Festival for the rest of y'all

If you've ever experienced soaking in a live music set by a songwriter that writes not from a drive to rake in huge piles of cash or because somebody told them what they should be writing about; but they are writing real songs about real experiences and feelings their own life has handed to them; then you know my perspective.  I've been a life-long lover of a wide variety of musical genres, but it wasn't until the last few years that I discovered there is more to music than listening to studio albums and the radio.  When you actually hear somebody perform a song live and hear and feel the emotion as they deliver a song that came from their heart it brings new meaning to it.

The Blowin' Off Steamboat Music Festival was born not from an urge to take a jab at a certain event that happens up north in the snowy mountains around this time of year; it's actually quite the opposite.  In this day of rabid usage of social media (I also cast those stones in my own general direction) you get to see post after post of pictures of people enjoying themselves up in the mountains watching their favorite artists play full band and acoustic sets over several days and nights.  A conversation on Facebook was started by a fellow music lover as he joked about how we needed something down here for those of us that are left behind while our friends enjoy that music festival.  That's when a moment of inspiration hit Chase of the TX Citizen and his brain went into overload thinking about how if we could pull together a venue and a few bands we could do that very thing!  That next morning I issued a handful of random invitations to a music event that Music of New Braunfels and the TX Citizen was organizing, and within a 24 hour period between a couple of great additions from Chase and what I pulled together we had enough amazing talent booked to do not 6 or 9, but 12 hours of live music!

In the group that has been assembled, we have several guys that play together regularly in different combinations to form different bands.  They pitch in and help each other pull off amazing full band sets.  These guys also stand alone with complete competence and all entertain on their own as well as they do as a member of a buddy's band.  This group of New Braunfels songwriters and musicians are Jordan Minor, Tony Taylor, Slim Bawb, Bryan Boyce, Kyle Reed, Court Nance, Keith Hickle, B.J. Thibodeaux, Jordan York, Steven Vee, Carol Cochran, Stan Little and Paul Rogers; and that's just the ones that are in this music festival, there are MANY more not represented here!  We also have great talents from nearby such as Chris King, Fallon Franklin and great bands from nearby as well like Dave Jorgenson, Pitchfork, T-Bone and The Bluetones and The Red Dirt Ramblers.  No knock to these other guys but my happiest moment while booking talent for this event was when Tina Wilkins wrote me back with "Ok Brian. WW is IN!".  I was floored to say the least, and we are all very excited to have Walt Wilkins as part of this event.

I hope you'll be there too to enjoy some amazing music with us and please enjoy some of the wonderful food Freiheit Country Store has to offer, they really do have amazing burgers!

Links:
Event information page
Blowin' Off Steamboat Music Festival (Facebook)