Contact us
Back to All Posts

Rock around the Hudson Hot Air Affair clock this weekend, with all sorts of styles at various evening starting times

While the Hudson Hot Air Affair has a big blow up with the requisite ballooning activities, it also features a wide range of music downtown, in differing styles, and it all follows the Super Bowl theme. (The local event has been moved up a week, to Jan. 26-28, because of the big game in Minneapolis).
The following is a primer for Hot Air Affair music:
— A signature activity is the Taste of the Hot Air Affair, Touchdown Hudson XXIX Edition, with local rockers Boondoggle providing the music. (They will tone it down for this gig so people can converse). The times for this opportunity to sample all kinds of good stuff is 7:30-10 p.m. on Saturday. The Boondoggle genre is “variety country/rock. We play music by Elvis, the Beatles, the Stones, Skynyrd, Led Zeppelin, Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Dwight Yoakam, and anything and everything around and in-between.” Moreso than almost any band, they cover the gamut of five decades — the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and even the 2000s.
Band members — some local people you may know — are Brent Ackley, Dawn Budrow, Jim Ehlers, John Wolf and Nate Dahl. Their hometown and continuing onward, current location is western Wisconsin, namely St. Croix County. “We like music with good harmonies, dancing beats, lots of telecaster “twang” and hot guitar solos,” they say.
“Boondoggle has been terrorizing the region with loud rock ‘n’ roll and badass country music since 2002,” members say, “playing our version of hundreds of popular songs over more than 200 gigs.” For this gig, they have turned done the volume, so to speak.
They list their band interests as rowdy bars, bachelorette parties, dancin’ fools, wedding dances, barn dances, guitars, cadillacs and cold brewskies. To further the humor they say that they are “just one hit shy of being a one hit wonder.”
— On Friday night, starting at around 9:30 p.m., is the group Junk FM at the Smilin’ Moose. They fire off partygoers’ favorite songs with unexpected twists and surprising changes of pace, sporting a song list as diverse as you will find. They say that on more than one occasion fans have confessed: “Junk FM RUINED some of my favorite songs – when I hear the originals all I can think is ‘I like Junk FM’s version better.’“
With genre-bending mashups and juxtaposing styles, Junk FM just wants to see how ridiculous the dancefloor can get over the course of the night. From Garth Brooks to Lady Gaga in one slamming step, simultaneous Eminem and Green Day, Cee Lo Green meets Rod Stewart, all while stealing your drink!
— But rock music is not all there is at the Hot Air Affair. Anne Deming takes the stage at Urban Olive and Vine from 6-8:30 p.m. Friday. “I write songs and tell stories with my guitar,” Deming says, adding that this is a common genre, with solo guitar plucking being typical, but critics say she also has a voice that carries her to the top of this style.
Seductive and confessional are the adjectives that come to mind when describing these songs. Dealing with life, love, and accompanying emotions, Deming is said to have a voice that comes close to, and stacks up favorably, to a more angelic Natalie Merchant. Standout tracks include the blues oriented “Not The One” and “Talk Me Down,” as well as “Bring Me Happiness,” a gospel-flavored number sung a cappella.
— Also at that Urban Olive and Vine venue, at the same time frame on Saturday evening, is the duo calling themselves Quinn and Meter. Pat Quinn and Peg/M.Etta Meyer perform a wide range of music, including folk rock, traditional and contemporary Irish songs, a few standards and pop favorites, and original material.
— There also is DJ music to dance to on both Friday and Saturday nights at Dick’s Bar and Grill, featuring Ben Michaels, who has been known to throw in some multiple-song mixes, and at The Moose on Saturday, with one of their revolving group of DJs, who always draw a packed house. Both venues have a series of TV screens with videos running in tandem with the songs, adding to the experience.
— Lastly, you can find karaoke at the Hudson Bowling Center on both Friday and Saturdays nights, a two-fer trend that has been rolling out the tunes in that manner for years.
For more information on non-music activities at the Hudson Hot Air Affair, check out the latest edition of Hudson Neighbors magazine, which has hit the bookshelves and mailboxes.

Share the Post:

