GranolaBox

I’ve had all good intentions of seeing Gov’t Mule for the past several years, but I’ve never been able to connect. This year at Party in the Park, I finally connected. Even though I got there a half hour into their set, I still got a two hour show in which the Mule and fearless leader Warren Haynes whipped the Rochester crowd into a frenzy.

Warren works hard with every note.

The band is an incredibly tight hard rocking unit. Drummer Matt Abts is a wild man, playing a pre-encore solo with sticks, then mallets, then his hands.. then played two more encores. Bassist Jorgen Carlsson also set down some funky rhythms along with the near metal riffs Mule explores. I didn’t get a good picture of keyboardist Danny Louis, but he plays a kickin Hammond B3.

What makes Party in the Park so cool is that it’s FREE. It’s a democratic party in the park. Interestingly there were not many people there who hadn’t heard of Gov’t Mule, and as Sgt. Tim and I pressed into the crowd it was all hardcore Mule fans ranging in age from 18 to mid 70′s.

Rochester has a beautiful skyline that gets beautifully illuminated with sunsets. It’s not much of a skyline, but we’re humble people who flock to free concerts. We’ll take it.

Much of the night was tasty Warren jams on a bizarre range of originals, standards, covers and teases. Led Zeppelin’s No Quarter was probably the biggest treat of the evening. I think I was the only person there who didn’t know the song though.

We yelled frantically for encores, and the boys obliged three times.

I swear, this was no camera trick. It’s genuine SOULSHINE emanating from Warren’s guitar.

This is what my car saw the entire evening. I got what was probably the last parking spot left in the place after going all the way to the top and finding nothing. It was packed, and I knew it would take a long time to get out. So I did what I always do when I’m bored in a dimly lit situation.

This is the intersection of South Ave and Court Street. The crowd of people is the Dinosaur BBQ, a Rochester post-concert hangout.

I exercised great patience heading out. It was a clusterf&%k.

Filed under: Music on August 18th, 2009