"I want to roll my darkness into a million suns"

Alabaster City Fest was a completely new experience for me. Not only have I never been to it before, but I've never been to any music festival anywhere that was so mellow.

We made the one-hour drive from Tuscaloosa so that Jason could see Tonic. He hadn't done so since we lived in Ohio several years ago, and the free festival seemed like a good opportunity.

Upon arriving at Alabaster City Park, we found the area in front of the Main Stage packed with people - all sitting in lawn chairs like bumps on logs. I felt sorry for the band that was performing when we got there. Though their rockabilly music was pretty upbeat, the crowd seemed dead. There was no applause when the band finished each song. I detected not so much as a tapping foot among the folks seated near us.

We figured we'd be standing and brought nothing to sit on, but fortunately found open seats at picnic tables lined up to the side of the music area. We weren't terribly close to the stage but near enough to see the band members' faces distinctly. The speakers were plenty loud; we heard the music from the parking lot 1/2 mile away.

We saw about 15 minutes of White Oaks' set, then sat for another 30 minutes waiting for Tonic to come on (at the exact moment they were scheduled). About 10 minutes of that was consumed with City Fest business: a word from the sponsors at the local CBS affiliate and a drawing by one of the vendors for iPod prizes. The shooting of T-shirts from an air cannon seemed to wake up the crowd, so they had a little bit of pep to them by the time Tonic took the stage.

A small crowd of Tonic fans formed right in front of the stage, but we opted to stay seated where we were. We enjoyed a nice relaxing hour of good music on a temperate Alabama June evening. Jason danced in his seat and sang along to the songs he knew, and others around us also showed signs of life, tapping their feet, clapping, even getting up to dance. Generally speaking, though, the throngs of festival goers remained planted immobile in their lawn chairs. Failure of most of the crowd to repeat "Ohs" during a moment of participation led lead singer Emerson Hart to muse that the attendees apparently were too tired from sitting in the sun all day to play along.

Otherwise, the set lacked much banter. Hart thanked us many times for having them and frequently mentioned how cool it was that Alabaster was able to get so many folks together in a park for a free concert. The only memorable bit of between-song chatter occurred when Hart called out the folks who had hot air balloons in the kids area of the festival. Apparently, the balloon dude ruled.

Despite the lame crowd, Tonic rocked out. They gave no rest to their bevy of guitars and sounded great vocally.

I don't know them well enough to provide a set list, and Jason's not good enough with song titles to help me out. I can tell you that their one-hour set opened with the decade-old singles "Open Up Your Eyes" and "You Wanted More," and that the last three songs were "If You Could Only See," "Casual Affair" (with an attempt at crowd participation), and a nicely-done cover of Fleetwood Mac's "Go Your Own Way." Furthermore, I know that their most recent single "Take Me As I Am" was somewhere in the middle.

We knew no one else on the schedule - including the headliner, country star Terri Clark - so we bailed as soon as Tonic finished and beat the crowd out of the park. But, Tonic's set was well worth the trip. The Dairy Queen we found near the freeway entrance was icing on the cake, so to speak (Tuscaloosa's DQ closed a couple years ago).