There were a few key acts we wanted to see on Sunday, so before that Face and I broke down our tent and moved all of our stuff to the ca. After we saw what we wanted to see, we were ready to split. It had been a great weekend so far, and even though we were excited for George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic and The New Pornographers, we were beat (and I was, and still am, very sunburned).

I was also excited to see Ivan Neville’s Dumpstaphunk, because a) awesome name, and b) I didn’t want to miss a member of the Neville family. But their performance wasn’t until 2:30, so Face and I had time to wander. We watched a little bit of the band Euforquestra at the Starshine Stage, which really didn’t do much for me. Then we wandered over to the Sunshine Stage, where all the acts we wanted to see where at.

At 1 p.m., the Bloomington, Ill. band Backyard Tire Fire played. I went to Illinois State University for two years, and while I was there, I heard a lot about this band. I had never seen them though, so I figured why not. The band came on, and for a relatively unknown band outside of Bloomington, they attracted a sizable crowd. The group’s roots rock(with emphasis on rock) was surprisingly refreshing to hear. Their lyrics were simplistic and kind of stuck to the cliche’s you would hear a roots rock group sing about (girls, driving, drinking and everything in between), but the music and melodies were often so good you forgot about them.

The drunken (or kind of drunken?) escapades lasted about an hour, and they kept the energy up throughout. The band’s covers of Roger Miller’s “King of the Road” and Warren Zevon’s “Lawyers, Guns and Money” were faithful and were nice additions to a set of tunes that could have stood up on its own. It was a nice surprise to see something I wasn’t expecting.