After a long day of flights / layovers and anticipation of our first Bonnaroo experience, we made our way over to our hotel and tried to get in some sleep before meeting up with the amazing and glamorous Ourstage family in the morning. . . . Ok so the part about getting some sleep was a bit of a lie, because with all of that excitement dancing elegantly over our heads how could anyone sleep . . . right? So I’ll try this again, once we made our way over to the hotel we stayed awake with the magic and mystery that lay before us on that beautiful 700 acres of 100% home grown Manchester TN land.

But back to our story. . . The next morning we met up with Alyssa, one of the most beautiful and genuine people I have the pleasure of knowing – and Andy only the best camera man there is as well as a great new friend of mine who I hope to travel and climb many mountains with (in case you weren’t sure, check out Alyssa’s Blog to see just how much Andy hearts mountains!).

Before we knew it we were whisked away via the secret VIP only entrance – and out towards our campsite where with the help of Alyssa and Andy, we got our tent up in no time and oh what a glorious tent it was!!!.

There is way too much to fill in the gaps of this story so we will stick with some of the highlights. Our first stop was the Ourstage tent located directly next to the Sonic Stage, which would be “the stage” (pun intended) of many great performances by some of the best bands around as well as many of the brightest indie artists trying to make it in the crazy world of music. These included bands like State Radio, Ozomatli, Donavon Frankenreiter, and the Ourstage exclusive bands The Press Project, The Sons Of Roswell, MorningBell and Don Dilego.

We met up with the rest of the Ourstage family that included Steph – whose smile can light up any room, Laura – who brought that beautiful Bulgarian Flare that we all desperately needed – as well as being super cool and kind, and Chris – the silent warrior who presence was felt by everyone!

Quickly we were rushed off to have our first DJ Lesson!! – Thanks to Scratch.com we had a personal lesson in which my skills could not match my g/f Cara’s natural ability to tear it up with the transformer scratch – only one of the most difficult scratch techniques known to man!

Oh and the bands!!!! – We got up close and personal (like backstage close) with Vampire Weekend! and MGMT!

But let us not forget others like Superdrag and Grupo Fantasma.

Day 1 – Amazing . . . stay tuned for what Day 2 held in store for us!