Sampler Release Party

If you recall, I won tickets to the Cities 97 Volume 22 Sampler Party, which I attended on Tuesday with my friend Jill.  If you are not familiar with the radio station Cities 97 or the Sampler, here's some background.  Cities 97 is a radio station in the Twin Cities and the best way I can describe the music played would be Adult Contemporary and Adult Alternative.  The Cities 97 Sampler is a CD that is a compilation of artists that performed live within Studio C at Cities 97.  The CD itself has been released every November since 1989 with all proceeds benefiting Minnesota charities. It is only offered through Target stores and the line each year for this CD on the morning it is released is out the door and around the corner.  The CD sells out every year and this year it was released on Thursday, November 18th and sold all 33,000 copies early that morning.  I also got my copy in the mail from Cities 97 on Thursday.

The Volume 22 Sampler Party was held at BayView Event Center in Excelsior on the shores of Lake Minnetonka.  If you know where Maynard's is, it's right next door. I do not venture out too much to the west side of the cities so it seemed so far away from my house but it wasn't too far of a drive from my work, which is where we left from.

Once we arrived inside, it wasn't too busy, with maybe a few hundred people there and it was very comfortable to walk and stand around.  We grabbed a beer (thank you, Jill!) and got there just in time for the first band to start. Cedar Avenue was the name of the first band.  They are a local band and are featured on the Sampler.

The next artist to take the stage was the one I was excited about....Donavon Frankenreiter.  He played for maybe 30 minutes as he had a show at the Varsity Theater later that evening.

After Donavon played, we were hungry so we ventured downstairs to eat some of the free food that was offered.  At this time, it was pretty busy and it was hard to move around.  Once we were downstairs, it was another big room with a heated outdoor tent that extended onto a patio outside.  That where the food was with tables and chairs to sit and eat but it was so packed down there, we had to stand and eat.  The food offering was pretty good including spinach and artichoke dip and chips/crackers, chicken wings, BBQ ribs, crab rangoon and different kinds of sandwiches.  We ate and hung around downstairs while the next band, The Rescues were playing, however there was a TV and a live feed from upstairs so we didn't miss the music.  We ended up going back upstairs towards the last part of their show and it was completely packed.  We could no longer move and everywhere we could stand was not a good place because it was either an aisle to somewhere or we were just packed in like sardines.  

We ended up leaving before the headlining band, One EskimO came on.  They are a band from the UK also featured on the Sampler CD.  One our way out, we were given a gift bag that included some earplugs, a few coupons, a note pad from TCF and a 10 pack of cute eco-friendly Thank You cards.