Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Gentlemen of the Road

What a crazy weekend! Jake and I made the drive up to Troy, OH to Mumford & Sons' Gentlemen of the Road festival. The entire downtown Troy was turned in to a street festival with all of the local businesses having booths outside of their stores. Boy, did they get some business this weekend. All of the shops also decorated with mustaches and British flags for the occasion. There was such a fun, friendly vibe everywhere you went. You could tell Troy was very excited to host GOTR.

The concert grounds were just as festive and fun. They had food booths from all over the country, including my favorite Jeni's Ice Cream from Columbus, OH. The concert itself was on the Troy High School football field. At the height of the day's concerts, the entire field plus both sets of stands were covered with 30,000 fans (PS- Troy is a town of 25,000- it doubled this weekend!). We definitely didn't have the best view, but you couldn't match the atmosphere on both days (even with a slight rain storm that brought out our super cool ponchos- see picture below).

Some new-found favorites from the weekend were Willy Mason and Bear's Den. We also had an awesome time singing along to Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros and Old Crow Medicine Show. In fact, I like both of them better now than I did before. Mumford was excellent as usual and even brought both Bear's Den and Old Crow on stage for a few songs. You could tell they were genuinely having a great time on stage. We were as well, along with 30,000 of our closest friends.