Backstage at the McDowell Mountain Music Festival

5 Down....

2008-05-05T15:21:00.000-07:00

Melody Trip raved:
"Fantastic weather, groovy music, and wonderful friends! Who could ask for more!"

Ick Music said:
"It’s a young festival (this was it’s 5th annual), and with the impressive lineups, the great organization, and so much room at the Westworld venue to expand, it’s going to pick up steam and continue to grow each year."

Glide Magaizne mentioned:
"what a well run small-scale festival the McDowell Mountain Music Festival has become in this crowded summer of big festivals."

AZWeekly’s Brent Diggins said:
“(MMMF) is one of the better run music festivals in the nation…I saw true culture and heard incredible music…All in all a suburb event that I highly suggest to everyone for next year.”

With tons of pictures online, some videos from some very talented cameraman and lots of sunburned smiles I’d say the McDowell Mountain Music Festival was a true success.

The excitement started on Thursday when I got out to the field and it wasn’t quite complete. I ran around with H putting signs up, making sure tents were in the right location, organized things before the Bands things got there (notice I capitalized Bands too? Yea…I did it without thinking? Huh.) Stopped for the occasional frothy beverage from the Tin Cooler that rode in the back of a gator all around the field and pretty much had the best time preparing for what I knew was going to be a busy, exciting, dance-filled, FANTASIC weekend.

Bright eyed and bushy tailed I got up and out to the field super early to start working...you know I’m not going to go into detail about what kind of work it takes to put on a festival, otherwise this would be very long and I would go way over my hours this week but I’ll just say for the 100 or so staff members that put on this Festival – it was at least 2 days of non-stop action.

Friday- Line up was great, I’m also not going to give you a review (click on one of the links above or give it a little google…haha. I just laughed after saying that out loud. So did H, give it a try and tell me you didn’t laugh a little.) Anyway, I can’t give you a review due to the fact that unfortunately I didn’t get to watch all of the bands. Although they all sounded great from wherever I was on the field!
I did however get a chance to watch Grace Potter and the Nocturnals tear it up just as the sun was getting ready to set. Standing there with H and a few other higher-ups singing along at the top of our lungs (heehee) was probably the highlight of Friday for me. hopefully you all got to check it out too!
Then there was Robert Randolph and the Family Band to which MC and I dropped what we were doing and H told me to take off my radio and enjoy. Which I did. Very much so. We even got two of the Festivals hardest workers to do a little jog with us while we got to watch from the side of the stage. Another highlight of my Friday. (I’m allowed to have two right?)
Ended the night after Gov’t Mule closed the show got a few more things done and ready for Friday and practically fell in my bed after some buddies who drove up to volunteer at the show took one look at my bloodshot eyeballs (i was quite tired and the grass that made me sneeze for hours caused the redness I promise!) and told me to go to bed. I happily obliged!

Saturday- woke up with my hair wet (it’s what happens when you shower before bed and then don’t sleep long enough for your hair to dry) and headed out to the field with me fellow festival workers and started another great day.
Saturday was a bit hotter but as the people streamed in the gates and the music flowed, so did the beer for many good festival patrons. (yay for frothy beverages).
I got to check out Peppermint James at the beginning (I’ve accidentally become a bit of a stalker to them so it was only fitting) but most of the afternoon flew while I was doing who knows what. Got to see a little bit of Toubab Krewe play their awesome African instruments and overheard The Wailers sing the songs I’ve heard forever while helping out Merchgirl in her…Merch Tent (naturally enough). Got to see a little Blues Traveler but was still running around a bit attempting to help out any situation I was needed in. But then. H told me again to take of the radio and enjoy the headliners: John Butler Trio. MC and I and a whole slew of other JBT fans danced along to their incredible sound and amazing showmanship (all in my opinion of course, but as this is my blog, I guess that’s all that matters right? =)) Point being: Great way to end a fantastic Festival.
Well that of course and the lovely surprise H called us all over to the VIP bar far. That was good too… =)

Yikes. Long blog today. Coming close to the end of an era. And by era I mean Ashley the Intern will no longer be an Intern soon.

