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Well, I'm back from Moestock!
Moestock is an annual pilgrimage/jam/party/guitar pull of a group of musicians who collaborate over the internet (known as "cyberjamming"). Although I've never actually cyberjammed (being far too tech-inept, much less busy with kids, church, and local bands), I'm a member of the forums on their website. This is the 9th annual meetup, the first of which was hosted by a guy named Moe, who has since passed on. They've always been far away previously (Colorado, Ontario, Pennsylvania, etc.) but since this year's was within driving distance (mountains of north Georgia), I finally got to go to one. I've known some of these folks for years but never met a single one irl. This one started Thursday afternoon and went til Sunday morning.
I was in a house on stilts (although imagine all the trees being overflowing with bright green leaves):
I slept on the couch, 2 guys were in the loft upstairs, and a married couple in the bedroom off to the left:
We even got t-shirts and stuff:
The lodge was really nice, down in a holler only a couple hundred feet away from my cabin (which as you can see from the pic above is at the crest of a little ridge).
Since the fireplace was not in use, we set up a stage in front of it on that end of the lodge (the kitchen and bathrooms were on the other end, with space for tables in between). Here's the fireplace end of the lodge, without the PA, but showing where it was set up:
The hosts (local cyberjammers) provided a great PA, one of those fancy Bose "column" system thingies, that sounded great. The backline was all-boutique or high-end stuff-- Ignater, Victoria, Bogner, etc. There must've been 30-40 guitars out on stands along the back wall of the room, with more still in cases under some tables against the front wall.
Basically, we just ate, drank and played music all weekend. Friday night we informally divided into groups and everybody played a short set of 2-3 songs, just to get everyone involved. Saturday night we did the same thing again, only a smidge more formally, and styled it as a "battle of the bands" (although there was a winner, there weren't any prizes or anything). I've already forgotten what songs I played Friday night. Saturday the group I was in did "Mercury Blues" and the Ramones' "I Wanna Be Sedated." Then we stayed onstage and backed one of the guy's tweenage daughter singing "Ring of Fire."
Thursday afternoon and evening and all day long on Friday and Saturday various people came and went onstage as the mood struck them, and there were acoustic jams out on the porches as well. I played mandolin in a batch of acoustic jams, and onstage played guitar, bass, "drums" (actually just tried to keep time on snare, when no drummer was about), and sang some lead and some backing. The back porch featured a keg of beer that usually got going about noon and went for as long as people wanted to hang out.
An absolutely epic weekend. I didn't take pics but if/when I can get hold of some that show the guitars/setup/partying I'll post here.
Originally Posted by Robert
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