Muddy Roots Pt. 3
THE SPRINT
Right after our set ended, we had 2 things to do - get our gear off stage and run over to the merch tent.
Obviously, selling merch right after a set is essential to any band. You play your show, and people who aren’t familiar with you want to buy merch in order to support the band. From the band’s perspective, it’s always funny because after a show, we are exhausted, sweaty, smelly, and losing our voices.
Muddy Roots has a really great system down where you get one hour after your set where you are allowed to have your merch set up in the merch tent. Not only do patrons know when and where to find the bands after their set, but it takes the pressure off the bands knowing that you can’t sell merch outside that window. Therefore, we weren’t worried about constantly missing sales throughout the weekend and we could just enjoy our time at the festival.
Before leaving for the festival, I had made a point of running to the bankin order to swap the bigger bills we have in our “band fund” to smaller ones. I did this in order to easily make change for cash sales for our merch. Muddy Roots is a packed festival on an isolated ranch, so I had no idea how reliable cell service was for digital transactions via Venmo, Paypal, etc.
Either way, our better halves and Vincent were the first over to the merch tent as Julian, Riley, and I had a few more components to our rigs that needed to be packed up.
As I was organizing my cables, I looked up to see Casey (my girlfriend) frantically running towards me.
“Is everything ok?!” I asked while wrapping one of my ¼ instrument cables.
“So…there’s already at least 5 people that want to pay with cash, but I don’t have any change. What did you do with the cash?”
Before heading down to the stage from our campsite, I had made the decision to leave my wallet and keys tucked away in my duffle bag that was currently in the corner of our tent. I brought my phone with me in case the stage or production manager needed to get a hold of me. Outside of that, I wouldn’t need my keys or wallet, right?
RIGHT?????
I sighed while turning to look at our tent on top of the massive hill that was overlooking the festival.
“FFFF***************************CCCCCCKKKKKKKKKK…”
I nodded at Casey, set my cables down, and began my sprint up the hill to fetch my wallet.
For all you fans of the show “Stranger Things,” I DID have Kate Bush’s song “Running Up That Hill” playing in my head.
I consider myself to be in pretty good shape. I grew up as a multi-sport athlete. I run 10-15 miles a week. I go to the gym a few times a week.
By the time I got up to the tent, I was DEAD. Turns out that I underestimated the physical toll that the show had on me. Was I tired? Sure, but I figured adrenaline would take over for the hill climb. I forgot about dehydration because when I unzipped our tent door, I was basically crawling. My heart was pounding. I was tasting blood in my throat, and my body was struggling to sweat. Again, at this point, it was probably 95+ degrees outside.
^ I sprinted from the big white tent you see in the background to the orange tent to can see between the heads of Vincent and I. It was brutal. This picture doesn’t justify the distance or slope of the hill.
Panting, I dove into the tent, and dug to the bottom of my side pocket to find my wallet. I put my head down, took a deep breath, and headed out of the tent. It was literally all downhill from here, right?
After zipping the tent door back up, I started power walking back down the hill. My legs felt like jello and walking was the best I could do.
Admittedly, I tripped over my own feet a few times when descending due to not lifting my legs up high enough off the ground. My quadriceps were burning, so I couldn’t get much space under my feet.
Finally, towards the bottom of the hill, I had the merch tent in my sights. I found enough gas in my tank to jog the last hundred feet or so.
When I arrived at the tent, I turned the corner, and immediately exclaimed, “who needs change?” while setting my wallet on the table.
Much to my excitement, there were already about 10 people lined up who needed change in cash. I took the backseat settling those transactions as Vincent and the ladies had done a fantastic job of staying organized and getting everyone the items they had asked for.
Immediately after those initial transactions had been settled, someone (can’t remember if it was Vincent, Abi, or Casey) had pointed out that the cold bottles of water sitting on the table were for us. Needless to say, I immediately chugged one and started sipping on a second one. My body began to sweat and cool off again. The fear of passing out was gone.
Once I began to recover, I was able to take in all of the cool moments and interactions we had with other bands and fans alike.
Admittedly, I can’t remember names of all of the people we spoke to, but I do remember a good number of interactions.
One person came up and joked with me, “Where were the smoke bombs at MTAC?”
MTAC refers to “Middle Tennessee Anime Convention.” You can read about it in the Muddy Root Pt. 1 blog
“You were at MTAC???”
“Yeah we saw you at MTAC, and we knew we HAD TO see you guys here. Ya’ll are crazy!”
I personally had an awesome interaction with the guys from “Immortal Lee County Killers” who bought some merch. It was really cool how they walked us through their reactions to the smoke bombs, Vincent playing from everywhere and the energy of the show in general. The details and insights that they shared with us were really great as we obviously didn’t have any type of perspective from the crowd. They were just as shocked as we were when we told them the reason our set get started late.
We also had the pleasure of selling our merch right next to Thee Scarecrows Aka, who were really nice guys. They perform folk music while wearing burlap sack masks - they look like scarecrows. Those guys are incredible musicians, and it was really cool getting to connect with them personally about their experience at Muddy Roots and how they became a band.
Finally - I was not there for this - but Vincent and Riley were stopped by the Spanish band Moonshine Wagon from Basque Country, Spain. The band apparently raved about how much they enjoyed our set. Again, these guys are absolute phenomenal bluegrass musicians, and I couldn’t believe that they saw us play. It was surreal being recognized by Internationally known acts. We couldn’t believe it.
After our hour was up, we packed up all of our gear and headed back to the tent. We all had to take some time to talk at camp and reflect on the incredible start to our Saturday.
Again, if you made it this far, thanks so much for reading. We have a few more stories that we think are worth sharing, so stay tuned!
