Michael Franti.

So between the albums and the shows, this has been a heck of a year for me musically.  

Part 2 of my year-end summary is coming soon...

My 10 Favorite Sets from Floydfest 2014

The 10 sets of Floydfest 2014 I most appreciated (in order of hearing them):

Driftwood -- A band I'd never heard of, one of three On the Rise bands I absolutely loved, did great covers of Dylan's "Tombstone Blues" and Townes van Zandt's "Waiting Around to Die," and plenty of their own stuff.  

Michael Franti and Spearhead -- If you aren't bopping (at the very least!) when he's performing, odds are you're suffering from paralysis.  Just so much fun to be at a set like that, probably my favorite set of the weekend.  I really wish the girls had been able to be at that one with me.

The London Souls -- Caught this set immediately following Franti, and was able to get a spot right at the stage. Straight up sound from a time machine from 1968, loud and unabashed classic rock, reminding me how much I used to love that kind of sound, the music of my youth.  Awesome!

Swampcandy -- On a small stage, this two man band that I'd never heard of wailed some great foot-stomping blues while Hannah and I danced in the back.

Annabelle's Curse -- Same location as Swampcandy, and same unknown (to me) status, but this time it was a well-integrated 5-piece band whose male lead singer that evoked a happier version of Conor Oberst for me.

Grandpa's Cough Medicine -- They were a decent enough self-described outlaw bluegrass band, but running into someone I hadn't seen in 30 years while waiting for them to start is what made this set so memorable.  

Donna the Buffalo -- I'd heard of them and I was pretty sure their easy-going jam sound would be in my wheel house, but I'd yet to hear them.  Well, I'm glad I finally got the chance, as they were great live from my vantage point right in front of the main stage.  I tried playing them for Kathy on the way home, and while it was pleasant enough, they sounded much better live.  

Pigeons Playing Ping Pong -- a Phishish band recommended by someone I met at the Fest, they had a good funky bass line and were tons of fun.  

Ben Harper and Charlie Musselwhite -- they put out one of my favorite albums of 2013, and didn't disappoint live.  Ended the pre-encore set with a great version of "When the Levee Breaks."

Carolina Chocolate Drops -- the last set I got to see, in all its Appalachian roots glory. I saw it with Hannah at the main stage, and got her to dance with me after promising that a pizza lunch would follow.