Related Posts

  • Stressed out as a caregiver? She’s back at yah. This is a rare case of a husband and wife being joint caregivers — for each other — aided and abbetted by the fact that they have a lot of the same disabling conditions. So she shovels snow using a walker/scooter, while he cooks gingerly using a microwave and offers her a plate when she sits down, in an easy chair, in a reversal and new take on traditional roles. Whatever it takes. Necessity is the mother of invention.
A few years back, I wrote an article about Hudson Deacon Tom Kroll and how he did so many extra dutiful tasks, his living out the Gospels tirelessly, when his wife was ill, in addition to his regular job. I was inspired at the time to pen this, about my own lovely, disabled wife — we were separated briefly but now back together with our 40th anniversary this month, as wholehearted caregiving has many strains — and how an atypical view of standard roles, out of necessity, made things work, as far as our approach to work and home that’s...
Read More
  • He says, and goes fishing with the boys. She says, then goes to the middle of Texas, inviting her mates to a ranch/villa built for the ages. The bachelor and bachelorette parties were on the same night, but though very different, they had some things in common … like the snakes, at least three kinds, to avoid. (None with exotic dancer.) But while away, they did not avoid each other, completely. He made a phone call. —– Just added, last call included a Carolina cowpoke.
What do fishing, maybe in the dark, thus a Texas ranch, snakes of various types and do they come or stay out after dusk, eating either and only fine food or snacks, and a game of cards — likely just one each — have in common. And no strippers or Chippendales. And an only half or quarter, not full Monty. (Who is Monty anyway?) Or cowboy or cowgirl hats. Although there was some dress-up. More Barbie than boots on, I think. It’s an easy answer, connected and conflicting, but not in all or dirty ways, bachelor and bachelorette parties. One of each...
Read More
  • Full metal jacket? Hey, I wasn’t exactly to the point of going Rob Halford. But tastes aside, there must be some reason why after 26 years I was shunned, like going Bob Daisley by Ozzy at his reunion? OK, I know, my style may not have fit with the packed crowd. And the last couple of times for this, I tried to do too much with ad-libbing. So yeah, I get that this time around, I was the somewhat unusual choice to be the one left off the set list, with singers clamoring to get up there. But seriously, just being analytical of strengths and weaknesses as a singer here, no hard feelings. I’m not Dio. (Or Traveling Wilburys, a when jumping inside, inside joke.)
It was clear to me at the most recent Jeff Loven music show in Hudson, for Memorial Day weekend, that there has been a changing of the guard. The sword has been passed. New blood, like Yungblud, has been brought in. And, I must say, loyalty — amongst the devotees who travel frequently and all across the two-state area to virtually all of Jeff’s shows — has been rewarded. They are the royalty, in what just makes good business sense that I can appreciate. In a significant but not unprecedented altering of course, I was not one of those asked...
Read More
  • Songs by Napalm Death? A fire swept down my very street today, where the babies were burned. (But alas, a new A/C unit is on its way up the freeway.) The Stones did not leave these themes unturned, either, or should I say unrolled. Oh wait, this all was my cooker of an apartment, and we are not talking the kitchen. But all these matters will become more pressing, a pressure point, as the new normal especially in southern climes is temp well into the triple digits. It is these people, the third world, and their heat stroke not mine, that most concern me. (Another example of hellfire temps just added. Sin after Sin.)
Trial by fire. My broiling heart in my efficiency flat still beats a bit, in concern over those boiling over in worse apartments in a Chicago tenancy, or on an ocean island instantly-burn-your-feet beach or dessert, or forced to endure ice baths just to keep cool — or simply be offered no way to maintain an ice-dripping body other than also read a non-cookbook at the library, or select not a big steak you can’t afford but a 73/27 burger from a freezer and slap it on your forehead. Just not too hard. All these things are ones where you especially today either burn or...
Read More
  • I had a dream … And out of it (re)sprouted an ancient spring fertility rite to save the world, or at least my apartment building, or at least my second story window, from a giant lizard peering in, out at T-Rex days of yore. This ritual requires copious amounts of consumption and goes from there to hobbits and lords who are not yet a-leaping, for reasons to be retold in this fanciful, twisted tale (of fiction?) Just watch the use of Why! The letter, that is. And try to catch on to the inside jokes. (Psst. Another tale inside. Or two.)
This is a truly awfuI, twisted tale of villains and heroes, powerful ale if used carefully, giant beasties and smaller hobbyts, but also renewal and redemption. I will ascrybe to an ancient rytual, back to when the tyme gyant lyzyrds peered into second story wyndows of apartment byldings and no amount of walls could keep them out of such urban non-placated places, save this practice that annually, about this tyme of three-day holiday, would save humanity for another year.  So in this spryng fertility ryte, go consume copious quantities of hunhy grhym cr’krz and jinjer biyr, deprived of its alcohol as worshippers need to be sober-headed...
Read More
  • And musings moreover —– A full list of the trios of triumph. The power of threes. A full dozen of these triads, oh make that 13 as we linger, that you will see listed as shopping promptings in three long blocks of store windows of downtown Hudson. Three’s company? Get it? Third time’s the charm. And this is a truism, the words, some of them three letters, chosen to depict their offerings show the diversity of, dare I say it, a Super WalMart.
Here goes the ultimate list of lingo, even if it languishes, in no particular long order, as we go at length into the different kinds of businesses you will find in this locale, starting the list and at its last, two of the many art galleries in our downtown: — Feminist power, love and generosity, and to double your fun, framing, art tchotchkes and earrings, all at the biggest little art and collectables gallery you will see mid-block. — Community, commerce and tourism, touted at the Hudson Area Chamber of Commerce and Tourism Bureau, in a blatant suck up to...
Read More
Scroll to Top