moe snoe.down festival, Spartan Arena & Bear Mountain, Rutland & Killington, Vermont

Music, Skiing, Shenanigans

While a repeat of the moe snoe.down Music Festival, first held in March 2006 in Lake Placid, New York, lured us to the snowy hills of Killington Ski Resort in Vermont to celebrate Ben’s Bachelor Party, the weekend was more about skiing and late night comradely rather than music.

Nonetheless, most of us secured tickets for their Friday and Saturday night shows at Spartan Arena, home of the Castleton State College Ice Hockey Team, in Rutland, Vermont, a short drive from the slopes of Killington. After a little back and forth on whether we would actually follow through with attending at least the first night of the shows, a large group of us drove from our condo on the slopes to the concert venue. It was quite a hike to the festival, perhaps 35 minutes, something that no one really realized when we originally planned the weekend.

The event itself was very community oriented with local high schools selling water and food as part of a fundraiser. Fortunately, they outsourced beers to organizations of age and our group made sure to down our fair share. However, I volunteered for the role of designated driver, so I had a bit of a different festival experience than a few of the others in our group. It was fun if a bit strange to watch a show in a hockey rink. And not a large NHL arena, but a smaller rink with the boards and glass still intact, a venue which I imagine isn’t thawed for a concert too often.

We missed any opening acts and arrived as moe’s first set was starting. We stayed through the set break into the second set, though not till the end. I’m more of just a casual moe fan, but the show was good and the long, meandering jams were enjoyable, even though I can never keep up with their massive catalog. A lot of others in our group knew even less. The show wasn’t very crowded, which makes it easier to move around but makes it feel like less of a party. At the very least, it was a good excuse to get out of the house for the weekend.

Night 1 Setlist (March 22^nd) at Spartan Arena, Rutland, Vermont

Set 1:

Captain America

Recreational Chemistry

Bring It Back Home

Happy Hour Hero

Cissy Strut

Bullet

Kyle's Song

Set 2:

Billy Goat

Tailspin

Opium

Faker

Tubing the River Styx

The Pit

Wind It Up

Encore:

St. Augustine

The next day, moe played an additional set at the bottom of the slopes on Bear Mountain. I skied by for a few songs.

Daytime Setlist (March 23^rd) at Bear Mountain, Killington, Vermont

Stranger than Fiction

Spaz Medicine

Blue Jeans Pizza

Waiting for the Punchline

Jazz Wank

Akimbo

Okayalright

Encore:

Spine of a Dog

We didn’t make it back down to Rutland the following night for the second night of the festival. Overall, it was a fun weekend and the festival added an extra incentive to make our weekend getaway happen on a particular weekend in Vermont rather than some other random time and place. However, what made the weekend fun was the skiing and the late night shenanigans back at the condo, not so much the festival.