Rites of Spring Festival, Phoenixville, PA

Colonial Theater Marquee

This weekend I traveled to Philadelphia for the Rites of Spring progressive rock music festival. The festival starts on Friday night and ends on Sunday night with a total of 11 bands. It all takes place in a nice little hamlet called Phoenixville about 40 minutes or so outside the city. This is the third year in a row Mark and I have made this trip and every year has been great.

I say it's a nice little hamlet now and it is. But, it was not this nice 2 years ago when we first came here. The downtown area has undergone an impressive makeover in a short period with new shops, restaurants, and brick walkways that really make Bridge Street a nice place to stroll between shows. There is a new Iron Mill brewpub a couple blocks down the street and a great coffee shop as well as several other nice restaurants. There are new blue lampposts, trash receptacles and benches scattered along the street and new brick walkways/park areas here and there.

The Bridge Street Scene across from Colonial Theater

There are several old buildings that have cool wall murals painted on them as you can see below.

Mark in front of Painted Wall near Theater

Steel City Coffeehouse and Huge Wall Mural

Enough about the town... ROSfest kicks off with three bands on Friday night. This year, both of our flights were delayed due to weather issues in Philly so we ended up getting to the venue just in time to see the last few songs of Puppet Show, the 2nd band to perform. We thought we were getting there in time to see only the last part of the 3rd band but we were fortunate that there were delays with the shows also (lighting issues?). Puppet Show performed the song of the night for me as they did a rousing rendition of "Cogs in Cogs" by Gentle Giant!!! (Dave would have flipped!) The 3rd band, Starcastle, did not start playing until midnight! This was not a good start to the festival but the crowd didn't seem to mind and gave the band many standing ovations. The show did not end until after 2am!!

After the show we headed directly to the hotel for some much needed sleep.