Really though – go google the reviews. They’re pretty good =)

tomorrow....tomorrow...!!

2008-04-24T21:15:00.000-07:00

This one is going to be short and sweet kids. I am one tired intern and the Festival doesn't even start until tomorrow! haha....well the music doesn't start until tomorrow.

i was out on site all day today with the rest of the MMMF crew putting the finishing touches on the field and everything that goes in it. And let me tell you - it looks AWESOME.

be excited...be very excited. I'm hoping to get heaps of pictures and videos this weekend so I'll hopefully be able to post some behind the scenes stuff from this weekend next week.

anyway, I'm going to hit the hay so i can get up and be at the field bright and early tomorrow. so i hope you all have your tickets, tents and bags packed and will also be out bright and early for a weekend of fun. If you don't yet....no worries, you've got a few hours left =)

See you out there!!!!!!

2 Days and Counting

2008-04-22T15:26:00.000-07:00

Herrrrro,
Today's been just silly thus far. Even with being so close to the festival everyone is in such happy and surprisingly cheery moods! Whew J

I was preparing to tell of our day so far and realized I had not yet introduced the rest of the team:

Meet LS, otherwise known as Merchgirl. She likes Hawaii, running and her office always smells good. She doesn’t like greasy looking breakfast restaurants or when we wear jeans to work.

Enter MR – THE designer. She is half the size of the rest of us, loves greasy looking breakfast restaurants and has been known to wear jeans to work…ok only once…haha. She doesn’t like To-Do lists or when people steal her food without asking.

Then we have EC. She likes fresh granola cereal from THE designer’s desk and has a sweet tooth. EC doesn’t like when her son puts fake tattoos on her baby daughter’s leg without telling her or when she people use the paper cutter for long periods of time when she’s trying to do something.

And to round out our little marketing team we have KL. KL also has a good smelling office, likes listening to Christmas music for months at a time and doesn’t like sitting down for more than 15 minutes at a time.

So there’s the team. Now you know.

Anyway me, MC, Merchgirl and THE designer went to lunch and made a pit stop at Kmart to pick up some things for this weekend. MC and I didn’t have to get anything so instead we spent our time buying fake tattoos and I learned that MC is a master at the “claw for stuffed animals” game. Seriously, she got two animals on the first 2 tries. I’ve never seen anything like it, it was amazing.

This morning H was on Good Morning Arizona with Peppermint James (playing on Saturday afternoon) which was awesome. She (H) has been out onsite at Westworld since Monday overseeing the creation from polo grounds to the Festival. I get to go out there on Thursday and I’m excited about it. Merchgirl is headed out tomorrow so maybe I’ll see if she can get some pictures mid-set up that I can post later. I’ve heard it is really impressive to watch the entire set up.

Now I’m babbling. So I’m going to go do something productive...like take pictures of our billboards around the Valley (have you seen them around? Or check out the back of a city bus next time you see one, maybe we’ll be on it!).

OH OH. before i forget....the $10 off ticket deal is over tomorrow at 10pm. So if you don't have your tickets yet, don't wait and get them at the door, hurry to the ticketmaster website and enter code: M3FESTIVAL and receive $10 off of the $55 General Admission ticket - limited time offer - HURRY!

Come to Zuma tonight and get drinks specials and get a sneak preview of MMMF artists Peppermint James and the Steve Reynolds Band!!

See you there!!

...almost a week away.

2008-04-17T11:08:00.000-07:00

I love this picture. The Festival at night might be my favorite…

Robert Randolph and the Family Bands’ The March is running through my head right now due to the mood that’s buzzing around this office. After making my way to my desk this morning I come to find an AZ Weekly open to our sweet 2 page spread. Then to turn to the front cover and see the even more sweet familiar MMMF design on the entire thing. THEN H completely depleted the supply of New Times at the local Oreganos and brought me one with our 12 page insert sticking out over the top of the rather shocking green hand flipping the bird. Ha. All of that aside it looks great and if you haven’t already found a copy of either and framed it, go ahead and stop by a Zia records…an Oreganos (although not the one on Shea because H took all of theirs)…or really anywhere you see a corner in Tempe or Scottsdale. I swear I see New Times paper holders in the most random places in this town. Whatever works though right because EVERYONE should get a copy this week!

