This weekend, Funkrust Brass Band piled into a bunch of cars and a rented van and hit the road for Trenton, NJ and Philadelphia! We were playing two shows in one day, just a few hours apart.
The first was at the Trenton Pork Roll Festival. Yes, a festival dedicated to Pork Roll. And believe it or not, it wasn't the only pork roll festival in town that day — there was another, rival festival just a few blocks away.
The pork roll festival was amazing. It was a joyous celebration of a local cuisine, and people got really into it. It doesn't matter that pork roll isn't actually that good (don't tell the Trenton people I said that!). It was a fun day.
The festival had its very own superhero, PRoll, who fights South Jersey evildoers with his Meat of Justice (or something like that). He was pretty into the band:
After our set, we gorged on pork roll, and headed off to Philadelphia.
In Philly, we were playing with Molly Rhythm, a fun ska-punk band we shared a bill with back in January in Brooklyn (actually, the last time I played trombone with Funkrust).
The venue was pretty small, but it was jammed. We did our usual thing of parading through the crowd on our opening number and a few other tunes during the set, and it wasn't easy to elbow past all those people:
I got to take a solo on Terminus, one of our newer tunes. Normally, the rhythm section doesn't take a lot of solos. But with a trombone in my hand, they gave me the green light. I don't know how it sounded, but it felt good. And people asked me questions about it after, so it must have stuck with folks. So it was probably fine.
The real point here is that it's amazing to play in front of new crowds who don't know what to expect. Funkrust's shtick is pretty dark and foreboding, but our music is pretty light and happy and fun. Watching people watch us and try to reconcile the two is always fascinating.
After us, Molly Rhythm came in and knocked the house down. They're just phenomenal. Find them, listen to them, dance with them. You won't regret it. So so good.