Carnivals of Madness--Alter Bridge in WI and IA -- Part I

Myles at Rock the Ranch, Twin Lakes, WI, August 13, 2010

I have been a fan of Myles Kennedy and Alter Bridge since their first single, “Open Your Eyes,” came out in 2004. It was the voice. I listened to the chorus over and over, reveling in the clarity and depth of his tone, and wondered to myself, Can he be for real? Can he do this live? Not since Chris Cornell had I been so moved by a voice.

So in 2004 I went to my first AB concert in a small bar in Scottsdale, AZ. That’s when I discovered that Myles’ voice was very real indeed. I vowed to follow every musical move he made from that night on, and have been doing so ever since.

Last Saturday night I got the chance to tell him that in person; not in 30 seconds while battling for his attention with 20-30 (or more) other fans standing outside their bus in the rain, but rather during a long conversation shared with him, my sister Sarah, Myles’ wife Selena, and our two new AB friends, Nate and Katie. Fellow band members Mark Tremonti, Brian Marshall and Scott “Flip” Phillips also moved in and out of our conversation circle over the course of an hour or so—as did numerous fans looking for autographs (there’s now a bar stool with Myles’ signature on it somewhere in Iowa) and fellow festival musicians seeking a chance to compliment his performance and shake his hand. But through it all, we were the ones he focused on, told stories to, and asked questions to learn more about.

How did this happen?



I’m still shaking my head trying to work that out. In short, Myles invited us backstage to talk to us. This was a result, and I’m guessing here, of our numerous but brief meet-ups with him after shows over the years, plentiful short-but-sweet Twitter exchanges, gifts we’ve given him over at shows, and most importantly, our constant presence at center rail, singing along with every word and smiling as if our faces would crack. Sarah and I have been to almost every show as a team, though a few we did separately. Over the last 7 years, we’ve each seen AB about 12 times, and we saw Myles and Slash together in 2010. Seems like more, and given time, it will be.


Sarah and I at center rail in Waterloo for Rockstock IV.

Last Saturday was another Carnival of Madness tour stop—this time at Rockstock IV in Waterloo, IA. Only a 3.5 hour drive from Madison, it seemed a good choice in that it was a small town, which meant a smaller crowd and a greater chance of seeing one or more members of the band. We had tried this two weeks earlier in Twin Lakes, WI, at Rock the Ranch (the first Carnival of Madness stop) but had little success other than a wave back from Flip off-stage, and Myles’ laugh and wide smile when he saw the deflated pug balloon that had survived the day’s intense thunderstorms with us.


Myles' reaction to our sad little Pug on the rail at Rock The Ranch

I was checking Twitter as usual all day during that show, and saw numerous tweets from friends reminding the guys we were there, and had brought gifts for them. We also saw that Myles was having trouble getting to the venue, also due to the storms. He later told us he almost missed it entirely. Coming in late meant chaos and rushing, and we were not able to get to him after the show. That was a long, hot, wet, then cold day filled with more challenges than we could have imagined before-hand (thankfully) and we were soaked, exhausted and not a little disappointed by the time we limped through the mud back to the car late that night.

The Storm coming in at noon in Twin Lakes


Ten inches of flood water that eventually forced us off the rail at Rock The Ranch.

Rockstock IV offered another chance, and we didn’t like the idea of failing, so we planned for every scenario we could imagine. We drove down the night before to be well-rested for another very long day on the rail, and packed ponchos and sunscreen—and the gifts I was still determined to get to the men.


Later added hand lotion for Brian and hand sanitizer for Myles...

We had some extra ammunition packed this time as well. Of course, my friends on Twitter were all in position to rain tweets on the band once the flag was dropped, and those have proven invaluable in the past, but we had another ace in the hole.

A few days before the gig, I received an email from FM Entertainment offering me two free tickets to the show. How’s that for timing, I thought. I sent back an email letting them know we already had tickets but would be willing to settle for, say, a Meet & Greet. We got to chatting, and I mentioned what it had been like attending (surviving) the first Carnival of Madness, and how we hoped to avoid a repeat scenario in Waterloo.

