Rockin Rentrée. Or, These amps go up to eleven.

This weekend iccp had our big Rentrée party. Rentrée is the French term for that time of year when everybody goes back to school and work after months of restful, sun-filled summer vacation. And it's an excuse to throw a party. It's iccp tradition to kick off the new school year every fall with a huge BBQ out at the Anderson's gorgeous home at the foot of Mt. Saint Victoire. We had over 100 people gather on Sunday, many familiar faces reuniting after months apart, but also a bunch of new people that were really fun to connect with. It was international to the extreme, with people from France, the US, the UK, Germany, Italy, Australia, Japan, I don't even know where else, it was a beautiful mix of people.

My favorite part of the iccp Rentrée tradition, believe it or not, is not the multitude of people I get to hang out with, nor is it the refreshing dip in the pool after soaking up lots of sunshine, nor the harmonic blend of laughter that floats around all afternoon on the warm Provence breeze. It's not even the delicious spread, complete with Anderson-BBQ'ed chicken. Nope, my favorite part of Rentrée is enjoying live music all afternoon. I'm always a fan of being in a space where music can speak to my soul or get my toes tapping, especially if I get to be involved in that expression. So this year's Rentrée was extra wonderful because I got to lead the band that rocked out all afternoon. Our band, Vinyl Tap (also known as Weiner Tap (pronounced Viner, ok?), after our dear drummer Sébastien Weiner), was totally awesome, if I do say so myself. We ended our final set with a rendition of Gnarls Barkley's Crazy, how rock and roll is that?

There's nothing like a Rentrée party like that one to get me thoroughly excited for this year and all that it will hold. (It also got me excited to be a rockstar, but we'll see where that goes).




You can see even more Rentrée pictures here.