String Cheese Weekend

This weekend I drove up to Asheville to see the String Cheese Incident in concert and spend a little time with some wonderful friends. The show was wonderful – the music itself trance-inducing; the audience dancing almost non-stop the whole time; the auditorium smelling of patchouli and cloves. The highlight for me was the song “Looking Glass,” from the band’s album Untying the Not. The guitar licks tore through my brain like a benevolent steel hummingbird flying gleefully through my neurons.

The second half of the show started with the band members entering from the back of the auditorium while banging on drums each one of them carried. The tribal drum-circle vibe continued for the rest of the show, which didn’t end till around midnight.

The next morning I had a late breakfast with my friends Adam and Nur at the West End Bakery, a great little organic bakery/café. We had an interesting conversation that ranged from the political to the spiritual to the musical.

On the way home I stopped at Black Rock Mountain State Park, the highest mountain elevation in the state of Georgia. The picture above, from the park’s website, captures only a fraction of the beauty of the autumn leaves and the magnificent vistas from the many scenic overlooks throughout the park.