Deep Ellum Arts Festival 2005

I spent most of the day Sunday wandering around the Deep Ellum Arts Festival looking at paintings and sculptures by regional artists. Since our office is now in the Deep Ellum area of Dallas, the Arts Festival was within walking distance. I took a few fuzzy photos of the arts festival with my little JB1 camera. Susan was suffering from allergies and stayed home. I thought I’d be on my own but I ran into some friends.

Standing in front of the stage listening to a live band, I recognized a dog which turns up at the RBNO sometimes. Sure enough, attached to the other end of the dog’s leash was Bill James, a fellow robot builder. He was there with a couple of friends. One of them, Sarah, is a drummer. She was interested in the band that was currently playing, called Cherry Blossom Clinic. By coincidence, the new drummer for CBC is April Samuels, a fellow website designer who I know from a past consulting job. So after the set ended, I managed to get April and Sarah introduced.

The band members had a photographer with them and spent some time after they got off stage shooting the usual sort of eccentric band photos in a nearby parking lot. This was the first time I’d met the other folks in the band, who turned out to be an interesting collection of people. I only became aware of CBC after April joined the band and this was actually my first time to hear them play. If you haven’t heard CBC, imagine a sort of insane Mr. Rogers playing guitar; add vocals, another guitar, bass, and drums. They have the energy of an early 1980’s garage-punk band combined with music that’s a compositional mix the 1960’s and today. I liked the music enough to buy their most recent CD, Orange (a new one is on the way I’m told). You can listen to a couple of mp3s on their website.

In the end I stayed out in the sun a little too long but it was a beautiful day and well worth a little sunburn.