So far I haven’t done much with my free time in Kansas City. I’ve been working until six or later each day and from there I’ve headed out for a late dinner and then retired to my hotel room in an attempt to catch up on my sleep I missed over the last week and weekend. I guess it’s working so far, but I could probably use one more night of rest and I’ll be fully recovered. However I have tried my best to go out and get some good Kansas City related food, though no BBQ has been had yet. Here’s my list so far:

• Houlihan’s – dinner night one
• Planet Sub – lunch day two
• 54th Street – dinner night two

Lunch today doesn’t really count as some guys at work convinced me to try Panda Express. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t really that great either. Dinner for tonight is still up for grabs, any other places I need to hit?

As I mentioned last week, we attended the first annual Mile High Music Festival over the weekend, or what I hope is the first annual. Overall I felt that the event was a huge success, easily deserving of a B or B+ grade, and with a few changes could become one of the truly great festivals in the country. Here are some of the highlights and lowlights from the weekend.

The first highlight of the event was the lineup. For me, there was no better festival lineup this year than this one, although Rothbury was very similar. Though, due to tight scheduling, I missed a few artists that were on my list from last week, I still managed to catch most of them. Steve Winwood was probably the surprise show of the weekend, he and the accompanying band sounded great and I was shocked at how many songs I knew. The headliners provided amazing shows as well, especially both Tom Petty and the Dave Matthews Band.

Another positive from the weekend were the sound systems. The sound setup on the main stage was perfect, well unless you were off to the far side of the stage, but who wants to be there anyway. The addition of a secondary stack of speakers was perfect for those of us who don’t want to fight to the front of the crowd. The sound was also very good at one of the smaller stages, aka the Bullsnake Stage. From the few shows I saw in the tents, I would also say the sound there was acceptable. The one stage that needed work was the Lizard Stage, which I felt really affected some of the performances there, especially Jason Mraz’s.

As far as lowlights go, the top of the list for me is transportation. I am still shocked that the promoters didn’t setup shuttle buses from downtown. If this is going to be anything more than a local festival, meaning people coming to town just to see the concert, then there needs to be a better way to get there. We took a cab back and forth both nights. We paid $60 for a minivan full on the way there. When we attempted to leave the festival grounds, we were greeted by a huge line of people waiting for cabs, and no cabs to be found. Fortunately we were able to get the same driver to come back and pick us up, but it came at an even larger price.

Another thing that could use some improvement were the available vendors on site. True, there were some good vendors on hand, but there is easily some room for improvement. Budweiser is easily the most unlikely vendor I would have thought would have been at the festival, but they were there and that was all that was there. That’s right, no micro-brews. This must change. Food vendors were hit or miss, and unfortunately we missed on the first night. Oh well, not much you can do about that, just hope for a better choice next time.

I’m hoping that they will learn from the mistakes and make the changes needed to make the festival even better than it already was. I know that I will definitely return.

I just got into Kansas City and into the office here. I haven’t been back for work in nearly a year, so I’ve got lots of catching up to do. More from me tomorrow…

I wish I would have gotten more sleep this week, this is going to be a long weekend. Over the next two days the first ever Mile High Music Festival is taking place in Denver. Highlights have to be seeing both Dave Matthews and O.A.R. in back to back nights, which is almost as cool as seeing O.A.R. open for DMB. Each day we’ll be getting to the festival close to the start time, and won’t leave until the headliners are done. Check out the lineup, and be prepared to be jealous. I’ll take suggestions as to who I should see perform, but I already have a preliminary list:

Saturday:

• Eric Hutchinson: 12-12:30
• Kellogg: 12:30-1:15
• Newton Faulkner: 1:15-2
• State Radio: 2-3
• Mraz: 3-4
• Steve Windwood/Citizen Cope: 4-5:30
• JJ Grey & Mofro: 5-6
• O.A.R.: 6-7:30
• Spearhead: 7:30-8:45
• Petty: 9-11:15

Sunday:

• Brett Dennen: 12:30-1:15
• Rose Hill Drive: 1:15-2
• Martin Sexton: 2-3
• Tea Leaf Green: 3-4
• Flogging Molly: 4-5
• Grace Potter: 5-6
• Roots/Black Crowes: 6:45-8:45
• DMB: 8:45-11:15

I’m sure this will change a bit, but it looks like a good start.

Last night was one of those shows I’m still angry I didn’t tape. Kim and I headed to the Soiled Dove Underground a little later than originally planned, and showed up just as Will Hoge was taking the stage. I knew we were going to be pushing it close, so I didn’t take the recording gear along with me. Had I known how unique the venue was, and how great the show would be I would have definitely changed my mind.

Firstly, the Soiled Dove is a small and intimate venue, where a circular stage sits high above the floor below. On the floor are many tables, each sitting four people. Behind that is another level starting with a bar rail, which is where our seats were. There is an even higher level back behind the second, and both of these are full of more four person tables. All of the seats have a small lighted number post on the table/bar, and there is a little switch on it which when flipped turns on a red light at the top of the post. This is an indication to the servers that you’d like to order something. This setup leads to an incredibly silent room, which I’m sure can lead to some great shows as last night proves.

