What an incredible festival. Today we just hung out and saw some great shows from The Waybacks, Patty Griffin, Jenny and Johnny, The Dukes of September Rhythm Revue, T-Bone Burnett, and Elvis Costello. Golden Gate Park is an amazing spot for a festival, and I can’t believe it’s free to the public. Here’s a backstage photo from T-Bone Burnett’s set just to give you an idea of the backdrop. The photo doesn’t do justice, but it’s pretty amazing.
Backstage during T-Bone's Set
At one point backstage in the midst of this natural and musical paradise, I was hanging out with our booking agent (who we affectionately call “Hatchet” Wiley, “Hatch” for short), taking in all the great music. We look around and realized we were surrounded by some of our favorite artists like Patty Griffin, Buddy Miller, Emmylou Harris, Elvis Costello, Bonnie Raitt, T-Bone Burnett, Steve Earle, and Jenny Lewis. Everybody’s just hanging out real low key talking, having a drink, listening to music. It was pretty far out. We were trying to be as cool as possible, mingling and pretending to not geek out. We also noticed the beautiful actress Kirsten Dunst sitting at a table about 5 feet in front of us. Our fearless booking agent “Hatch” Wiley quietly announced in a whisper that he wants to take a picture of Kirsten Dunst on his cell phone camera but doesn’t want her to notice. He thought he could take the picture and pass it off like he’s just typing a text message. We told him this was not a good idea and to just try to be cool. Apparently this was not an option. He then raised his his cellphone into an awkward position pretending to type a text message pointed directly at the unsuspecting Ms. Dunst. I start briskly walking away, pretending not to know the strange paparazzi man pretending to not take a photo. I don’t know if Kirsten noticed the awkward arm positioning of the texting man, or me walking quickly away, but I do know that she looked up right in time to see this:
(This photo is a Hatch Wiley re-enactment of what happened)
Turns out that Hatch forgot to turn his flash off (although he swears he turned it off). So we would like to say to Ms. Kirsten Dunst that we love you and we’re sorry on behalf of Hatch. Tomorrow we vow to be cooler, to keep our booking agent in line, and to play one hell of a rock ‘n’ roll show.
Peace,
The BOH
