As I mentioned in my Bourbon and Beyond post, Michele and I decided that one music festival was not enough and that we should go to TWO festivals on back to back weekends in Louisville, Kentucky. The problem is that we live in Alaska which is a six hour flight and a six hour drive from Louisville.
This would be our second time at Louder Than Life, our first being in 2017 that was epic. We had tickets for last year’s festival but it was cancelled at the last minute, after we were in Louisville, in fact, because of a hurricane.
We were determined to be back. After our awesome time at Bourbon and Beyond, Michele flew home to Alaska for the week, well, three days, and I headed to Lexington to stay with my aunt. While there I visited the Buffalo Trace Distillery. What a great tour. Hung out around town and waited for Michele’s return.
On Friday, day one of the festival Michele flew back down and was super late on her flight from Chicago because of massive storms. We made it inside at about 4:30 just in time for all of the big bands to start. It was so hot these too weeks and I could barely walk because of a bad case of plantar fasciitis that I thought I was going to die on the first day.
The headliner was Slipknot and was one of the bands I wanted to see the most. They rocked it and man, what a set.
We learned from waiting on the shuttle bus for for more than an hour the previous week to just walk back to the car. It was about a mile but my god it was a struggle with my bum foot.
The second day we headed to Holiday World in the morning and made it back to the festival around 3 pm. This was the day I was really looking forward to. I would be my first rap show, with Ice Cube tearing it up and followed by Halestorm, my all time favorite, Godsmack and almost a three hour set by Guns n Roses.
Of course we ate a lot of great food including the most decadent chicken sandwich on a glazed doughnut and plenty of bourbon.
Unlike the week before we were not allowed to bring in our cool chairs. I guess they figured this would be a rowdier crowd than the old folks at the B&B. Sunday’s line up was pretty dang good. It was In this Moment with one of the most bizarre sets I have ever seen, along with a surprisingly good set by Breaking Benjamin. Of course Rob Zombie always puts on a great show but Marilyn Manson was just ho-hum. We left after just a few songs from Disturbed because of my stupid foot.
So, after two weeks of rock and more seeing more bands than we can remember, Michele and I licked our wounds and headed home. What a way to carry on the rocknroller tour tradition!
True to form we already bought our tickets for next year as soon as it was announced that Metallica will be headlining two nights!
**Just so you know that I have included some Amazon affiliate links to some of the artist’s music. Please do me a favor and check them out.