The 3rd Annual River Roots Live event will be held beginning tonight at LeClaire Park in downtown Davenport. They've combined the River Roots Live with the annual River Rockin' Rib Fest after last year's River Roots Live turned out to be a monumental money loser.
I worked the first River Roots Live in 2005, but wasn't asked to work the event last year. This year, DavenportOne - the city's chamber of commerce arm - took over the event and are working with the River Music Experience to produce the event.
I worked the annual Street Fest again this year - the 9th year I've worked the event as the stage manager and stage announcer - and I must have impressed Marcy Hyder, the new director of events for DavenportOne. (It didn't hurt that Bob Dorr - the leader of The Blue Band - told Marcy I was the best stage manager of any locally produced event they've played at.) She asked me to be the lead stage manager for the two stages that will feature performances this weekend.
At Street Fest, I am the stage manager, the stage announcer, an equipment guy, a bartender, a traffic cop, a janitor, a parking coordinator, a banker, and I have to be an asshole from time to time, especially when someone from the crowd wants to go up on stage with the band, or hang around with the bands behind the stage.
At River Roots Live, I have a whole slew of local union stage hands and volunteers who will be working under me to do many of the jobs I do at Street Fest. I don't even have to do announcements - they're supposedly having some of the local on-air radio talent come in to do that. Other than making sure bands are ready to go, and having to pay them afterward, I don't have to raise a finger, much less my voice.
Some of the bands that are playing this year are the old 70's rock/folk group America (right), who just came off a very successful summer tour headlining with Chicago; Tea Leaf Green, an up and coming jam band; Reel Big Fish, a fun "ska" band, the great Jazz guitarist Charlie Hunter; and the Headhunters, featuring Leo Nocentelli - an original founder of the great New Orleans band The Meters. It's a pretty diverse music line-up, just as River Roots Live has proven to be over the first two years.
The only problem is that it's been raining over the past week and the ground at LeClaire Park is very mushy. As I write, we got 1.2 inches of rain last night and it's still coming down. We're hoping that the rain gets out of here this afternoon and we get a respectable crowd for the show which starts at 5 p.m. tonight. Tomorrow - when America, Charlie Hunter, The Headhunters and Tea Leaf Green will play - promises to be much better with sunny skies and much lower humidities than what we've experienced over the past three or four weeks.
There will continue to be rib vendors on site - although only 5 compared to the 8 to 10 we've had in the past for Rib Fest. There will be no amateur contest to judge, but that's OK. Quite honestly, a lot of the amateur rib cooks that participated - especially over the last couple of years - weren't all that great.
I'm hoping for a good weekend and I'm sure I'll have pictures and some backstage stories to share with you later on.
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