The venue is on the banks of Lake Michigan, and I wander into the stands. Behind me is an seemingly endless expanse of water, in front of me is the main stage. As I walk down the stands, I can see the production crew setting up the stage.

Found the production office stage right, got my meal ticket and a schedule for the day. I walk back out onto the grounds into the midday sun. I like the setup of this venue better than the last city. Blacktop vs. gravel. I'm sure the vendors are a lot happier, too.

12:15 pm
At the Excite booth. They let me go online for a few minutes to check on one of our projects on the Web. Killing time before the 1:30 pm planning meeting.

1:45 pm
Eating a vegetarian lunch and deciding what our schedule for the day will be, who we will interview, who films which act. Ate a lentil dish, a barley dish, a cucumber dish and a carrot dish. Vanessa from Nettmedia should be very happy today as she is a strict vegetarian. On the road, food becomes a focal point upon which all other actions and activities are based.

2:15 pm
Looking around for fans to do a road diary for the day. Find a mother and daughter --Lonna Olson and Arika Olson. It is Arika's first concert. She's 11. Then found a group of 5 girlfriends (two of them sisters) who agreed to review the shows. Gave them all Cybergrrl buttons, then hurried across the grounds to the press conference.

2:45 pm
Small press conference, but got to ask another of my group questions:

"When did music first enter your life and what was the first album you bought?"

Amy Pierce from the local band Framing Amy said that her parents were very musical and that she taught herself to play the bass in highschool and joined a jazz band. Her first CD was "Blondie."

N'Dea Davenport said that music was big in her family and that her parents exposed her early on to jazz, gospel and the blues. She also played music in school. Her biggest influence as a singer was Michael Jackson and the first album she bought was probably the Jackson Five.

Paula Cole said that her family was old fashioned. They didn't listen to music on the radio but instead made music in the home, sitting around the piano, making 3-part harmonies, singing folk songs and old standards. She called music a "living language." She thinks her first album may have been DEVO, but around the house, the albums ranged from Dolly Parton to Paul Simon to Buck Owens and Johnny Cash.

Sarah McLachlan grew up listening to Joan Baez and remembers hearing her music when she was about 4 years old. She wanted to pick up an instrument to accompany herself, just like Joan. Her first album was Queen's "The Game."

Jepp had two older sisters who were really into disco. The first record she bought was the Gogos' "Beauty and the Beat" and she still has it.

Amanda Kravat, one of the Village stage performers, said that she was supposed to be playing Tsaichovsky (sp) while practicing the piano but found a Beatles songbook and played that instead. Her first album was the Monkees and she and her sister would take turns kissing the album cover.

Erin Berginhous said that she didn't have a stereo in the house growing up and didn't get into music until she was much older. Her first album was either Amy Grant or the Bodeans. She wrote her first song 5 years ago when a friend of hers was going through a difficut time.

3:30 pm Village Stage
The audience is sitting back from the stage because there are tables with umbrellas set up. Framing Amy take the stage -- Amy Pierce with two guitarists. She sings sweetly, but powerfully, with a soft vibrato in her voice. The melodies of their songs stay with me throughout the day.

3:55 pm Village Stage
Amanda Kravat takes the stage, with a fiery red tangle of curls and a long, lean body behind her acoustic guitar and an ever-present cigarette between her fingers, then her lips. She is accompanied by a keyboardist as she shouts and sings in her breathy, raspy voice. Her between-song banter is playful, such as when she talked about the last time she played Milwaukee: She remembers playing on a pier and everyone began throwing fish. She told the audience today that they can throw fruit and vegetables, but to please not throw fish because she hates fish.

4:00 pm Behind the catering tent, sitting on the grass, under some trees.

Interviewed Framing Amy, a band that considers themselves to be alternative/pop, with each member coming from different musical backgrounds including country, pop, Top 40, heavy metal and blues. Amy Pierce cited Blondie and Enya as being her two major musical influences, as well as Lita Ford, Joan Jett and Pat Benatar.

After the interview, I headed back across the grounds to the B Stage.

5:00 pm B Stage
Neko Case was already playing when I arrived and I was immediately impressed with her Janis Joplin--strong voice howling and careening over the crowd. She seemed to be shy, however, and spent most of the time on stage with her back to the audience or pacing the stage looking down at the ground. Her voice pulled you in regardless of her closed presence.

5:20 pm
Having an early dinner of an assortment of cooked vegetables including carrots and green beans over rice. Joan Osborne and her band are eating across from us. One of the band members has his acoustic guitar with him and every once in a while hushed voices in harmony reaches our table. Sound of angels.

