Baby, I’m a Firework

We will let @KariPizza, a Milwaukee native and a bartender at Summerfest, narrate this road journal:

Not every show, @KariPizza, just the important ones.  And it’s no secret we are huge fans of Summerfest, a two week festival on Lake Michigan (under a highway) in Milwaukee.  Milwaukee seems to understand something that other cities don’t – music should be accessible to everyone.  For like $15 on July 4th you could see over 100 bands, sometimes involving some tough choices, like when we went head to head with touring partners Barenaked Ladies last night, and when “Rush” was playing opposite “Skillet” earlier in the evening.

Anyway, back to our story.  I worked all day to learn the lyrics and melodies for “Firework” — a song I wasn’t familiar with but one that was very holiday-appropriate.

Also, for a little Katy Perry vs Guster history, check out this exchange from last summer:

See — she started it!  She started this whole thing!  Mercifully, Ryan promised that this would be the first and last time we ever played it, before I went out in front of a festival crowd and sang Firework as best I could.  Let’s call in @KariPizza again for the commentary:

Talk about hurt feelings, don’t you know that vocalists are sensitive people, who search for themselves on twitter after their performances to ensure that their message is reaching the people?  At least I can spell “and” …

Thankfully, @DailyJoce had my back:

But let’s not do this.  Let’s not create twitter wars.  Let’s not fill the British tabloids with Katy Perry vs Guster drama that will only create strife and ill will.  Let’s let you all judge for yourselves.

By the way that was Ryan taking this panoramic of the crowd with the house lights on before we started the song.

The rest of the evening was just typical Milwaukee… I borrowed Ryan’s bike lock and snapped the key off trying to unlock my bike at a bar, so I had to recruit people to help me lift my bike over the street pole it was locked around, and then I couldn’t ride it back to the bus (people in NYC are trained to put the lock through the front wheel)… some bouncer wrestled a patron to the sidewalk right in front of us and put a boxcutter to his throat… meanwhile Ryan was in a stretch hummer (sorry Adam!) with 6 members of the NY Mets and why don’t I come meet them?  Including a certain All Star rookie pitching phenom who I would have foregone mac & cheese pizza to meet?  Terrible timing.  I have to stay with my bike which has a lock through the spokes of the wheel, sorry Matt Harvey.

I ended up with a purple shiner from bashing my own bicycle into my eye trying to stuff it in the storage bay of the bus when the bus finally bailed me out and picked me up at the bar.  At least I got my mac and cheese pizza.