What's a Bunbury?

We took a quick weekend road-trip up to Cincinnati to check out a new music festival called Bunbury.  The decision to make the trip was easy due to the fact that several bands were playing that we wanted to see and our friends, Derek and Laurie from Wisconsin, who we met on a music cruise last year, were going as well to celebrate Laurie's birthday.

Thursday, July 12, 2012:
Maui? Fiji?  Nope, just Horse Cave, Kentucky on the drive up
after work tonight.After leaving Tennessee and rain,
the weather cleared for us for most of the weekend.

Friday, July 13, 2012
We got a hotel room at a Hilton in Florence, KY
just south of Cincinnati across the Ohio River.
We slept in since the music didn't start until after noon.
We had brunch at Izzy's, a popular regional sandwich shop
featured on Man Vs. Food.  We didn't have the guts to
order the 5 lb. reuben,, but my pastrami on rye with
accompanying potato pancake were plenty filling and delicious.

The Bunbury Music Festival takes place right on the banks of
the Ohio River in downtown Cincinnati.  There are six stages
in total set up along the river.  This is the mid-sized Landor stage.
Some of the better performances we saw during the afternoon
hours included Brent Kirby, LP, The Airborne Toxic Event
 (in the short video below) and The Henry Clay People.

This is another mid-level-sized stage sponsored by Bud Light.
There was plenty of room for viewing and the crowds were tolerable.
The evening performances included a great set by one of our
favorites, O/A/R, ( short video above) and a festival-best performance by local
favorite, Foxy Shazam (the video below is just a brief part of their
wild on-and-off stage antics).  The headliner, Jane's Addiction, was a
bit disappointing as it seems time has caught up with these
once cutting-edge rockers

Saturday, July 14, 2012
After arriving back in downtown Cincinnati before the music
started on Day 2 of Bunbury. We walked across the Ohio
River via The Purple People Bridge, a converted auto bridge
connecting Cincy with Newport, KY.  We had brunch at
another Man vs. Food star, Tom & Chee's, a gourmet
grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup restaurant.

This is the"BananaRama."  A dessert concoction at Tom & Chee's
consisting of a grilled glazed doughnut surrounding fresh
caramelized bananas and melted Gouda cheese.
Yes, it was outstanding.

The weather was a bit more threatening today and one of the first shows we saw
by Imagine Dragons (video clip below) was in a light rain shower.  However,
it didn't last long and the sun broke free of the clouds and left us with a fairly
nice, albeit steamy, afternoon and evening where we caught other
good performances by The Gaslight Anthem (second video clip below)
and headliner, Weezer.

Sunday, July 15, 2012
Since no bands we were interested in were playing until
late on Day 3 of Bunbury, we decided to head home a bit early
after having a delicious birthday brunch for Laurie at Virgil's Cafe
in nearby Bellevue, KY, which has been featured on Diner's,
Drive-Ins & Dives.  We enjoyed our brief visit to the
Cincinnati area.  Above is another nice view across the Ohio
of a neat, new condo building in Covington, KY called The Ascent.

We are going to keep the Bunbury Festival on our list of things to possibly do again in the years to come.  For a first-time festival they had a great line-up, were very organized and reasonably priced.