May 2022 - An Anthem of Unknown Origin [Montana Music Week(end)]

Madden sessions

My wonderful friends and I just pulled out an amazing love, laughter, nature, foodie, music, and dance couple of days, and yes we put a ton of work into it, but OH BOY was it worth it! During Art Basel past November, we enjoyed hosting our friends at our new place in Miami. We had the best time, and in between laughs and dances, Lizzie and Alika had a vision: We want to have you all (and more) at our new home state (MONTANA) for a “micro-wellness-and-music-festival”. They rented an awesome ranch in the middle of the Bozeman mountain range, where we could set up and be loud, which is all that a musical crew could ever dream of. Crazy travel plans were arranged (getting to Montana is “on purpose” hard according to our hostess), and once we arrived it didn’t disappoint. Beautiful outdoors, gorgeous property, sound healing, and breathwork EVERY DAY, made us both find the connection with ourselves and the energy to keep going for days and nights of dancing and fun. This set is the one I played on Saturday for Kristin’s Big Birthday Bash. We had learned our lesson from the previous night when our “main stage” had been violently closed at 3 am by the owners of the property that had decided it was a good idea to stay in the house next to our DiscoBarn. I’m sorry for them, when we said we’d be bringing sound equipment they were probably thinking of a couple of guitars, maybe a ukelele… Little did they know that the largest mobile club in the state was coming to town! That inconvenience made us figure out ways to escape the craziness and we ended up setting up in our meditation room, which ended up being the best. As "revenge" for the overbearing landlords, we started plotting a plan to take over the property. Part of the machination was to raise a fringe flag on the property to claim the land as ours. The flag shall come up to the sound of An Anthem of Unknown Origin. We had not really worked out DJ slots, but again when a GREAT group gets together, the energy just dictates the times. Our host and AMAZING DJ Lizzie (aka DJ Plot-twist) gave a recital of energy, smooth transitions, and pure magic. After more than 2 hours behind the decks with the perfect warm-up, she asked for relief and I jumped in ready to deliver a peak time session. This time I wanted to overdeliver for my wife’s birthday. The pressure was on, the set went on for a little over 2.5 hours and I WORKED for it. It was one of the “hard” sets when I’m deep in technique and selection to make the ultimate sound experience come through. When I was done playing, Chad had an enormous grin on his face. I had seen that expression before, he approved. After going over the tracklist history I realized the uniqueness of the selection. I decided to re-record the set just as I had played it, carefully following the "recipe" to try to recreate the moment as faithfully as possible.