DMB Caravan, aka The Mulch Festival

The Bruno

At the nudging of my buddy, Bruno, Wendy and I decided to take part in the Dave Matthews Band Caravan festival. This is being held in four U.S. Cities in lieu of his normal summer concert schedule. Chicago-Lakeside was lucky to be one of the cities chosen, so Wendy and I decided to buy a one-day pass for Friday, July 8.

What, you've never heard of Lakeside? Oh wait, neither has anyone else in this city. It is 10 miles south of Chicago and has, according to Wikipedia, been completely barren since U.S. Steel (who formerly occupied the expanse of land) shut its doors in 1992. The concert was a collaboration between the developers and festival/concert promoters. Other than letting the people of Chicago know of Lakeside's existence, I can't imagine what good came out of having a music festival on this desolate tract of land that could not have been more inconvenient to get to. Being car-less Chicagoans (something we're usually proud of), we had to hop on the Red Line to 87th, which is the second to last stop going southbound. We then had to take a 3 mile shuttle ride from the trainstop to the outer edge of the festival grounds. We then had to walk about another mile to get to the front gates. And apparently, no one told Dave and his Caravan that having customers print their tickets from home saves time and man power.

On the train headed up...

Sorry, I tend to be good-before-the-bad kinda guy...

On the way there, we learned there would be some HIGH quality people joining us. A group of MICU nurses (Kristin, Sarah, Katy, and Heather) as well as a good friend of Bruno's from high school and her fiance. Wendy also made good friends (and Bruno, a good impression) with a girl on the train headed down there, Emily from Baton Rouge. Altogether, it was a hodge-podge of awesome people all there to have a good time and listen to some great music.

After mobilizing the troops and snagging some cold beverages (we went with Dos Equis instead of the devil's elixir, Bud Light), we led off the day with Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. You might know them for their single, "Home", which is the theme song for a Blue Cross commercial that plays all the time in Chicago and, per Wikipedia, has been in several TV shows and movies. They put on a great show and got our day going in the right direction. We then headed over to Soja for a little reggae, hit up Ray Lamontagne, who is always awesome, and O.A.R. who definitely jammed out some fan favorites. (If you're looking for a detailed review of the music and performances, I'm definitely not your guy). We capped off the evening with a three hour performance by Dave Matthews and his Band. I believe I was the only one in our crew that had not seen him live before. Long story short, he completely brought the house down. This guy knows how to rock out. And he's been doing it since I was in the third grade. It was awesome then (when I was perfecting my one-and-a-half off the diving board) and it's still awesome. I should disclose that we were a drug-free group.

Sarah, Kristin, Katy

The Mulch Festival

Given that the festival grounds were one huge piece of dirt, someone thought it would be a good idea to dump a gazillion tons of mulch down on the grounds. I've been to festivals before where they didn't do this (Austin City Limits, circa 2004), and this actually was a pretty good idea. It tempers the dust if it's dry, and minimizes the muddiness if it's wet. It was still a dust bowl and my feet felt as if I was constantly walking around a baby tree in my back yard, but it could have been a lot worse.

Pros: great music, awesome friends (old and new), accessible food/beer lines/bathrooms

Cons: too far (the train/bus/walk combo is never a good one), too far, too damn far; otherwise the cons are about the same as any music festival (too many people, beer is too expensive, etc)

Totally glad I went. Probably won't go back until they put a train stop there.

P.S. I need to buy a camera!