Lola and I agree that Friday night was the best BoDeans concert we ever heard, and we never once saw the stage. Walking the outside edge of the riverfront fairgrounds we duck under yellow police line tape and eventually accept an offer to hang out with the fireworks crew. When the baseball game at the neighboring field concludes, those Scott County boys launch twenty minutes of pyrotechnics over the Mississippi River. Leaning back in the camp chairs we watch as the explosions reflect off the water. After all the big shells have been launched we sit chatting while emptying cans of cold Bud Lite.
In the warm darkness between the five white arches of Centennial Avenue Bridge and the chameleon lights of the Neon Skybridge, the initial River Roots Live Music Festival in Davenport, Iowa becomes a live soundtrack for a perfect summer evening. Every now and then a freight train of scrap iron and corn syrup rumbles south and occasionally a line of box cars clanks back towards the northern cities. Walking back to the hotel we giggle at having lived through yet another strange and wonderful moment in time.