Will Hoge started off the night by playing a few songs by himself on the acoustic guitar and lots of harmonica playing thrown in as well. It was awesome to hear his distinguished voice in such clarity and mostly silent crowd. Following a few mellow songs, the other two band members joined him on stage for a set of much louder, but still great sounding, songs. I think the crowd was mostly familiar with Hoge, but those who may not have been would definitely have to be fans after seeing this show. At the end of the night, a four or five song encore was played with a mix of solo/acoustic songs and a couple of full band songs to cap off the night.

Note to self, see more shows at the Soiled Dove. O.A.R. played there once back in 2001, and I wish I could have caught that show. Perhaps I’ll have to find the tape from that night.

Another hockey game last night, and another loss added to our record. The good news is that I had another game without an injury. The sad thing is that if we would have played last week as well as we did this week, we would have easily won that game. The team we played last night is one of the better teams in the league, and we managed to go up on them 3-0 at the end of the first. However, we fell apart in the second period and let them tie it up at 3. In the third we started playing well again, but just couldn’t get the puck in the net. The opponent scored one additional goal toward the end of the game, and another empty-netter with under a minute left, to take the game 5-3. Only one more week and then it’s time for the playoffs. Hopefully we can turn it on and win a few games to finish this session out.

O.A.R.’s latest disc, All Sides, is out in stores today! Though I haven’t received a hard copy of it yet, just mp3’s, I’ve heard there is another shout-out to yours truly and oarsa.org in the liner notes. Many fans felt like their prior disc, Stories of a Stranger, was a departure from the bands normal songwriting style and was way too overproduced. I’m happy to report that this one release is back to the old ways and is one of their best albums to date. I would highly recommend picking up a copy as soon as you can, and if you need a little convincing you can listen to the entire thing at VH1.com.

I traveled back to Cincinnati once again this weekend, but this time it was for a bachelor party weekend. I arrived late Friday evening in Dayton where my brother picked me up and we headed down to his pad. We were both fairly tired and had to get an early start the next day, so decided to head for bed after watching a bit of TV.

Saturday, after running some errands for a good chunk of the morning, we met up with my dad and some others to take a canoeing trip down the Little Miami River. Though the authorities have been trying to crack down on drinking while floating down the river, we didn’t run into any problems doing so. It was a great six mile trip that ate up most of the afternoon and into the evening hours. Since we ended up with an odd number of people, I opted to take out a kayak for myself, which I thoroughly enjoyed and would love to do again.

After that we went back to my brother’s, cleaned up, and started up the grill. Lots of others who didn’t go on the canoe trip came over and we had a great little party out on his back deck. Eventually the party moved indoors as the weather got a little questionable. We had lots of games of Rock Band, a beer pong tournament, and lots of good times. A big thanks goes out to my brother, dad, and all else who attended. Oh yeah, thanks to my mom too for dropping of all kinds of good sides and appetizers!

I took a week off from cruise planning to reflect the day at sea we will have on the fifth day. During this time we will be traveling from Naples on the west coast all the way around Italy to Venice on the northeastern coast. Once we arrive in Venice at 1pm on the sixth day we will have lots of time to explore, in fact we won’t leave there until 5pm on the seventh day. Yes, we will be doing an overnight stay in Venice on the docked ship.

With all of this extra time, we really need some suggestions on things to do. It sounds like you can get lost for hours navigating through the streets and bridges that span the many canals. And I don’t think a trip to Venice is complete without a gondola ride. But what else is there to do? I’ve read a little about some of the neighboring islands like Murano but was hoping that someone had some advice. I’ve received a number of emails on previous stops, but I encourage you to post in the comments section. Let’s get some conversation started, don’t be scared!

The itinerary thus far:

• Day One: Cannes / Monte Carlo / Nice
• Day Two: Livorno / Florence / Pisa
• Day Three: Rome
• Day Four: Naples / Capri / Sorrento / Pompeii
• Day Five: At Sea
• Day Six: Venice
• Day Seven: Venice

Kim and I headed back to Fiddler’s Green last night for our second show there. This time the lineup was a little more rocking than the Stevie Wonder show we saw earlier. Another difference was that the tickets were not free this time and were not in the reserved seats either. I must say now after sitting in the lawn, it should be the last time I ever do so there, at least with a crowd of that size. We got there as the first band of the night, Cheap Trick, was finishing up their set and there wasn’t a good spot left on the lawn. Though we missed hearing them play “I Want You to Want Me” we did get to hear the next most popular song “Surrender” and I wish we would have arrived earlier as they could have been the most entertaining of the night.

Next up was Heart, the act I might have been most excited to see. The Wilson sisters and the rest of the band started off a little slow with some of the lesser known songs, but eventually they got into the groove with a toned down performance of “Alone” which later launched into rocking versions of “Crazy on You” and “Barracuda.” I must say that they sounded great throughout the short 45 minute set and I wish they would have played a bit longer. Though they did play a quick encore, including a Led Zeppelin cover. It’s not every day you see an non-headliner play an encore.

Finally, the night was wrapped up with Journey and their latest front-man, Arnel Pineda who was hired after band members saw him performing cover songs on YouTube. Though I’m not sure he compares to Steve Perry, he does a pretty good job filling in and at times you could be completely fooled into thinking Mr. Perry was on stage. There were some good tunes thrown in early, but I felt that they played a few too many new songs as well. I highly doubt many in the sold out crowd were there for the new stuff. But when they did bust out the hits, the crowd went wild!