The Cosmic American Music Festival & 7th Annual Gram Fest
Joshua Tree, California - Saturday, October 19

Just got back from the desert - what a weekend! The Gram Fest is a day long music festival celebrating Gram Parsons and the music that he has created and influenced. Over 30 bands played at four different venues throughout the day, next to the stunning Joshua Tree park where Gram spent his last days.

After a late start yesterday morning (this shouldn't surprise anyone who knows me!) Bobbo, our drummer Chuck, and I arrived in the little desert town of Joshua Tree. We hunted down some friends who were staying at one of the local hotels and hung around for a while singing and playing Gram tunes. Had to get into the spirit of the thing, you know? To stock up energy for the long night ahead, we moseyed down to a local Mexican restaurant, where we met up with Gram's stunning daughter Polly, the wonderful Shilah from Sin City, and the always fabulous Pamela Des Barres, among others. Dinner was lively, plus we listened to the only mariachi band I've ever seen with a harpist! But enought about the dinner, on with the show!

We arrived at t Hi-Desert Playhouse just in time to catch The Dairy Kings, a great band from Orange County. Pulling from the Jayhawks, Steve Earle, and of course Gram, they seamlessly mixed covers with their catchy roots pop brand of originals.

Next up was the Mike Stinson Band. Now I've been hearing good things about Mike Stinson, but this was the first time that I've heard him, and I wasn't disappointed. With hooks like "The Late Great Golden State," Mike had every head in the room nodding along with him. Not to mention the arrival of surprise guest Lucinda Williams who performed a few songs, including an appropriately whiskeyed version of Gram's "Do You Know How It Feels to Be Lonesome."

Sawtooth and friends was up next and there's not much that I can say about their set that Bryson hasn't already said far better than I, other than it was an unstoppable torrent of honky-tonk love for Gram, the audience, the musicians, and everyone that put this amazing event together. Check out his account of the evening here - he's almost as fun to read as he is to watch!

Up next was Brit-pop band, Minibar. At first, you might think this an odd combination, a bunch of Brits at the epi-center of Cosmic American Music - until you hear them. Soaked in alt.country spirits, their swirling harmonies and pedal-steel flavored instrumentation is more cosmicly American than anything else I'd heard all day. The highlight for me was set-closer "Six Foot", featuring Hawkeye's Kalai King on harmonica and Dawn McCoy on vocals.

One more band was up, a more traditional country ensemble, but unfortunately I didn't catch their name. Anyone wanna help me out here? Anyway, at about 1 am we moved on down the road to the Saloon, which was already hopping with a stripped down roadhouse combo featuring Bryson, Jonny, and a bunch of others I couldn't get close enough to the stage to name. Oh, and when I say stripped down, I mean literally stripped. There were shirts and shoes scattered all over the place! There was rocking, there was dancing, and there was beer. What more can you ask for? Oh wait, there was beef too - the guy at the grill outside making hamburgers and meat on a stick is now officially my favorite person in the world.

When the saloon finally shut down around 2 or 3, the only thing left to do was... find Cap Rock, where legend has it, Gram's body was taken and burned after his death. So under the brightest full moon in recent memory, we piled into cars and drove into the desert. And drove. And drove. The lunar looking landscape was stunning and almost unreal. Although we ended up getting lost (you know how hard it is to listen clearly to directions at 3 in the morning?) it was still a gorgeous ride.

Eventually we made it back to the hotel and crashed. A long day - but man it was worth it. Can't wait for next year!