“Yeah,” the return email read, “a lot of people were unhappy with me when I had to make that call [to suspend the concert during and after the storm].”

It suddenly occurred to me that I wasn’t talking to someone at a ticket counter. I asked to whom I was speaking.

“The owner.”

Now this was getting interesting. I learned I was exchanging emails with the man in charge of putting on both Rock the Ranch in Twin Falls and Rockstock IV in Waterloo. As much as I wanted to hit the all-caps button and start begging for backstage access, I managed to remain relatively calm. As I was “staying calm” he friended me on Facebook. So much for calm. Luckily we weren’t chatting on Skype.

I thanked him again for the free tickets, promising to try and scare up some friends willing to spend 14 hours at an outdoor heavy metal festival. Chances seemed slim. All our friends that WOULD have been up for that lived half-way across the country, or across the Atlantic.

So Sarah and I made the trip alone, getting lost a few times just for good measure. Unlike the first festival, we didn’t stop (except for directions) on our way to the hotel in Waterloo.

Two weeks prior in Burlington (outside of Twin Lakes, site of Rock the Ranch), we did stop, pulling into a local Sentry just minutes before 9 p.m., with the very distinct goal of obtaining some chilled wine to start our pre-party. On our way to the liquor department Sarah stopped and let out a scream of delight. I turned around to see her gazing into a large box filled with inflated dog balloons. Seemed to me that the older she got, the easier it was getting to entertain her. She in turn looked at me like she’d found the Holy Grail. Then she lifted a perfect Pug balloon out of the balloon kennel. Cue a second squeal of delight, this time from me.


Sarah and Pugsly in Burlington before Rock the Ranch (and wine ;)

Every man has his weakness, be it women, alcohol… or Pugs. Myles Kennedy is known for his inability to resist puppies of any breed, but most of all, Pugs. Just recently someone posted a new picture of Myles at a signing table where he wore one of the widest grins we’d ever seen. In fact, we were all so curious as to who it was that caused such a reaction that I finally sent him a tweet asking just WHO could elicit such a reaction from him. Not minutes later he tweeted back, “…a pug :)”


Myles' best smile--for a Pug :)

The Twitterverse roared in laughter over this bit of information. So that night, when we found the Pug, all we could see was that brilliant smile aimed in our direction. We took Pugsly and ran to find our wine just before they closed the store.



At our hotel, we proceeded to tailgate from the comfort of our Hampton Inn room. And of course, we included Pugsly in the festivities. There may have been a bit of tipsy tweeting that night, as we woke up to find we had sent poor Myles several pictures of Pugsly with headphones listening to ABIII on my iPod, and at least one of Pugsly laid out sideways next to some hotel glasses and an empty bottle of wine.





Sarah, Pugsly and I all slept soundly that night, and moved quickly in the early hours to get ourselves over to the festival grounds in time to be thoroughly soaked, physically threatened, and bruised all to hell by young and old moshers over the course of a very long, 14-hour day. But that was Twin Lakes. This was Waterloo.

Eventually we found our luxurious Super 8 and settled in—but not after checking the room thoroughly for bugs. Hey, you can never be too sure, and we’d been living high on the hog for the Cornell and Eddie Vedder shows recently. Our last two hotels for Alter Bridge had been two of the nicest we’d ever seen which, looking back, was pointless given that we spent so little time in them.

At exactly 9 a.m. Saturday morning, we pulled into the first parking spot at the National Cattle Congress, site of Rockstock IV. As AB bassist Brian Marshall would point out in a general tweet the next day, it was a bit of a dustbowl. And busy. There was already a horse show going on at the other end of the grounds, and planes of all types flew overhead prepping for the annual air show, which would later include a stealth fighter, and the Blue Angels. But our focus was on the Alter Bridge bus we could see clearly in the large bus parking lot. Their equipment semi was already backed up to the stage and the crew was setting up. The band and crew had traveled all night from Louisville to get here, and though the latter were hard at work, we knew the boys in the band were all in their bunks, and probably would be for several more hours. We stood by the empty ticket booths, up on concrete blockades, checking out the height of the chain link fence that separated the fans from the buses. Once again, this was not going to be a walk in the park.

Or so we thought.

To be continued...