I’m sitting here on my couch drinking tea and listening to Neil Young’s Harvest album (for the first time in probably over ten years for some reason), recouping from and reflecting on what was one of the most fantastic weekends of my life so far. I love doing things outside of the norm, breaking life’s routine with a spontaneous or drastic decision, action, or trip out of town. Usually it’s in our own power to create these experiences, but we rarely do. One example I think of often in my own life is the fact that I live an easy day’s drive from the Grand Canyon, but have never just gotten up one morning, spontaneously driven there with some buddies, done a hike and camp for the night, and then come back the next day. It would be so easy and so epic, so why haven’t I done it yet? There are so many things like that I can think of, and it just comes down to being comfortable in what we know, and routine. Routine has it’s place, but it’s also a suffocating cage preventing people from experiencing moments in life that really breathe freedom, power, and perspective into the soul. The thing is it’s a cage most of us love being in, so people aren’t even tripping off of what is being missed by not swapping the cage for a penthouse now and then. So usually it’s up to ourselves to create and choose when we do something super random or “crazy,” but this last weekend for Inspired Flight was extremely unusual and epic, and was created for us rather than spontaneously by us. Months ago we had it in the books to play two festivals the same weekend: Bella Music Fest in Minnesota, and Lightning In A Bottle (LIB) in SoCal. We really wanted to have a spare travel day in between the two festivals, but the way it ended up having to be booked is that we played in MN on Saturday, and then had to be in SoCal for an early LIB set on Sunday! We had a lot of anxiety and reservations about flying with all of our gear across the country, playing a festival, driving back to the airport to get hardly any sleep and wake up before the crack of dawn to fly to LAX with all of our stuff again, have a friend meet us with our van full of a bunch of other gear we would need for LIB, and then successfully play LIB though we would be exhausted and sleep-deprived. There was hardly any room for error; had a flight been delayed, missed, or any gear lost, damaged, or not brought up in our van it would have been a disaster. In other words, choosing to break the usual routine with flying to MN to play a festival one day and then fly back home to play another the next day is something I would NEVER choose on my own. But what a weekend it was!!! As it was all happening it felt so good, it made sense… We flew on Friday to Minneapolis early in the morning, and all of a sudden there we were in St. Louis killing time eating at Chili’s in the airport. Then all of a sudden there we were driving across the beautiful MN country, then suddenly there we were checking into a hotel and eating dinner at a Perkins diner, and then all of a sudden there we were arriving and setting up at Bella Fest, and so on… Why was all of this happening? Why were we there? To play music! It was tiring, it wasn’t something we would do on any other weekend spontaneously, and we probably lost money on the whole weekend, but to even have the opportunity we had to play back-to-back music festivals across the country on back-to-back days is such a blessing, and to take advantage of the opportunity despite all of the reasons it may not have made sense is so beautiful. To be at a point in our career where we are playing festivals, even if we aren’t playing the main stages at night, feels really, REALLY good.

Both festivals were great in their own way, though LIB was definitely the highlight of the weekend, if not the main highlight of iF’s career so far. Bella was very small, and very hippie trippy. That’s not a bad thing, or a judgment, but it’s really what it was. I’ve never been in the midst of such a concentrated gathering/culture of people with the “hippie” vibe. It kind of felt like a time warp to my parents’ era and what they may have experienced as youth, and the music there was mostly jam bands and bluegrass. There were cool arts and crafts, and the best festival food I’ve ever had, but it was a very small scene, and almost didn’t feel like a music festival (though my only notion of a music festival before Bella had been Coachella, which I now realize is happening on some crazy epic proportions). All of the staff at Bella were super cool and helpful, and we had a really good set, though there sadly weren’t many people there to watch us. The whole thing felt like a rehearsal for LIB the following day. Thankfully we played Bella, made it back to the airport, flew to LAX, and met up with our friend in our van without a hitch. No lost gear! No delayed flights! No strange car troubles or other unforeseen mishaps! We were tired, especially Eric who couldn’t sleep at all Saturday night for some reason, but we made it to LIB with a few hours to spare, which were completely filled with checking in, unloading gear, finding and setting up our camping area, problem-solving with the stage/sound crew at the Bamboo Stage where we played so that we could actually perform there (there were a lot of issues we had to work through to pull it off on that stage), connecting with Eligh and Scarub and going over how our set was going to go down, and many other things. Before I knew it we were on stage setting up and it was time to start. And…………..(drum roll)…………. there were people there! LOTS of people, gathered in front of the stage, spilling off in all directions across the festival grounds, and they were attentively watching us, and dancing to us! It was amazing, and the response we got from the crowd was so awesome. The best part of all is that nothing about playing there felt weird or uncomfortable; there was no nervousness really. It just felt right, and we were confident and excited, and we had a great set. To write about what LIB is like, and how the whole vibe there changes at night, and to share what my day and night was after we played would take way too long to write, at least right now. But it was amazing, and people were stoked off of us, even more-so than I thought they would be, and we did some really great networking. It feels good to be home now, still drinking my tea, which is now cold, and listening now to Al Green after playing Harvest twice through in it’s entirety. I suppose I should get off of my couch and go do stuff now; normal routine stuff. I like being back in the cage this week. But I am so grateful for getting to experience such an unusual, fun, eventful and adventurous weekend. I’m looking forward to the next crazy traveling adventure playing music will bring. And next time I won’t have so much anxiety; we now know that some tight-scheduled traveling is doable. It takes some planning and effort, but really all you have to do is just do it. Life really boils down to that notion, which Nike so greatly turned into the slogan of all slogans: Just do it. We did it…

-Chavez

Bella Music Festival, MN, 2011

Tent where Inspired Flight played, Bella Music Festival, MN, 5/28/11.

Bamboo Stage where Inspired Flight played at Lightning In A Bottle, 5/29/11.

Beautiful view at Lightning In A Bottle, 5/29/11.