Lucas Camilo

Yesterday we went to Burien Pride with some friends on a beautiful afternoon. It was a lot mellower than a big-city Pride festival, but still it was sunny and hot so Lucas wasn’t so into the scene…  until all of a sudden he heard some guitar licks emanating from the stage a few hundred feet away. Ida looked over and said “he’s got a Hello Kitty guitar!” And we were in.

Here’s what Lucas wrote about it this morning:

Last night I met my second rock star at a festival.

He was the guitarist from a band called Late September Dogs.

He had a pink Hello Kitty guitar.

He did awesome guitar solos.

There were 2 singers in the band.

They would take turns singing, then they would sing together.

The band was a mix of women and men which I think is rare.

Lucas insisted on getting right up front so that we could check out the guitar solos and appreciate the bands’ rock moves. Since becoming passionate about rock music about a year ago he has developed a very particular taste, and appreciates a good band when he hears one. (We tried to watch the previous band but two minutes into the first song he said “I want to do something else.”) Late September Dogs, said to be influenced by Heart and Aerosmith, was right up his alley.

After the show was over we went up to Dan, the guitarist, to tell him how awesome they were. Lucas was a bit star-struck, but he had enough wherewithal to ask him if their music was on Spotify (which it is.) Then Dan invited us backstage to take pictures with him and the Hello Kitty guitar. Needless to say, Ida was almost as excited as Lucas.

We’ve been fortunate to see a lot of great music lately. Last weekend was the Folk Life Festival at Seattle Center and we saw a bunch of different bands from across the music genre spectrum. His favorite was a hardcore band with an amazing horn section called Actionesse (they refer to themselves as “horncore.”) It wasn;t exactly your typical Folk Life fare — so loud and raucous that Krista insisted that Lucas wear ear plugs. It was 11 am and the band was clearly hungover but they still played a great set.

Then today we went to HonkFest in Columbia City and enjoyed a bunch of great marching bands, samba lines, and other assorted brass instrument-based groups.

Still, meeting the lead guitarist of a hard-rock band shortly after seeing him shred guitar solos on stage was definitely the biggest music highlight for Lucas and something hewill be talking about for a while.