All of us are amazed at the desserts, an array of Indian dishes that are so unusual we all end up taking pictures of them. Carrot pudding, a sticky rice pudding, semolina cake with raisins and a grey, unsweetened banana pudding. We brought a plate of each to the table and proceeded to try each one. The rice pudding was my favorite, the carrot pudding made us all cringe.

5:30 pm
Interviewed Sara Jepp of Jepp under the sames trees as the previous interview, with Lake Michigan beyond us and a breeze blowing gently under the shade. She talked about her circuitous route to London, where she now lives, starting in Minneapolis, to Venice Beach, to New York City, back to Los Angeles to write screenplays (none of them produced), back to New York City where she worked in the horse stables at Central Park and met a guy at a party from London who expressed interest in hearing the songs she had been writing on the side. She ended up in London signed to Virgin Records two months later.

6:30 pm
Sara and I headed over to the B Stage to catch Mary Lou Lord's set. The sun was settling behind the stage and Mary Lou appeared more relaxed than in her previous show, wearing blue jeans and a blue halter top. She took photographs of the crowd, explaining that she was pregnant and making a scrapbook for her baby. The crowd cheered appreciatively and Sara applauded and hooted loudly.

7:00 pm
Ran into the venue to see Joan Osborne on the main stage wearing a white, fuzzy,long sleeved, mini dress, black tights and black platform shoes with buckles. Her voice was at once husky and penetrating, soulful and expressive as she moved across the stage with an easy confidence. Had to leave her show early to catch Mary Lou to do an interview.

7:30 pm
We interviewed Mary Lou Lord in her trailer, with her Pomeranian mix Mona running about, jumping up on her lap. She spoke admiringly about Shawn Colvin and Elliot Smith and recounted her days busking in the London Tube stations for money, an acoustic guitar and the obscure songs of her favorite artists as her only sources of income on the streets.

She went on to explain why she covers a lot of songs on her album --she sees herself as a caretaker of good songs, trying to bring them into the light to be heard as they deserve to be. She hopes to some day have her own publishing company and to be an archivist of songs.

9:20 pm
The interview with Mary Lou ran longer than any we have done. We were fascinated by her views of music, of preserving a musical legacy and of giving generously to other artists. After the interview, I ran back to the venue to catch Natalie in full costume -- a loud, puffy red skirt with multicolor stripes and red top, barefoot as usual.

Natalie dances across the stage like a child across an open field, twisting and turning her body in a fit of emotion, trance-like at one moment, a whirling dervish the next. Toward the end of her set, a large blue and yellow swing is lowered from the ceiling and she jumps on, swing off of the stage and over the heads of the people in the first few rows of the audience. Next, she is joined by Sarah who was wearing a magenta top lined in black fake fur and a long black skirt. Sarah took her turn to jump on the swing during their duet, then she jumped off and Natalie grabbed her hand then they ran offstage together.

10:00pm
I move into one of the rows of chairs stage left as the crowd takes their feet and Sarah breaks into "Sweet Surrender." When Paula Cole joins her for a song that she dedicates to all the teenagers in the audience, the teens in the audience scream in delight. Paula and Sarah dance together and their voices harmonize as if they were one. For "Ice Cream," Ash's drumset is rolled toward the front of the stage, with him riding on it, and he proceeds to back Sarah up vocally as she strums her guitar. The first notes of "Building a Mystery" has everyone back on their feet. At the end, Sarah puts her hands together in prayer-like fashion and takes a bow to thank the audience who screams, whistles and applauds, knowing she'll be right back.

Sure enough, she emerges for an encore, then she introduces all of the artists of the day for the grand finale. Everyone on stage gives Joan Osborne a hug to welcome her onto the tour.

12:00 pm
Some of us decide to go to a local club called the Hi Hat for a birthday celebration for one of the women on the crew. The bar is crowded and smoky, of course, and Jill (from one of the show sponsors) and I sit at a table on tall barstools and joke about social situations. Ash, Sarah's husband and drummer in her band, appears in front of us to exclaim "Hello, Ladies," then he runs off to another table. Jill wants to dance to the Latin music playing over the sound system but there isn't any room.

Being the fuddy duddies that we are (we were tired!), we left early, and as we waited for our cab at the entryway of the club, Ash came over to where I was standing and said, "Hi Cybergrrl," then walked away. Sarah's bass player asked Jill and I to pose for pictures, and we sat on a sofa under a red neon sign that said "Music" and he snapped away. Our cab arrived and we were back at the quiet of the hotel in a few minutes. It had been a good day and a good night.