Ok that rant…or rave rather is over…on to the next.
According to the MMMF website we only have 8 days left until gates open and in flood thousands of happy Festival-going peeps. Well lets be honest…it’s a little early in the day for the thousands expected to rouse themselves up to venture out in the sunshine. But one can hope right? One thing I know for sure is the entire MMMF crew will be out there with bells on. wooh…

NEXT UP: this weekend.
The Brown Foreman crew (you know, those people who make it possible for us to get our hands on such deliciousness as Sierra Nevada , Finlandia Vodka and Jack Daniels) is going to be doing a little bit of a bar crawl throughout Tempe to help promote the MMMF…this is the schedule that has been passed on to me:

Friday Night
8-8:45 Doc & Eddy’s
9-9:30 Tavern
9:45-10:30 Library
10:30-11:15 The Loft
11:15-11:45 Mill Cue Club
11:45-12:15 Zuma
12:30-1 Casey Moore;s

Saturday Night
7-8 CK’s
8-9 Jilly’s
9-10 Teakwood’s
10-11 Iguana Mack’s

Perhaps I’ll try to get a few of my trusty Street Teamers to head out and join up with the crawl. So come out and look for us!! We’ll be in those blue shirts you saw earlier =)

ALSO: Tuesday April 22nd
Come out to the Zuma Bar & Lounge on Tuesday night for some sweet Red Bull and Sierra Nevada drink deals and live music from Steve Reynold’s Band and Peppermint James!! Music starts at 10pm so come out for ticket giveaways and other fun stuff. The New Times Street Team will be there too, so come and pick up some goodies and cheap drinks and maybe get your picture on their website! Really though, it’s going to be fun.

PS:
Last weekend we went out to the Great Arizona Picnic and Southwest Beer Festival and had a ball. Hopefully you saw us there and hopefully we gave you a little something to remember us by. And if you didn’t see us, and we didn’t give you something. We suck, so come out this weekend and find us and demand some MMMF goodness.

Allrighty…time for me to go shopping (hehe…yet another lovely perk of the internship)

Get excited!!
Ashleytheintern.

MMMF Street Team

2008-04-10T16:24:00.001-07:00

2 weeks and counting...

2008-04-10T16:18:00.000-07:00

Aye Yie Yie is it Thursday already?? So I was making some calls to some potential vendors for our marketplace earlier today and a few asked when the event was…I said about 2 weeks. Yikes.
This explains why I’ve not updated this since….way too long ago.

But exciting times are up ahead.
1: The festival is 15 days away.
2: The Street Team is heading out to the Great Arizona Picnic and the Southwest Festival of Beers at the Scottsdale Culinary Festival on Saturday. The picnic starts at 10am and the beer fest starts at noon. So we’ll be out there at noon. (ok, can I just say for the third time in the duration of this blog – what a lucky intern am I??) Haha but come on…it goes until 10 at night, so no need to be out there for 12 full hours right??
3: On Tuesday the 22nd there’s going to be a “Pre MMMF Concert Jam” at the Zuma Grill on Mill with ticket giveaways, drink deals and live performances by Peppermint James and the Steve Reynolds Band.
4: Did I mention the Festival is 2 weeks away? Because it is.

Anyway. I’m on my way out of the office for the day but wanted to share with you all 2 big things:
1. The video above. That video was made possible by our handy dandy new IFlip camera and the editing skillz of Miss MC….don’t we look like we’re having fun? If you come hang out with us at the event this weekend I’m guaranteeing this level of fun…nay…even more fun will be had.
2. The Street Team will be out at Great Arizona Picnic this Saturday from about noon until we get too sunburned and too full from the tasting that we need to retire.

