Ha! How’s that for a tease of a headline?
The ol’ Frequency inbox received an e-mail yesterday from local singer-songwriter Reed Thomas Lawrence announcing that he has been chosen to perform at the gigantic Rothbury Festival, to be held July 2-5 in Michigan.
Joining Lawrence on the bill (or is it the other way around?) are The Dead, Bob Dylan, The String Cheese Incident, The Black Crowes, and a whole bunch more huge names. Visit Rothbury’s Web site to see the lineup … you have to wait for it to scroll down for a bit, but sure enough, there’s Lawrence’s name.
This morning, Lawrence told me the gig came about through his connection to Madison House Inc., a large booking and publicity company in Colorado. Madison House signed on as Lawrence’s booking agent last year, and began working to get him on the Rothbury roster about a month ago, he said. Last week, he got an e-mail confirming the gig.
“I was so excited, but it didn’t really sink in until, I think, the next day, when I was on the Rothbury Web site looking at all the artists, and they had actually added my name to the lineup,” he said. “It was kind of surreal, because here’s Bob Dylan at the top, and I’m like, ‘What!?’”
Lawrence is scheduled to play “toward the evening” on July 4, he said, which sounds like a pretty sweet spot. Often, new acts are stuck playing at noon on the first day of the festival, when most people are still setting up tents rather than listening. But no matter when he plays, this is a huge opportunity for Lawrence. A quick Google search turned up estimates that 40,000 people attended Rothbury last year. That’s a whole lot of ears.
I’m happy to say that we’ve been covering Lawrence for a few years now, beginning with his first album back in 2006. You can read more about him here and here, if you’d like.
(Photo courtesy Ben Moon.)
