On July 13th and 14th The Shotgun Wedding Hip-Hop Symphony and Brass Mafia performed at Moody’s Outdoor Stage in Truckee, CA for the Jazz Camp and Festival that owner JJ Morgan presents every year. During the week Adam Theis and Joe Cohen led the Jazz Camp along with fellow instructors Josh Jones and Will Bernard. This year the number of students was in the 60s! Every night the faculty performed concerts at Moody’s.

The weeknight faculty concerts went smoothly considering the band consisted of members from all over the country that had a few hours to rehearse for the whole week. The turnout was solid and the band played a wide variety of originals, arrangements and some standards. When the weekend rolled around things got really rowdy and moved to the outdoor stage at Moody’s. The festival venue was packed both Friday and Saturday nights to a capacity of two to three hundred people each night. Brass Mafia played a set to warm up the night then Shotgun went on with the full 13 piece Symphony and played the set they were rehearsing for the Independent CD Release party the following week. After the show more jamming happened down the street at Passtime Club with a great Reno band called Kaiser Soze and that was followed by street horn hip-hop jams and that was followed by a parade of horns and drunkards to the river house which led to more craziness.

The bands had a great time up in paradise. Dublin bought a bunch of stakes off some guy at a gas station selling them out of the back of his truck. Dub grilled them up with some oyesters and had a great meal on Saturday in between soaking in the Truckee River. Sunday some of the guys went out on a boat on Tahoe with Chicken and Shaggy, which is now a 3 year tradition as well. Gootimes y’all!

Below is the River house in downtown Truckee. It is one of the two houses we stayed at.