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Telluride Bluegrass Festival 2007

June 21-14, 2007

Every summer solstice we venture back to our roots in Telluride for the Bluegrass Festival. We schlep a truckload of Toads and Toadwear out to Colorado and set up a vendor booth on the festival grounds. Yeah, there’s good food, great music and lets not forget the cold beverages, but there’s also tons of great folks … all ingredients for what is traditionally called a rip roarin’ good time.

Our road crew leader, Jenn, gives us the scoop on this year’s happenings at the Horny
Toad booth.

Jenn’s Report:

All I can say is that for a festival that somehow packs 10,000 folks into a tiny mountain town, it still preserves the charm and awesomeness of a small town. Everyone is still polite in line for coffee in the morning, folks share stories and stoke, and a general “free love” vibe (uhhh … minus the weird stuff).

Anyway, we really like going every year to set up shop with the rest of the great vendors there. It feels like an old style mercantile, but instead of trading chickens for grain or something like that, we trade beer for food (vice versa), fleece for a good story, and smiles for smiles -- with great music in the air the whole time.

This year we met lots of fun people, like we do every year. The booth was a hub of activity, with repeat visits from many festivarians. Of course, it makes us proud and happy to meet the people that love wearing our stuff as much as we do. One fella, fondly nick named Chops, because of the size and volume of his sideburns, came in every day of the festival and sometime a couple times a day. By the end of the gig he was head to toe HT, and had purchased gifts for his girlfriend, mother, and from what we could tell the rest of his family and friends. Oh, and the bonus, the guy even brought us beer! Chops, wherever you are … we love ya man.

I think it was the second day of the festival and we were trying to sell some women’s shirts made out of this super yummy soft and oh-so-nice-to-touch fabric, but we didn’t have a way to merchandise them. So, brave brave Sir Jeremy volunteered to be a human rack with a sign attached that said, “Touch me, I’m soft. $1.” Now, for those of you that don’t know Jeremy, he is a big fella. One of his first visitors was bigger, and, might I add, not a woman. The visitor was seriously interested in the fabric, not Jeremy, but the visual of two larger fellas talking about the finer points of soft fabric was a sight to see.

Last day of the festival we got another interesting visit from a kid that couldn’t have been more than 15. He was dressed only in shorts and a t-shirt and a scarf that a friend had lent to him. The poor kid was freezing! As he turned his pockets inside out to reveal the 70 cents, lint, a pen, and I think some moths came flying out, he asked if he could buy something with his change. We just couldn’t turn away such an eager Toad, so we gave him a bright pink women’s sweater. It fit him, and he sported it with one of the biggest grins I saw at the festival the whole time.

Every day is an adventure truly is the way our Bluegrass booth is. Come visit us next year and let’s make some more stories and fun.

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