Lake Effect

Adirondack Independence Music Festival

We arrived in Lake George with seven songs and left with eight. Assembly of Dust rolled into the Adirondack Independence Music Festival on Friday for an afternoon set at Charles R. Wood Park—a beautiful patch of earth where two stages keep passing the music back and forth until nobody quite remembers which band they came to see.With festival math, seven songs is not a lot of real estate. So we skipped the furniture and built upward:

Love Junkie · Roads · Valhalla · Cluttered · Whirligig · Filter · Whistle Clock · Speculator

A short tour through a long history. Old friends, strange characters and a few songs that have been gathering fingerprints for decades. That is the peculiar pleasure of a festival set: arrive quickly, say what you came to say and leave the door open behind you.

The weekend’s lineup stretched from moe. and Daniel Donato’s Cosmic Country to Deer Tick, Dogs in a Pile, Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe and a small army of other musical agitators. More family reunion than industry convention—which is how we prefer our conventions. Later Friday, Al Schnier and our longtime friends in moe. invited Daniel Donato and me out to close their first set with the Grateful Dead’s “Deal.” Three singers, several guitars and one song sturdy enough to survive all of us. Daniel and Al traded electric volleys while I held down the acoustic end of the argument.

Both Relix and JamBase caught the evidence, so apparently it really happened.

Many thanks to the Adirondack Independence Music Festival, the crew, the musicians and everyone who lent us their ears. We brought seven songs. You sent us home with another fine story.

That seems like a fair deal.

— Reid