WOW, what can you say??? Telluride on it's own is one of the most powerfully beautiful places on the planet, add 53 breweries, top-of-the-line bands & a fantastic group of people all searching for the same thing & you get one hell of a good time. The brewery rolled into Telluride Friday evening as the festival shows were finishing up. We made sure everything was set in the House of Brews & headed into town for the first night of Juke Joint celebrations. Las Montanas played host to one of the famous Burnside family members, Kent. Kent continues to pour the Burnside family's version of electrified Delta Blues into the future. 
To be honest we missed most of the festival music on Saturday as well, the Grand Tasteing took all of our attention until all the fine folks had drank us out of all the beer we brought. Thanks to all of you who joined in our fantastic day of beer pouring & ass shakin'. The fine folks seemed to really dig the Dales Pale Ale & Old Chub, we did have some people dissappointed that we didn't have enough Gordon to go around. After we gathered our bearings from the tasteing the music highlights started with a gondola ride & the Juke Joint scene at the Telluride Convention Center. JJ Grey & Mofro played the Austin City Limits festival earlier that morning & made a bonzi run to Telluride to provide their deep fried funk to the accepting audience. Any thoughts of a travel hangover where quickly conquered as the saxophone solo 10 minutes into the set left everyone with no choice but to get down & dirty. After riding that funk to the end we headed back down the mountain with a heard of good people to catch the end of Johnny Sketch & the Dirty Notes. Johnny plays Electric Cello & the dirty notes are not afraid to throw a mix of music at you that's simply unstoppable.
Last call came & went & the final late night show opened the doors @ 2:00 a.m. Eric Lindell's Soul Roots Movement rolled into town just in time to make the late start. Eric's one of my favorites on the list & although road weary they again didn't disappoint. Finally we hit the festival as nothing but beer drinkers & music seekers on Sunday. By this time I had made 10,000 trips to the House of Brews tent and Dales Pale Ale line seemed to be pretty consistently long. A great group of local beer drinkers had befriended us by the final day & they secured the first row for the Gospel Hour in the rain.
After the late night before we made it to the festival to see the thick list of New Orleans bands warm up the crowd for the final encore of the festival: The Black Crowes. As Chris Robinson said: "It's great to be back among the mountain people, we brought Rock n' Roll for you!" The set would prove that comment to be an understatement, lord did they rock. Sporting Luther Dickenson on rhythm guitar the Crowes threw down a smoking set. That set left us with one more shot at musical salvation: Fais Do Do. This was the perfect encore for the festival & for the summer season in the town of Telluride. The Sheridan Opera House provided another amazing setting for Bonerama & The Radiators to funk the hell out of the closing party. Yep, that's right the bands played together, testing the limits of how much funk can fit on one stage, in one building & at one festival. 
Mark Mullins led that group into a version of "War Pigs" that may have peeled the paint straight off the walls. Thanks to everyone for sharing this special event with Oskar Blues Brewery, we will be back next year!
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