I always try to make it down to Wolf Trap for a show at least once per summer because as I’ve mentioned many times before it’s one of my favorite venues. Last night was the night for this summer. It really is a testament to how much I love it that I’m willing to deal with rush hour traffic in both Baltimore and DC to get down there. Last night’s drive was particularly terrible because we drove down in thunderstorms pretty much the entire way. There was one particularly harrowing part where we could barely see the road it was raining so hard.

Despite the awful weather during the drive, the weather gods continued to smile on me this week because we got no rain once we actually got to the venue. There were a couple flashes of lightning, but it didn’t wind up amounting to anything thankfully. In fact it turned out to be the perfect barefoot, blue jean summer night. It’s my favorite kind of weather. The fact that the show was acoustic meant that the music wasn’t super loud, and you could hear the cicadas in the trees as well. It really was the perfect summer atmosphere in one of my favorite places.

The performance I went to see last night was the American Acoustic tour which featured The Punch Brothers, I’m With Her (a supergroup composed of Sarah Watkins, Sarah Jarosz, and Aoife O’Donovan), and Julian Lage. Each of them played some songs on their own, but even in their individual sets there was lots of collaboration between them with various members of each of the groups coming out to join each other on songs. Then at the end they played a number of songs all together.

I pretty much have to agree with exactly what I heard a guy walking out in front of us say. My favorite parts of the show were the ones featuring the members of I’m With Her because I’m a huge sucker for some female harmonies. And as he said, I too still miss Nickel Creek, and loved the few Nickel Creek songs they played. It was an excellent night of music all around though. Everything about the night was well worth the less than fun trip to get there.