Ok enough with my numbers.
I’m off…
Come see us this weekend!!!

Street Team weekend fun!!

2008-03-27T16:02:00.000-07:00

"All the time while ya' lookin' away There are things you can do, man There's things you can say Undo the, the ones you regret When you're spending today Get your gaze out tomorrow And come what may, because…."

Ahhhh The John Butler Trio’s “Better Than”. One song I will definitely drop whatever it is I am doing and leave to go watch JBT sing this song on Saturday night. Very excited.

I’m just packing things up to go home for the day when a few things happened:
1. I was thinking in my head the street team supplies I needed to snag up before leaving.
2. Putting stuff away that I won’t need until next week
3. Pulling out some brochures I made earlier…AND THAT’S when it happened.
I was pulling out a stack of 15 or so brochures made out of rather thick paper and slllliiiiiccccceeee. Got the inside of my knuckle on my middle finger. I hate paper cuts more than a lot of things, clowns, snakes, bad drivers…they’re bad. So I now have some tissue taped (yes, as in scotch tape) around my finger right at the knuckle and it’s making it exceptionally hard to type. So short and sweet this one will be.

You already know what I’m listening to right now…the above lyrics have been running through my head for the last 3 months…ok, really the last 30 minutes. But they’re amazing, as is the song, as is the entire CD really. So check it out.

I know how excited you all are to find out where we’re going to be this weekend. And when I say we I mean me and a few fellow MMMF Street Team ladies. Well search no more. We’re going to head out to the Tempe Arts Festival on Saturday. So look for us out there from around 10 to 2…we’ll be wearing our sweet blue Street Team shirts you see above. THEN….after hanging out on mill for a couple of hours we’ll be making our way over to the Tempe Music Festival so be sure to keep an eye out for us there too!

Alrighty I’m outta here.
Remember to come hang out with us this weekend!!!!!!!

One Month Out

2008-03-26T09:27:00.000-07:00

So this weekend, whilst taking flyers to a few local stores around the valley with one of my trustee Street Teamers, Jamie, I realized that the Festival is almost a month away…and my breathing sort of paused for a minute (notice that I capitalize the word Festival…ha. I don’t know if I’m the only one who does that, if I was told some time ago, or if it’s common knowledge to capitalize words when referring to such greatness...?) Anyway, so I sort of stopped breathing for a half of a second and got really excited. Now when I get excited I tear up a little, which isn’t good when driving so I immediately ceased the excitement and continued the flyer-dropping-off endeavor.

But now. It’s officially one month away. (To anyone who is working on this Festival and is reading this and is reminded of that very fact - please pause, take a deep breath…and get excited!!) and to those of you who, in one month, will be waking up (possibly with a bit of a head ache from watching Gov't Mule the night before and most likely NOT getting to bed at a reasonable hour)…get even more excited. Wow – just writing that made me think of last year and how much freaking fun it was, I can’t wait! My buddies and I thought about camping this year, still might actually. We’d just make sure to keep our tents tied down REALLY GOOD. Why would I be such a stickler you ask? Well last year we had what some would call a “microburst” pass through and try to take everything with it. I have lived in Arizona for my entire life and never have I experienced such a thing and let me just tell you that “little microburst” wasn’t so little. The Southeast has hurricanes, the Midwest has tornados and we have “little microbursts”. Ok, I realize that it didn’t compare even slightly to the catastrophes in other parts of the country, but it really was crazy…take a little looksey. And either hope that it doesn’t happen again this year...or tie everything down and enjoy it!

So new little ditty I'm going to try = what I'm listening to right now: Toubab Krewe - Bamana Niya. I think it might be one of my favorites from them. Yea. Probably my favorite.

right so it's time to stop blogging and do some real work...and i'm out.

