At the inaugural Oro Valley Music Festival last September, it rained.
Actually, rain was the least of anyone's worries that day. The wind whipped and howled, toppling plastic tables and chairs, sending folks' lawn chairs tumbling and threatening to take down the stage at the Golf Club at Vistoso.
But we had high hopes that we would escape any such fate at Mother Nature's hands this go-around. The two-day Oro Valley Music Festival was pushed back several weeks; it started Saturday, the day after Monsoon 2016 had officially ended. And on Saturday — with a country music lineup — it was blistering hot, with temperatures topping 90. A little breeze took away the sting for small spells of respite, but there wasn't a cloud in sight, a gust to be battled. It was perfect.
And then came Sunday. So much for the end of the monsoon season.
The rain started just as poor Ben Rector was taking the stage. Howie Day had come and gone with nary a drop, but Rector was barely two songs in when the drops started falling.
The fluffy white clouds crowning the majestic Catalina Mountains range circling the golf course turned angry black and the blue skies turned a shade of menacing grey.
By the time Rector had finished his latest single "Brand New," the 2,500 people loosely filling the festival grounds were soaked.
That didn't stop anyone from jumping and screaming to the infectious pop-punk dished out by Montreal, Canada's Simple Plan. The band put on the day's most energetic show, a non-stop rave of throbbing soft-around-the-edges, driving punk rock.
"It's been a long time since we've been in Arizona," lead singer Pierre Bouvier shouted to the crowd. "You ready to party with us Arizona?"
Apparently, we were. From all reaches of the sprawling festival grounds, we jumped with fists punching the air like we had all just been told we won the Powerball to "Welcome to My Life," "I'll Do Anything" and "Jump."
There was some crazy energy coursing through the golf course and Bouvier fed off of it. When he introduced the band's new song "Boom," he leaped several feet in the air, which inspired the throng of die-hard fans crushed body-to-body against the stage to jump harder and higher. It was the closest the festival got to having a mosh pit.
"That was amazing. Tucson you officially rock," he screamed. "That was incredible."
No rain fell in their 45 minute set, even as Bouvier summoned it for one of the band's last songs.
"I wish it would rain because our next song is called 'Singing In the Rain'," he said.
They got through "Shut Up" and "I'm Just A Kid" but just as they were starting their final song "Perfect," a few fat drops fell for a couple seconds before quickly drying up.
And it stayed dry for half of Colbie Caillat's 55-minute set, a show that had a different yet still vibrant energy to it.
Instaed of encouraging her fans to jump in place, Caillat, dressed in a long black skirt with sheer see-through lace at the thighs and a midrift, sleeveless shirt, got them all singing. They sang the chorus of her ballad "I Do," penned for fiancé and band mate Justin Young, and the poppy "Falling For You." Caillat was barely a line into the love-lost lament "I Never Told You" when the audience took over and their combined voice, surprisingly nearly perfectly pitched, nearly drowned her out.
The only time the audience stopped singing was when Caillat sang her new songs "Gold Mine" and "Never Got Away" off her new album "The Malibu Sessions" set to be released next week. When she returned to familiar ground, the audience roared to vocal life, singing the lyrics to Caillat's poppy love song "Bubbly." As they got to the second verse — "The rain is fallin' on my window pane / But we are hidin' in a safer place" — the rain started falling again.
It wasn't really a hard rain, but it was unrelenting, driving fans under the exhibitor tents that by 7 p.m. Sunday evening — as Phillip Phillips was taking the stage — had been vacated. Some people crawled beneath the tables on top of the slope, where you couldn't really see anything going on on stage, but you could hear Phillips sing his hits "Lead On," "Gone, Gone, Gone" and "Home."
Sadly, the rain also drove away hundreds of fans who filed out in the middle of Phillips' set. By the time that headliner Daughtry took the stage, the audience had noticeably thinned out.
Organizers don't seem daunted by the weather woes. A representative from the I Heart Radio team that promoted the show said they would be back next year.
