I first met the guys from Dead Feather Moon through my good friend and sound engineer Aaron Swanton (he makes records – musicians, hire him – he’s amazing). Anyways, they came by the studio and recorded in one of our very first White Horse Sessions. If you haven’t seen our White Horse Sessions, we’ve got them all here on our Vimeo page, CLICK HERE FOR WHITE HORSE SESSIONS! We were all really stoked on these guys and continued to follow them through 2011 at shows all over town from The Belly Up to the Casbah. So of course when I saw they were opening up for Transfer and The Silent Comedy I was thrilled. Like I expected, their show was a lot of fun.

The house was packed, sold out actually, and the vibe in the room was good. They started their set strong beginning with Everything going straight into Dark Horse and followed by 1907. The room quickly became warm and toasty, transforming into a hot and sweaty summer weekend even though in truth it was really a cold Monday night in the dead of winter. These boys sure know how to warm up a room! By their last song Always Around, the crowd was going nuts, completely taken by these guys, begging and pleading for more. Trust me friends, you’ve gotta check out Dead Feather Moon!

Pick up their music here CLICK HERE FOR THE TUNES!

I spent my last night of 2011 at The Lafayette Hotel in San Diego, California, floating on a cloud, happy as can be, surrounded by my friends and family.

Kevin and I arrived early to prepare for the night’s activities which would include a photobooth in our room. Our room ended up being pretty small and it was looking like the tub was going to be our best option until our kind brother Joshua Zimmerman, of The Silent Comedy selflessly offered to switch rooms with us. He had been granted the master suite in the corner, Room 101, which had a huge papered wall perfect for pictures. We weren’t in the room for more than a couple of minutes before the first knock came ringing at our door. That’s where the party started and the door pretty much became a revolving one as all my lovely friends came through to say hello. Of course, I can’t share all the juicy details of what ensued in Room 101, but I can assure you that fun times were had by all. And…I’ve got the pictures to prove it!

I should probably mention what brought us all out to The Lafayette in the first place and that is the music. Over 800 people showed up for the music with the tickets selling out days before the event. The reason? Because the line-up for the night was INCREDIBLE. Come on now, The Heavy Guilt, The Creepy Creeps, Low Volts, Transfer, and The Silent Comedy on the same night under the same roof?! I wish I could have seen everyone play and have those pictures to share with you, but a girl can’t be in two places at once, so here are just a few shots of mine, and Kevin’s, of the music we did get to enjoy. The rest of the time was spent being weird in Room 101.

Thanks for visiting my blog; I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about all of my adventures of 2011. Looking forward to sharing even more with you guys in 2012! Stay tuned…there’s more to come!

When I think back to the years just after I graduated high school, Cheshire Cat, Dude Ranch, and Enema of the State were some of the main soundtracks to my life. I like to refer to my favorite music as “life’s soundtracks” since many times the best memories are made with music happening in the background. Just as the smell of freshly cut wood reminds me of my dad, certain music takes me back to specific moments in my life. Hearing Blink 182 puts me right back in the car with all my of friends, windows down speakers up, singing along word for word, San Diego’s own, Blink 182. At that period in my life, their lyrics were easy to relate to. Life was carefree, still living at home with my parents, with my biggest concerns being what I was going to do on Friday night.

With age and experience one’s soundtrack will always change; Life evolves and thus the words and beat to which one relates to will in turn metamorphosize. Even though the memories I’m making today are being made to different songs, I still enjoy singing along when Blink 182 comes on the radio. Listening to Dammit, What’s My Age Again, and Carousel from the stage is a new memory, a hidden new track if you will, an addition to my soundtrack.

Having spent a lot of time with these guys, I knew the night was going to be another wild one, Burning of Rome style. Paste Magazine accurately described the band as, “Gypsy punk, rife with keys, rasping vocals and animated onstage antics.” My favorite “onstage antics” memory was at The San Diego Music Awards in 2009 when a sample of the kill the beast chant from The Lord of the Flies began playing over the speakers and all five band members walked out with pig heads and performed for a shocked and scared crowd. I love their unexpectedness and their desire to entertain.

