On Day 4, the Mindpool crew and I ducked back behind the Potawatomi stage to interview Fred LeBlanc of Cowboy Mouth. A Summerfest veteran, he was thrilled to be back in good ol’ Milwaukee for another show. For more Summerfest Live 365, click HERE!
For more Summerfest Live 365, click HERE!
Saturday night, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Ronnie of The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus backstage (in air conditioning!). We chatted about playing Summerfest, their lack of genre and their live show. Enjoy! For more Summerfest Live 365, click HERE.
Backstage at Summerfest is a funny place. There are staffers waiting for assignments, security guards milling about, police officers, paramedics and a slew of tour buses. The most efficient way to get anywhere with a press pass is to duck backstage and walk through the empty space. And then you never know who or what you’ll find… Guster For day four of the Big Gig, I started with the amp show – Guster and Jason Mraz. Guster came on stage to a rather empty Marcus but put on a respectable set nonetheless. Frontman Ryan Miller played to the crowd,…
Throughout the course of the 11 wondrous days of Summerfest, Inside Milwaukee is teaming up with the video geniuses over at Mindpool Live to go backstage with some pretty nifty acts playing the festival. On day two, we caught up with Better Than Ezra and Blackberry Smoke. I had the pleasure of chatting with the men of Better than Ezra, who were pleasantly down to earth, articulate and damn funny. Other Mindpool staffers sat down with Blackberry Smoke, while I ducked away to Kanye. They also seem like great guys with pretty rad facial hair. Enjoy. For more videos, check…
(More photos! Check out our gallery here.) * Kanye West. Photo by Evan Solochek. After easing into Summerfest day one, taking in the violently fab fireworks, Hall and Oates, Buddy Guy and Matisyahu, day two appeared with monstrous expectations from none other than Kanye West, one of the biggest names in the business. It doesn’t take much to get swept up in the hype. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is a lesson in mass appeal. From hipsters to the hip-hop devoted, most can at the very least appreciate Kanye on one level (a mastermind hit generator) while loathing him…
Photo by Adam Ryan Morris. This story appears in the June 2011 issue of Milwaukee Magazine. CLICK HERE for a full gallery of images from this article! by Cristina Daglas Did you know there used to be a nude beach? Have you heard of The Challenge, an 87-foot schooner that sunk in Lake Michigan? And are you ready for some muscle men running around with 300-pound Atlas stones? (Is anyone?) Granted, this is an odd group of tidbits, but Milwaukee’s lakefront is exactly that – a pleasantly eccentric, often surprising collection of parks, trails and beaches, some smack dab…
Photo by Bradley Meinz. This story appears in the February 2011 issue of Milwaukee Magazine. “Na na na.” Tinkering with that funny little phrase in a soundproof, nondescript brick building in Wauwatosa are the two members of the band Chester French, holed up in a tiny room, working on the melody for a song. The duo, a nationally known pop group with hip-hop influences, is big enough to be working anywhere in the country, but frontman and Milwaukee native D.A. Wallach is loyal to his hometown, though the city hasn’t exactly returned the feeling. In jeans, red high-top sneakers…
by Cristina Daglas, photo by John Cizmas Trying a new salon can be like going on a blind date. Exciting but a touch terrifying. Maybe you and your stylist will click. Maybe you won’t. Then you have to find a new one and try again. Some find the whole process intimidating and see salons as places where an entirely different language is spoken (fringe, gloss, precision, razor cuts), and clients are in the dark, arms tucked under smocks, heads in sinks, patiently awaiting the results. It’s no romance for them. Others are in the know and rather demanding. They want…
photo by John Cizmas It was a yellow Cape Cod. Cute but quaint. Walking through the Wauwatosa home on North 65th Street, Jeremy and Sara Monty, a young married couple moving from Michigan, weren’t quite sold. The house had lots of character, with a mishmash of window types and trims, and sat on a nice, tree-lined street bordering Center Park. But maybe it was too quirky. “There were just a bunch of things we didn’t like,” Jeremy says. The basement was too small. It had oil heat. “I was afraid the house was going to blow up,” Sara says. But…