Intern-ly Duties

2008-03-18T11:23:00.000-07:00

So. Part of my intern-ly duties include organizing a Street Team. Last weekend we went to the Great Arizona Beer Festival. Two of my street team buddies wore our awesome street team shirts and partook in the joy that is sipping on lots of different yummy beers. (I say again…what a lucky intern am I??) Anyway the beer festival was great and there quite a few people who came up to us and ask what we were doing and who we were representing (which was, well, the point). We were giving out some of our MMMF info cards with our cute buttons on them and all of the sudden we were looking at some of the people getting down (keep in mind this was towards the end of the beer festival…hence some heavy duty jigging going on) to the band and we kept seeing buttons pinned on people’s shirts! We hadn’t given out too many and came to find out that the Sierra Nevada beer tent had the buttons all over their table as well! So…yay. We were excited that people were wearing them and started pinning others we were chatting it up with. Pins galore! I think the Street Team going to try to go to a spring training game soon – going to really up the pinning process!
Oh and also- we just got in our other cards which will have sweet guitar picks attached to them! Fender (one of our big sponsors) hooked us up with thousands of picks and we got our cute little logo engraved on them. So let me tell you how excited I am to attach all of them to our little info cards…very =).
Anyway I’ll keep you posted on where our Street Team will be and maybe you’ll get lucky and be pinned by some pretty rad people!

On a more serious note (not really but we can pretend that I occasionally am serious) we need some more volunteers. Like whoa. Well kind of…we’ve gotten a ton of interest for the morning and afternoon shifts but not so much for the evening/night shifts. So come on people lets get cracking and sign up to volunteer. Last year I volunteered all day and night so I’ve come up with a list of why I liked the volunteering-by-night a little better:

1. You get your ticket whenever you arrive so you get to hang out and get some sun all day while jamming to some bands you may or may not have heard of, but will most definitely enjoy.
2. You don’t have to work whilst sweating your arses off in the middle of the day.
3. You can chill in one of four shaded recycle stations, basically your own private cabana…or help end the night silently in the Silent Auction tent, merch, or with tickets…when it’s not a million degrees out.
4. You still get to watch the headliners while hanging out with other sweet volunteers under the stars.
5. Did I mention that it won’t be crazy hot when you’re working?

Now after reading that list don’t you want to just hurry over to the Volunteer sign up and sign up? Good. Because we’re looking for volunteers from 5ish to 10ish in pretty much all areas. You’d still get your free ticket and be able to hang out and watch all the awesome daytime acts…you’d just have to report back for your evening shifts…and not intoxicated… cause then we would just have to turn you away and that makes us both sad. So go sign up. MC (Meet MC. Another one of my trusty co-workers. likes: Good 'n Plenty candies and napping on the couch. dislikes: driving in the snow and is overly talkative when she gets nervous) MC's is the volunteer coordinator and will hook you up. so let her. It’ll be awesome I promise.

Hopefully you’re reading this and getting more and more excited for what’s coming in 38 days!!! (the festival. sheesh.) but for now it’s time to go do some more of my intern-ly duties (I’m aware that’s not a word but I think it’s too funny not to say again). Wahoo for burning cd’s for our media kit.
Toodles.

A Day in the Life of an MMMF Intern.

2008-03-10T14:41:00.000-07:00

After hitting snooze a couple of times I drag myself out of my warm comfy bed (why is it that you’re bed becomes 10 times more comfy when you actually have to get out of it??) Like everyone else I fight my way down the 202 and then breathe a sigh of relief as soon as I get to the joy of the (usually) open 51 and head to the office.

After dishing out the greetings to all those I see I head to my desk which has a big giant window that I love (what a lucky intern I am?) I adjust the blinds according to the weather, if it’s overcast or raining I’ll open them wide, otherwise they stay down and cracked. My cubie thinks I’m nuts. I tell her it’s going to rain just about every week. She’s stopped believing me. Speaking of my cubie I may as well introduce her as I’ll probably have plenty to say with her involved. Meet H. She’s pretty much the work horse of the festival (the figure of speech kind of horse of course). We all work for her, essentially. H has brown hair and loves music and wheat thins.
There are a lot of people I work pretty closely with everyday, so I’ll introduce them as the stories occur….

