My main blog is Michigan in Pictures, and today is its 7th anniversary.
It’s the longest continually running internet project I’ve ever been involved with and I’m pretty proud of my work on it.
The photo is deadly by Terry Johnston, a regular Michigan in Pictures contributor!
We had a giant crowd for the 2012 Traverse City Wine & Art Festival, and while the numbers aren’t final, we had nearly 5000 folks at the Grand Traverse Commons to see Rusted Root (who were great!) and enjoy the offerings of 27 wineries, 20 artists, 8 restaurants and some extremely hard-working volunteers and staff.
This was nearly double last year and the biggest party I’ve ever thrown. Marco who helped me keep the production rolling snapped this shot and when I got on stage right before Rusted Root I was blown away to see how our vision of 4 years finally materialized.
Check out some of the photos right here.
PS: Got an idea for a 2013 headliner? I’m all ears!
SuperDre is one of the Michigan artists who I have yet to see. That sorry state will end at the first-ever Electric Forest*. EF is sponsoring Absolute Michigan, and I’m working to help promote the festival in Michigan. We are giving away a pair of tickets to the Electric Forest Festival this weekend as the kickoff to our Festival Summer promotion, through which we’re going to give away as many tickets to Michigan festivals and events as is humanly possible.
All you have to do is be on our mailing list. Seems easy enough…
*check out Bob’s interview of Jeremy Stein, founder of Electric Forest and its predecessor Rothbury.
In the latest Driving Michigan video from Absolute Michigan, Seth Bernard, Ken Lake and I had great fun at Founders Brewing in Grand Rapids. Head brewer Jeremy Kosmicki showed us around their amazing facility in Grand Rapids and shared some of their fantastic beer. Be sure to select HD at the bottom right and yay Michigan Beer!
What I’m doing this weekend … 2nd annual Traverse City Comedy Arts Festival (Traverse City, Michigan)
Lots more to come…
The 2011 Traverse City Comedy Arts Festival is coming February 10-13. We’ll be doing some cool stuff online so stay stay tuned!
The photo is by Robert Stucky – check out the 2010 Comedy Festival slideshow!
ArtPrize has returned to Grand Rapids for the second year. For my money, this is hands-down the most amazing event I’ve ever been to. I’m in GR right now, ready for a day of exploring this multi-venue art explosion. We’re featuring ArtPrize on Absolute Michigan once again too – here’s the montage video I made for ArtPrize 2009 – I’ll try to do one for 2010 too!
One of my absolutely favorite musicians is Michelle Shocked and she’s in Grand Rapids tonight at 8 PM. If you can get there, don’t miss at the Wealthy Theatre. She’s looking for some progressive, community organizer types in Grand Rapids to help stimulate discussion about the plight of the American worker and will feature her 1992 album “Arkansas Traveler.”
One of the things I’m doing this week – you probably should check it out bigger on YouTube.
All next week Absolute Michigan will be On Location at the Traverse City Film Festival and I came across this in researching an article for Wednesday (tune in for sure!). I also coordinate online media for the festival and in 2010 we will be posting daily video digests, and the link above and traversecityfilmfestival.org are the place to get all that and much more!
