The Rebellionfest: Blackpool

I slip behind a barricade, the security guard nodding me through as I hold up my credential laden wrist.
It all seems so familiar, the cozy backstage space behind the Empress.
The jolly little bar, the food stations serving up lunch, the tables assorted like at a wedding reception, inviting strangers to sit down with their plates and join in on the conversation.

I walk down the dressing room hall and find our assigned room, then back step a few feet to once again read the adjoining room’s door.
Oh nothing, we’re camped next door to The Sweet, that’s all!
I take photos of the door, hoping Andy Scott might emerge and grant a photo as well, but no such luck.

I enter our room and find Kimm in there alone, strumming his guitar in the corner.
He looks relaxed, as if he were sitting in a sunny spot in his backyard, and I take out my guitar to join him for a little warm up.

We share the moment of quiet, neither of us speaking, just communicating through steel guitar strings and tapping feet.
It is nice sanctuary between the shouted conversations of the halls, behind the roaring rooms where the bands cycle though endlessly, each claiming their 40 minutes of stage time with frenzied assault.
We could just be two friends sitting together on a park bench, old and growing older.
Feeding the rabid squirrels, complaining about the price of gasoline.

It is not lost on me, though, that we are decades beyond those first times we sat next to each other and strummed guitars.
In each other’s houses, out in the Cerritos garage.
And now sitting together, a few feet away from where The Sweet sits, behind a stage that once held The Beatles and Sinatra.

The fellas join us then, each of us taking turns telling of the bands we’ve just seen, the friends we’ve just caught up with.

There is a knock on the door, the stage manager letting us know there’s five to set time.
We file out separately, each of us on our own, hoping we will soon lock in as, well, a group.

There is a sea of people in the hall, though as is the nature of festival crowds, not all stay for more than a couple songs.
The fans wander the grounds clutching highlighter marked schedules, some just tasking themselves with catching as many bands as humanly possible.
Two songs, check another one off the list, and onto the next. Fair enough.

But there are other people, I can see them from up here, that we know.
Some loyal fans, grown into friends.
Some faces from back home as well, a few who have been with us from the very first days in the backyards of Cerritos.

We start out, and it feels a bit strange on this vast stage after the great pub shows we’ve enjoyed the last few nights.
The sweating clubs where the crowd knocks the microphone into your teeth once again, where hands reach out to strum the guitar with you.

There is a timer set in my periphery stage right, its numbers scrolling down like a terrorist bomb planted in a train station.
Time is now a puzzle to be solved, as we cut songs from the set, add some of the old favorites we think will go over.
We send the songs into a a black void, only the first few rows of faces illuminated, and those faces are still ten feet away and two meters down, beyond a barricade.

The green haired Finn Jukka, who you might remember popped up on stage with us back in Osaka, is here of course.
We bring him up on stage for the English/Finnish rendition of Mannequin (Mannekiini!!) for the fest truly is a global festival, putting those tacky Summer Olympics to shame!

_Mannekiini!!

It’s over all too soon of course, and we are back in the dressing room.
We pack up the guitars and peel off our sweat drenched shirts, hurry out to the merch booth to meet some of the people who have stayed after the set.
Hopefully we will sell the last of the tee shirts and check an empty suitcase home.

.In the morning we all say goodbye (early!) at the foggy seaside curbside.
Dave and Briony shuttling the kids back down to Heathrow with Kimm and Nick, while Ant takes the train up to Edinburgh to investigate the Fringe with his pal Chris.
I stay on in Europe with The Wife, and remain here even as I tap out these words, staring out a hotel window at the Amsterdam Centraal train station.

And to think it was nothing more, or less, than sitting together with my old friend and strumming those guitars that has brought me here.

_{Thanks Lorrie Smith photos}