But for now. maybe you’re wondering why I’m discussion such boring topics as what I do on a daily basis when there are FAR more important things to be talked about. Like the lineup for example. It was silly of me not to mention them right away but as you continue reading…you’ll figure out that that happens quite often. So unless you somehow missed all the references to visit the MMMF website last time (I can see how that might happen considering I only put the link in there once. Or maybe twice…) and you somehow didn’t spend hours ogling how wonderful our webpage looks or jumping at the chance to find out who’s going to be there, I’ll tell you:

Friday the 25th of April the lineup is as follows:
Gov’t Mule
Robert Randolph & the Family Band
Grace Potter & Nocturnals
the subdudes
Steve Reynold’s Band
Mikel Lander & Meredith Moore w/ friends

Saturday the 26th looks a little something like this:
John Butler Trio
Blues Traveler
The Wailers
JJ Grey & MOFRO
Toubab Krewe
Peppermint James, Mojo Farmers,

Michelle commented on the first entry asking who I recommend you DO NOT MISS.
And aside from the first answer that comes to my head “DO NOT MISS ANY OF THEM” I basically have a steady rotation of all of them in my car. There’s one song in particular that I just can’t help but dance to...no one can! Check out The March by Robert Randolph & the Family Band. It will seriously make you dance right out of your shoes! It was the number one played song on a recent road trip I went on…we definitely got our work outs in to that song! You can also check out our IMix with some choice songs from the bands coming to the Festival this year…so take a little look-see!

Ok. This entry just crossed the “too-long-for-a-blog-entry” line.
So until next time…I’m out.

MMMF = McDowell Mountain Music Festival

2008-02-28T15:23:00.000-08:00

So here we are, less than 60 days left before the big weekend and the wheels have really started turning. That is to say that they’ve been going since the week after the festival last year, but in the past couple of weeks they’ve really started spinning like mad!

Allow myself to introduce…myself. I’m Ashley the Intern. As you’ve probably guessed I’m an intern for this awesome event. Last year I volunteered for the festival both days…all day. It was a lot of work, but it was a lot of fun too. So fun in fact that I thought it’d be a swell idea to come and work on the event all year!

Me and some of MMMF gals all got together recently to come up with some new ideas to get people psyched for the fest this year and we came up with this here blog. We’ve had so much response on the festival website that we thought it might be a good idea to create a place where I can fill you all in on the ins and outs of the festival…and maybe I’ll even be able to throw in a few surprises and maybe even some MMMF secrets (well I don’t even know any at this point…but perhaps I’ll keep my ears open a little more)

If you've never been to the McDowell Mountain Music Festival, or even (gasp!) have never even heard of it, it's ok, there's still time. We're a Festival that brings in 13 rather impressive bands together for 2 days of none stop, get down, jam session-filled days. We've got camping, a Marketplace, a Kid's Zone, a Drum Circle, a pretty sweet acoustic stage presented by Creamy Radio, and of course a VIP area (umm. yea. free food and plenty of free drinks and possibly the best part - SHADE!) We pretty much have it all and the best part you ask? every cent that is made after the weekend-o-fun goes directly to two different charities in Phoenix, Phoenix Day and Golden Gate Community Center! Ok ok so you can get all of this info on our website but i just wanted to give you a little teaser to...well lets be honest, so you'd all hurry your little mouse to hover over the MMMF link and click like mad until you got to the MMMF Website. huh. well look at that, you didn't even need to go that far :)

So aside from the MMMF website and our handy dandy newsletters (if you’re not signed up to receive them go to this link and fill out some info…MMMF Newsletter) I’ll throw some random facts about the inner workings of the festival and this will give you all somewhere else to throw in some input…and really say whatever you want.

But for now…ttyl, talk to you later, bye for now, cheers …and all those other catchy sign off lines that people enjoy. I, on the other hand, will merely say…
Peace out folks.