Curious what my neighbors were up to, I joined the large crowd at a barn on Northview last Saturday night to see if Laurel Walker was right; that there would be "power to the people."
Laurel wrote about these ambitious guys in the Nov. 1st Journal Sentinel. They were going to try something unusual and power a concert with riders on stationary bikes. A pedal jam. I don't know if I was more curious to hear what "a soulful mix of funk-a-fide rock with a spiritually positive message" sounded like or if I just needed to see the lights dim when the riders tired. Either way, I live just a mile away, so I went.
Impossible to read addresses at night, I drove until I found cars lining both sides of Northview, a little west of Meadowbrook Rd. Friendly neighbors let me park in their driveway and I approached the barn at the end of a tiki-lit, car-lined drive.
You'd think a large dairy barn could handle just about any crowd, especially one for a "funk-a-fide rock" concert, but the place was packed and I barely made it in the door. The music was decent and loud enough but the lighting was a little on the low side.
The former milking parlor under the concert's main floor was clean and uncrowded and set up with tables, food and a large video screen of the live concert upstairs. But my favorite part of the whole experience was watching the bikers. One gal was pedalling so vigorously I could swear she was dancing. Maybe she just started something -- the pedal dance.
