My Goodness, My Guinness: Solid Sound Festival 2017

The Solid Sound Festival occurs every two years in North Adams, Massachusetts, and we look forward to it so much!! This is my 3rd Solid Sound. It's put on by the band Wilco, and it's just a REALLY great 3-day music festival. It has such a relaxed vibe, and it's super family-friendly (lots of kids everywhere!), and it's just people hanging out. There are a bunch of different stages where you can go see bands or comedians, and the venue that it's always at (Mass MoCA, which stands for Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art) also has a bunch of buildings full of art that you can wander around and look at! It's so awesome. Plus there are a bunch of food trucks and beer tents (Lagunitas is there with their beer called Wilco Tango Foxtrot (WTF) which is soooo good!).

So, this year was amazing. The group we were with this year was me and Kevin, Kevin's sister Mo, Timmy, Fro, Fro's boyfriend, and two of Fro's boyfriend's friends. We found an AMAZING cabin on AirBnB that was only about 10 minutes from Mass MoCA, which is the closest we have ever been BY FAR!! We've always been at least 30 minutes away in the past.

One comedian that I was REALLY looking forward to this year was Nick Offerman!! I loooove Nick Offerman so much (any Parks and Rec fans out there??), so I was really excited to see his stand-up.

That's Nick Offerman right in front with the mustache, just in case anyone doesn't know! He's so funny.

We actually didn't end up getting to the venue early enough to see his stand-up though (that was at an indoor stage, and it was filled to capacity VERY early!), so I was pretty bummed. BUT, I ended up seeing Nick Offerman 3 other times during the festival, so then I wasn't bummed at all!! We were watching the band Nancy and Beth (and Nick Offerman's wife Megan Mullally from Will & Grace is one of the two singers... not sure if she's Nancy or Beth...), and they were a LOT of fun! They have choreography for most of their songs, and the music was really fun too. Well, towards the end of their set, I saw Nick Offerman playing a drum!! Then he started walking and dancing around the stage while they were singing. It was great :) THEN the 2nd time was when Kevin, Mo, and I went to see this other comedian, and they ended up bringing out Nick Offerman for an interview and to play a game on stage with some other comedians. Nick Offerman won that game, so he of course took off his shirt and twirled it over his head. And the THIRD time we got to see him was when we were wandering around one of the art museums on the last day, and they were starting to rope off one of the art exhibit areas because they said that there was going to be a special "pop-up" musical performance that was a surprise, and they couldn't tell us who it was. They looked SUPER excited about it though, so we figured we'd grab a seat and wait to see who it was. Well, it was NICK OFFERMAN!! He was HILARIOUS, and he sang some super inappropriate songs that were sooooo darn funny!! So, that was amazing.

That's Megan Mullally! We didn't have the best location for taking pictures, but it was a great show!

And there was Nick Offerman, playing the drum! Towards the end of the show he walked around on stage with it.

There's Nick Offerman playing the game during the other comedy show.

And he won! So this happened.

Yep, this is how close we were when he was singing in the art museum!

Show's over! He played for about 30-40 minutes I think.

Wilco played Friday night and Saturday night, and both of their shows were amazing. On Friday night they played TWO of their most popular albums in their entirety! And one of the albums is even two discs!! So, that was beyond amazing. And on Saturday night they played a normal show, and that was also amazing! We saw the singer (Jeff Tweedy) walking around the festival a few times, so that was exciting. One time was when we were walking into the venue, he was walking with just another guy, and I think he saw all of us grinning at him like idiots, so he was smiling and said hi and waved. It's a VERY chill festival though, so it really isn't the kind of place where you'd run up to someone and ask for a picture/selfie with them or autograph or anything. Everyone just gives all of the singers, comedians, etc their space and they'll maybe say hi or wave at them or snap a quick photo, but that's about it! It's really laid-back. We saw Jeff Tweedy another day when we were watching a band that his son (Spencer) plays drums for, and we saw him standing to the side watching his son play, and he looked like SUCH a proud dad so I had to take a picture.

This was the first night! We were right in the crowd on the first night, but the 2nd night we took it easy and were towards the back.

This is Tweedy watching his son play drums! He's the one in front.

There he is again.

The 2nd night!

Still the 2nd night!

And here are a few pictures from when we were walking around looking at art:

That's Timmy, enjoying these upside-down growing trees.

There's Mo, trying to get a good picture of the beautiful art!

This was a net of about one zillion tiny beads that were all strung together.

Chandeliers!

And you could climb a ladder and look on top of the chandeliers. There was SO much weird stuff up there. I went up right after Kevin (only one person could go at a time), but I didn't take a picture while I was up there because I figured with my luck I'd drop my phone...