Recap: Music & Arts Festival

Went to the 1st annual Mesa Family Music & Arts Festival this past weekend. Had a lot of fun, even though the crowd was quite small. Mel and I decided to take our two biggest kids along, but we left the twins at home, for what I believe to be obvious reasons. We went to the afternoon concert which featured Jordan Bluth, Eclipse, and Peter Breinholt.

I had never before heard of Jordan Bluth, but he has a very nice voice, although his choice of material doesn't really suit my fancy. It was mostly show tunes, although he did impress me with a beautiful Italian operatic piece from...well, I don't remember. Overall, his voice was quite good, but he didn't really impress me until he hit that one piece, and then he proceeded to lose me again when he returned to the show tunes.

Eclipse was awesome! I have listened to their stuff a lot over the past 3-4 years as my group, MC6, has worked to emulate their sound somewhat, but this was my first time seeing them live, and they blew me away. Very energetic sound and stage presence. MC6 could really take some lessons from those guys, although I can think of for sure 2 if not 3 of our guys, right off the top of my head, that I would not want to see try some of the dancing that Eclipse was doing on stage! They have a very tight sound and really keep the audience on its toes throughout their performance. I was impressed before with their recordings, but now they've really got me.

Peter Breinholt was great as usual. He did not travel with his band, The Big Parade, this time, but instead enlisted a few members of Ryan Shupe and The Rubberband to play with him. He's such a down-to-earth guy and a fantastic performer. Melanie got to speak with him after the show, and told him all about how his 1995 De Jong show was our first date, and he was so excited b/c apparently those early Utah campus shows are what propelled his career to what it is today. He even gave us a free copy of his new CD just for being loyal fans over the years. Cool guy, that Peter Breinholt.

Unfortunately for all involved, the turnout for the festival was anemic at best. For the Eclipse/Peter Breinholt show Melanie counted about 100 people in attendance. I heard the morning and evening shows were about the same. Pretty sad, really, b/c these were good shows. The organizers simply did not promote it very well. I hope they work to bring it back next year, though. It's a great idea and realistically could be very well-attended and self-sustaining in the future, but people need to hear about it for it to be successful. I only knew about it b/c I was performing at it.

So, my group, MC6, performed as well. Mel's cousin, Kelly, has given a ringing endorsement of our show, albeit a bit slanted toward my own part in the show. (Thank you, Kelly. Really, it's very flattering!) We had about as many in attendance as the paid show we went to earlier in the day (ours was free, yes free, as we do not yet rate with the sing-for-hire crowd.) We had a lot of fun, and the audience was great. A number of people I invited actually came as well, so that was cool. We sang a couple of new songs. Peanut Butter & Jelly (thank you Inside Out) and The Lion Sleeps (thanks, N'Sync). Both came off pretty well, so we'll likely keep them in the repertoir.

All-in-all, it was a fun day. I'm sad that more people didn't come out to enjoy the sights and sounds and to rub elbows with their favorite LDS recording artists (they were all very accessible after their shows for meet and greet sessions - very cool gesture), and to support such a great family entertainment opportunity. As I said before, I hope they work to bring it back next year, not only for my own selfish reasons, as I'd like to perform there again, but also for the other performers and for the quality entertainment that it brings to the area.