View from the West, facing East, behind the main stage

We had a pretty decent sized crew in attendance for the first ever annual Mile High Music Festival. It was a hell of a good time I must say. With over 40 bands on 5 large stages over 2 days there was a little something for everyone. It was spread out across Dick’s Sporting Goods Park, where the Colorado Rapids play, out here in Commerce City a mere 9 miles from my casa. Covering 18 of the 24 outer soccer fields it was definitely the largest music event I’ve ever attended.

Day 1 

We got there rearing to go, after a little diner food, for the first day and entered the carpool lot that was reasonably close to the main entrance and required you have 3 or more passengers and sign bearing the words “Mile High Carpool”. There were many facets of the overall event that were “green” in nature starting with the carpool lot and expanding to free drinks for 5 recyclable trash items that you picked up around the grounds and a veritable army of recycle stations. I must say that the grounds were kept reasonably clean considering the vast amount of people there. We parked, lathered up with sun screen, and headed to the massive line that took us into the festival. When we first got in we were nearest the main stage and a vendor alley. We got familiar with the place and headed to the southeast stage to catch the end of Steven Kellogg and the Sixers. From there were shot over to the Lizard stage where we watched Hill Country Revue. Then back to the Bullsnake (southeast) stage for the start of State Radio, a Boston, MA band that was the best show of the day, in my opinion, so far. They had a kind of dub sound with a little more aggressive rock thrown in and drew a pretty big crowd.

On the way to hit up the vendors for a little grub we stopped by this giant watering thing that had a series of different types of sprinklers attached to the top of some aluminum beams; like stage lights would be attached to. The sprinklers ran in patterns and shot water all over the place catching people who had stopped there to cool off. It was rediculously hot the first day reaching the high 90s with no cloud cover. A breeze might roll through every now and again but it was scorcher. The sprinkler towers were great and they did have a lot of large tents up; not to mention that the two stages in the middle were completely covered and shaded. You can see them in the picture at the top of this post towards the right. We then continued on to the vendors for some grub and were a little late to catch the beginning of Citizen Cope.

Citizen Cope was the first band that day that I’d actually listened to their music somewhat regularly before the show and was definitely excited to see live for the first time. They were up on the main stage and it was our first time we tried to penetrate the large crowd camped out all over the main stage grounds. We got pretty damn close just off to the right of the sound board. Citizen Cope was good, played all their hits and the songs I expected them to but were kind of a slow band overall for this type of large festival crowd. So we bailed early to check out Andrew Bird (website) and I’m extremely happy we did. Andrew Bird was the biggest surprise/excitement of the entire weekend. That guy, and his band (especially the drummer) are down right amazing. He played the violin, guitar, a host of other instruments, and apparently he’s a world champion whistler which became instantly believable upon hearing him whistle with perfect pitch and sound. He would play different musical parts live, record it and loop it live, and move on to another instrument while the just-then-recorded piece would continue to play. I could go on and on but I’ll stop here. Truly fun to watch and experience live.

We then wandered around a bit from Moe and then over to Spoon and ultimately back to the vendors again before heading off to the main stage for that night’s headliner, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. We got in pretty close again actually, about where we’d been for Citizen Cope, and watched as the stage lit up just after sunset. Petty and the boys were good, and they brought Steve Winwood out for 2 songs as well. All the songs I recognized and all likely chart topping hits. Would’ve been kind of nice to see an extended solo or a revised song or something new. We left before it quite got over to attempt to beat the crowd. We made the mistake of walking straight back instead of out to the sides and had to wade through a seemingly endless mass of people. We were beat down and pretty tired from the heat and continuous walking all over the grounds and crashed pretty hard that night.

Day 2 

The next day we arrived a little later to recover from the previous days toils. We’d decided there really wasn’t anyone we wanted to see that started before 1:30. We got there a little later than that and putzed around for a bit trying to meet up with some other friends who were in town for Day 2 of this festive event. We caught a little of The New Mastersounds before heading over to Colbie Caillat who’s very… uh… sexy talented. Heh… she is very talented and I actually enjoy several of her songs.

From there we made it over to the main stage for an act I was super excited to see, Rodrigo Y Gabriella (videos). I’d had the pleasure of seeing them preform live about 3 months ago and was super stoked to see them again knowing they wouldn’t disappoint. Of course, they didn’t and the crowd thoroughly enjoyed them. They were able to wake up folks who’d been jamming hard for 2 days now with some truly amazing jams. Just them, 2 acoustic guitars, no vocals. So good. Hands down the 2 greatest acoustic guitar players alive today.

We then trekked all the way back across the grounds to where we’d left Colbie to see the Flobots, a local Denver band recently gone bigtime with them signing to Universal Records, take the stage and throw down. We watched them for about 30 minutes before heading over to where The Roots were about set up. We wanted a good spot and got one about 20 feet from the stage, just right of center. The Roots brought the thunder and were easily one of the best acts we saw there. Their tuba player, or sousaphone player as they preferred to call him, was quite the talent and fun to watch. Questlove tore up the drum set and Capt. Kirk, as they call him I guess, definitely impressed on the guitar. Good stuff.

There wasn’t enough time unfortunately to catch the end of the Black Crowes so we strolled around, got some grub, met up with some friends, and then wormed our way in as best we could for The Dave Matthews Band. Considering we got to the edge of the mass of people right as they started we actually wiggled in pretty close. After some of the fantastic acts of the day though Dave didn’t really measure up. Maybe we were too far out, not in stereo-sound-land (we were off to the left and our main speaker was kinda flaky) and couldn’t really appreciate it well enough. Maybe we didn’t do the right drugs… but Dave couldn’t keep us there for his whole set. We headed out and crashed hard back at my place once again.

I’d definitely check this lil’ carnival out again next year… I’m excited to see what the lineup will be.

 A little CBS Coverage posted up on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYXMW_MIgok (part 1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGE_VCwLMes (part 2)

A couple band videos from the show: http://milehigh.wakeupyourphone.com/videos.html

-Matt

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-Matt