We played a couple of outdoor shows last week that featured a variety of surprises for both us and the audiences.

First, we played the last set at Shakori Hills Festival on Friday night, at midnight. The crowd was terrific, and a considerable percentage of them seemed to have started their partying long before the sun went down. We invited a bunch of people up on stage to dance about two-thirds of the way through our show, and had a great time weaving around through dancing girls and a guy who had some early hip-hop moves while looking like a cross between jed clampett and ziggy stardust (pictured), looking for actual band members to make eye contact. The festival staff quickly cleared off most of the dancers after that song, apparently worried that the stage would collapse. But right at the end of “Get to Love,” a young guy jumped up on stage right next to me and performed two perfect backflips before jumping back into the audience.

Our impromptu (sic) dancer at our show the following day at the NC Museum of Art was significantly less charming and benign. He was dressed in Blue Cross Blue Shield Bear costume and proceeded to grab small children with whom to dance right in front of the stage for most of our set. When will those charming corporate shills learn?