Dear Mega Drop Ride, Please Turn Off Your Horrible Music. Sincerely, Hangout Fest
Hello, friends! Rob here.
Okay, it’s time to get serious. We’ve had more time off the first half of this year than all of last year (probably? Maybe? Please don’t fact-check me), but now festival season is in full swing and we’re gearing up for summer tour. And this isn’t just a "let’s play Pensacola and Ohio and be home in a week” tour (although we will do both of those within the next two weeks). This is going to be a hardcore, three-suitcase, leave-a-rent-check-with-your-roommate kind of tour. I’m going to be gone for so long that I’ll forget what I look like, and that doesn’t even really make sense!
We’re going everywhere. But you probably wanted to know where we’ve been!
Well, the answer is Hangout Festival.
Set on the alabaster sands of Gulf Shores, Alabama, Hangout Festival is far and away the most awesome thing that The Revivalists are technically allowed to refer to as "work.” We had such a great time last year that we intentionally blocked off the entire weekend this year in hopes that we would be able to use the time productively by either networking and giving interviews or watching Stevie Wonder be the most unapologetically awesome human being in the history of things. If I’m actually allowed by real United States Tax Laws to deduct the price of a Ke$ha CD from my return (it counts as "research”), then surely I can justify calling Mr. Wonder’s possibly unrehearsed Bob Marley cover (he was seriously calling out the chord changes for his band) a genuine learning experience.
To be fair, between time spent researching musical luminaries like Stevie and Tom Petty and way more time spent researching Hangout’s unrivaled artist hospitality, we did manage to do some actual (actual) work. Sunday was our work day. Between press engagements we played two sets, one on a public stage and one in the VIP area. Really, there isn’t much to say about the performances themselves other than that they went well and our friend (and possibly my hero) Khris Royal joined us onstage during the VIP show and did awesome things on a saxophone.
And that’s pretty much it. Hangout Festival was vacation for us, but vacation is over forever now. We've made productive use of much of our time at home. We’ve worked up a few new songs over the last month or so, and we’re really excited to completely rework them over the next month’s worth of live performances. Starting today.
