Day 5: Milwaukee
Welcome
Yesterday we played a live radio session on WMSE Milwaukee and then headed down to the waterfront to play at Summerfest.
I started my day with fairly balanced meal by hotel standards consisting of granola, watermelon, lemonade, English muffin, and an egg. The two muffins you see pictured I ended up saving and eating in the van today.
Tristan did a fine job of driving us the three hours to Milwaukee and once there we went straight to WMSE for our session. We played a tight twenty minute set and debuted one of the new tunes we've been working on.
Summerfest is a festival held at Henry Maier Festival Park, right next to the waterfront of Milwaukee Bay. It hosts more than 800 bands and close to one million fans over eleven days. We played a good set and then afterwards while we were looking for a snack we discovered the all-American corporate classic-rock joy-spring known as Bobby Friss. Bobby is sponsored by Miller Lite, Wisconsin Harley Davidson, Gator Harley Davidson, and the Fraan Hasch Law Group, which helps Bobby play all across the country, supported by 'world class musicians' [1], doing 'whatever it takes to entertain his crowds' [2].
Seeing the Daniel Hoan Memorial Bridge was a highlight of my day and it was an easy choice for my bridge of the day. It is a tied arch bridge with a longest span of 185m and a total length of 3km. Although it was completed in in 1972 after a construction period of only two years, due to public backlash against the Milwaukee county freeway system it did not open to traffic until 1977. In the year 2000 one of the spans suffered a near collapse after two of it's three support beams failed. Tied arch bridges are susceptible to problems caused by bad welds and have been described by the Federal Highway Administration as nonredundant. Luckily no motorists were injured and the damaged span was demolished with explosives (type unknown) and then reconstructed.
This famous stunt from The Blues Brothers (1980) was filmed on the Hoan Bridge while it was still under construction.
Beth of the day goes to Ben for discovering Bobby Friss and opening our eyes to the world of corporate classic rock, for making Tristan extremely happy by playing a modern country playlist while we were driving home, and for making a couple of really top-notch Instagram stories.
Good to see you up on the board Ben!
[1.] www.bobbyfriss.com
[2.] www.bobbyfriss.com