When I arrived at the Casbah at midnight they were about to begin their set. The moment I saw my friends, I knew this night was going to be a fun one. Decked out in tribal war paint these guys were in it for blood and they got it! Not more than three songs into the set, lead singer, Adam shoved his keyboard to the ground, gripped the mic between his teeth, and entranced the crowd. No more than two songs after that, Adam was off the stage and in the pit. Moments later he was swept off his feet and carried around the room by the swarm of adoring fans. By the end of the set guitarist, Joe’s knees were bloodied through his torn white pants. I’m sure everybody had their share of battle wounds. Being on the front lines, I was no different, I arrived home to find my legs polka-dotted with bruises and a guitar gash down my left hip. I’m sure all the pool-goers who saw me in Vegas a couple days later thought I was hardcore with my bruises and scratches. In truth, it’s just all about the picture. For some reason when the picture is the reward, the thought of the consequences always end up going right out the window. So without a care (except for my cameras of course) I braved the mosh pits and crowd-surfers and got these fun shots:

If you haven’t seen these guys before check them out August 19th at the Ruby Room in Hilcrest!

Please stay tuned for my next giveaway…friend me on Facebook now and you could be the next winner! If you don’t want to wait for the next giveaway, and you see a picture of mine that you’d like on your wall, all of my work is available for purchase. Thank you friends for your love and support…you guys are the BEST!

As usual I’m ahead of myself, so let me back up and tell you my story of the day…

It’s 5am Saturday morning the alarm is going off and Kevin and I look at each other with tired eyes and come to the reality that yes it is 5am on a Saturday, still dark outside, but the clock is ticking and we need to get up and get moving. The surf competition starts at 7am and we have a 30 minute drive to the beach and have a bunch of gear to load up and still need to fit coffee into the equation somewhere. Like soldiers, we make it happen and soon enough are standing on the beach taking in the beautiful view and breathing fresh crisp morning air. A picture of us at this point would have been fun to share since we could easily have been compared to the sherpas of Mt. Everest. Backpacks, sling bags, tripods, lenses, hands full, we begin the day’s adventure, marching through the sand, our shoes filling up grain by grain, step by step. Kevin took on the task of shooting the surfers in the water using a 400mm lens to get close to the action without getting wet. I on the other hand skipped around the beach interviewing and snapping photos of the surfers, volunteers, and general public. At one point I found myself calf deep in water, in my favorite tennis shoes! The things I risk to get the shot…unfortunately, the shoes didn’t survive. Since the event was a two (actually 3) part event, I want to show you the surf/beach photos now and then I’ll continue the story.

While the surf competition was fun and the boys were good looking…just down the beach was a stage ready to host some of my favorite bands. The lineup for the day was: The Howls, The Romany Rye, The Silent Comedy, and Switchfoot. Just gotta put it out there that whoever chose the lineup is a genius in my mind. Rarely do bands in these type of settings go so well together as these guys did, this show could have easily been a $75 dollar ticket (or more) and seriously been worth every penny. But it didn’t cost that, no one was trying to make a profit, just donations to help the kids while offering up a fun day of music, surf, and community. It was such a fun day, the crowd was huge and just as stoked as I was for the good music booming across the beach. Without further ado I’m just going to get on with it and show you the photos. I think you’ll think they’re cooler than my stories about free pop chips in the tent backstage, or the scary wobbly makeshift step that us camera people risked our lives on to climb up and down off the tall stage. So here are the pretty pictures of another beautiful day spent watching some very talented boys I love play their hearts out to a sea of adoring fans.

After the show, Kevin and I were still on the clock, so we spent some more time gathering interviews and snapping pictures. When the event was over we dragged our tired weary bones up a really big hill to our car, loaded the gear in and dumped about 3/4 of a cup of sand from each of my shoes before plopping into the car and taking a big breath because we still had 1/3 of a workday yet to go. It’s 6pm sitting there in traffic in the car thirty minutes from home, with every camera battery we have needing to be charged, cards needing to be downloaded, and tummies with not more than a banana and a bag of pop chips in them with our next call time at 8:30 back in Solana Beach which luckily is only a twenty six minute drive back (that’s a joke…I mean the lucky part). I bet this is when you’re wondering what we did. Well, since it was me and Kevin we did what we do, sucked it up and made it happen with smiley faces. Haha, tired smiley faces. Even though we were pretty wiped out from the sun and the fun of the day, we still were having a blast since our third and final part of the day was spent at The Belly Up Tavern, shooting (and enjoying) Little Hurricane, Fiction Family, and Johnny Rzeznik of Goo Goo Dolls. Jon Foreman even surprised everyone when he joined Johnny Rzeznik on stage to sing Iris. And guess what…we shot video of it and you can watch it now —> CLICK HERE FOR VIDEO <— The proceeds from this final portion of the event also went to Standup For Kids with tickets at $25.00 a piece and a full house. I'm not sure of the total amount raised, but looking around the room and seeing that every group of four equaled a hundred bucks for kids, that meant they raised thousands of dollars and that makes me happy. Here’s the third and final set of pictures, enjoy:

if you’d like to see all of the shots from the day, head over to my flickr page