The Ques Brothers competed yesterday at the 2009 Southern Hot Wing Festival in South Main, and I stepped into my role as team photographer and took 150 pics. Before I start posting pics of us, though, I want to recommend a GREAT band I heard yesterday at the festival: The Young Guns.
I happened to take a walk early afternoon, and as I approached the stage, I heard the band and thought, “these guys are rocking out.” Then I looked at them and realized they were kids, probably 13-16 years old, playing some of the best rock covers I ever heard. They played AC/DC’s “Whole Lotta Rosie,” which was supposed to be their final song, but the crowd went wild and started screaming for an encore. How often do you hear encore requests at street festivals? Usually, crowds are like, “ok, band’s over, let’s get another beer.” But the wing fest crowd couldn’t get enough of this band, and the fest’s organizers told them they could do an encore if they wanted. “We’re going to play some Led Zeppelin for you,” said the lead singer, and then they proceeded to play the best rendition of “Rock and Roll” I’ve ever heard by a cover band. These guys love performing and I could tell they would’ve been happy to stay onstage all afternoon.
Check out their website – they have a version of Jimi Hendrix’ “Voodoo Chile” and some other songs. They play the Daisy again on May 9, the Redbirds game on May 11, and Minglewood Hall on May 31. A lot of people were saying, “they should book these guys to play the Saucer” but I think the over-21 rule would put a stop to that. Wonder if there’s an exception for performers… anyway, I’m definitely going to try to go see these guys at either the Daisy or Minglewood next month.
A few festival pics:
Uncle Ray loves having his picture taken. He’s seen here sampling Pluck U’s wings.
John D and Otto enjoying patio seating underneath our sponsor The Silly Goose’s banner. John looks annoyed that we had kegs of PBR rather than his favorite, Bud Light.
Bicycle Bobby grills a fresh batch of wings.
No festival photo album is complete without a pic of Mikey hamming it up for the camera…
… or a pic of the Nuh-Uh Girl eating.
In addition to the wings, we served up homemade onion rings (pictured here), fries, and tater tots.
About 5:30 the rain began to threaten, and we hopped into cars and trolleys and headed north to the Saucer, where the festivities continued around the pool table.
The gang’s all here (except Erin, who I accidentally cut out of the picture. She wasn’t too happy about that).
With Terry, who isn’t in the best of moods after losing 4 games out of 5 to me at pool.
Stephanie gets ready to break. You can’t really tell in this pic, but Stephanie has a tube top dress on.
Complete photo album (151 pics) here. What a great festival, and we were fortunate that the rain held off for the better part of the day. Can’t wait for next year. My only complaint was that they only had four portable restrooms, which was not enough for a crowd that size and the lines got long.
Now we move on to today’s festival – Rajun Cajun Crawfish Fest. It’s on Wagner Street along the river betwen Union and Beale, and runs from 12 to 6. Two bands, buckets of crawfish for sale, as well as crawfish races, crawfish eating contests, and bobbing for crawfish. I’ll be there all day (weather permitting), and I’m enforcing my “no side trips” rule. No going to the Saucer for “just one beer” and not coming back for three hours, as I’ve done in previous years. The Saucer will still be there at 6 when the festival ends. Many of the gang like to hang out on Barton Flats’ rooftop, but I’m not doing that either – when there’s a festival going on, I want to be at the festival, not somewhere nearby looking at the festival. Not sure where I’m going to sit to eat my crawfish, though, since this morning’s rain has surely made the grass nice and soggy. I’ll figure it out though. Hope to see you down on the river this afternoon!