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BMF falls on the longest day of the year, and it’s going to be one of the hottest. Bring squirt guns!

Some interesting scenes from the workshop this week. The musical part starts at 3:05. It was awesome to see the expressions on our neighbors’ faces as we cruised around West Berkeley with Janaysa singing and playing.

Folk / Soul singer Janaysa came by the workshop on Tuesday to test-ride the piano mount on the Mundo. She was initially ‘concerned’ but left on a high after a good try out.

Come see Janaysa perform on Saturday as part of the cruiser ride! Don’t miss out on the night time festivities. Bring a bike to Dolores Park! Catch BLO, Stitchcraft, Ginger Ninjas, Manicato, La Malamana, and BMX flatlander Pete Brandt. And then join the BMF cruiser ride.

BMF does not pay bands to perform. Instead, we pass the bucket amongst the crowd after each band plays. Some bands go to great lengths to be part of the BMF, and all of our bands have spent years developing their musical act. So show your support for the bands you like by throwing some cash in the bucket. It’s not cool to support bands early in the day, then run out of money for the later performers. Please bring plenty of ones and fives, or tens and twenties, high roller! As co-organizer Gabe says, “please take a few bucks out of your pocket, then put the rest in the bucket.”

Big thanks to this year’s Golden Goose, Kathy Rose, who’ll be leading the charge on our busking efforts.

Video from Rock the Bike’s Pedal Power stage at Maker Faire this year. The sound system we’ll be using at Saturday’s BMF is even better.

Nice clips of SHAKE YOUR PEACE! performing.

Soul singer Janaysa will be going mobile, performing at the nighttime cruiser ride (beginning at Dolores Park). She’ll be playing piano and singing. The piano will be rigidly mounted to the back of a Mundo Utility Bicycle, using a custom bamboo piano mount. The red tractor seat is another recent mod designed to turn this bike into a serious mobile performance venue.

Other mobile performers in the nighttime cruise will include Mafiosa Felice and Joel Elrod. Joel (shown below street performing at KFOG Kaboom) will be backing me up on the Roland 808, and Mafi will be playing cuatro and singing.

Just checked the lunar schedule for BMF. We’ll see moonrise at 11PM, hopefully while cruising to the afterparty!

The moon will be 4 days past full, or 87% full.

My favorite part of performing at last year’s BMF was leading the call and response section of the Boda Boda rap as we cruised down Valencia. At the time, I thought I was just doing the ride to lead people to the biker beer bar, but once we arrived at the bar, the energy fell. I now realize that my art form is rocking the mic as I rock the bike. There aren’t too many other bike rappers out there who would even really try it. So this year, I’m just going to celebrate it. I hope you’ll be part of my performance, which will begin after Pete Brandt’s BMX performance.

Fortunately I won’t be alone. We just finished this new aTractor seat for the Mundo, so I can have Joel and Mafi play percussion for me.

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The Ginger Ninjas, just back from an epic 5000 mile bicycle tour to Mexico, got yet another chance to test out their sound system and rock festival-goers at this weekend’s Harmony Festival in Santa Rosa. With 4 pedal-power generating bicycles, there was enough clean, clear audio power to get over 100 people dancing. Musical highlights included Cipes and the People, and Los Ginger Ninjas.

The weekend was a good chance to work out any last kinks in the human power system before the Bicycle Music Festival. While there was a little troubleshooting to do on Sunday morning after Saturday night’s jam session, the system didn’t let fans down and was loud enough to have 8-piece bands rock out with a full drum set. You really don’t want to have to ask a drummer to play softly because the mains don’t have enough power to bring other instruments and vocals up to their level. It’s much better when a drummer can play out, and you can adjust the other instruments accordingly.

Fortunately the Ginger Ninjas’ sound system has that much power and more! We are psyched and grateful that they’ll be setting up the Human Power at this year’s BMF!