Meltdown 2014

The sixth annual presentation of the River’s Family Music Meltdown and Book Bash is completed, and holy smokes what a day it was.

It was — by a fair margin — a record-setting day, attendance-wise (we’re estimating between 3,500 and 4,000 people came through over the six hours).  The music and book lineups were insanely good.  The piglets were insanely adorable.  The food was fantastic.  The bounce houses were bouncy, the gymnasts were gymnastic, the circus show arts people were circusy, the dance room was dancey, and everyone was incredibly happy.

Doing a little back-of-the-envelope math, I think the Meltdown is likely, per capita, the best-attended family music/book festival in the country.  (About 270,000 people live in the three counties that the River’s broadcast reaches; that means we had around 1.4-1.5% of the target population out.)  Maybe there’s another one I don’t know about, and that’s fine, but regardless: Wow!  That’s a ton of people.

The River had an official photographer there so we’ll have more pictures soon, and probably some video too.  But this photo of Anand and Scott, from Rani Arbo & daisy mayhem, I think sums it up — crazy fun musicians, packed but happy crowds, and nobody freaking out — even though there are literally dozens of balloons on the ceiling, each of which presumably came from a child.

Anyway: Man, I love y’all.  Huge thanks to Jarrett for an incredible author/illustrator lineup, and tremendous energy.  Thanks to Mark Lattanzi at the station for making everything work.  Thanks to all of the station staff for their hard work, especially Monte for his awesome author previews.  Thanks to the sponsors and vendors.  Thanks to the performers and authors/illustrators for entertaining us.  Thanks to the school.

And thanks you all for coming out and having fun.