OK, so I’m pretty damn sure that Larry and his Flask are opening some East Coast shows for Dropkick Murphys.

How do I know this? Here’s the story:

Central Oregon’s own acoustic Americana-meets-punk band is pretty much always on tour – the exception being their recent stay in town where they’ve been playing a string of local shows, including a Wednesday night residency down at Mountain’s Edge.

So it wasn’t a surprise to see that their MySpace page now features a long list of shows as far off as Virginia, keeping the boys on the road well into mid-March. But then I started noticing the venues they were playing: House of Blues (Atlantic City, Dallas and Orlando), Austin’s famed Stubb’s and a few other high-profile names. These are big rooms – larger than the clubs, bars and living rooms LAHF has made a career out of playing for the past several years.

New Year’s Eve was a hotbed of musical offerings here in Bend. Armed with beer-and-scotch energy, Sound Check made it to a few places before ending up at the inevitable mosh pit of drunken people that was Corey’s at 1:30am.

First up was Silver Moon Brewing, which was jam packed with revelers for the Blue Moon Bash. We didn’t make it in time to hear Eric Tollefson but Mosley Wotta rocked it, as he always does. Joined by his brother Eric on backup vocals, he cycled through tunes such as “Love, Pain, Growth,” “Front Porch” well as a new track entitled “Big Head Small Town, during which MoWo blew up a condom to the size of a hot air balloon (always wanted to do that), presumably to symbolically illustrate the song.

It was the night before Thanksgiving and the fake bodily fluids were flowing throughout the Midtown, where we sent photographer Ben Murphy to document the almost-annual show from alien shock rockers GWAR. The band arrived on stage, each member in their now-infamous costumes and proceeded to play largely filthy rock and roll music, but most of the fun was to be had in taking in the giant inflatable robot aliens and, again, getting covered in goo. Here are some sights Murphy captured at the show.

Sound Check spent much of Saturday night not really looking at Poor Man’s Whiskey, but more looking around the band at all the lasers, movies, lights, fog and the brightly colored wigs of our fellow concertgoers who’d packed into a sold-out Domino Room. Oh we saw the band – adorned as the characters of the Wizard of Oz, which included guitarist Eli Jebidiah’s gratuitously short Dorothy dress (or not-so-gratuitous, depending on how you feel about the male thigh) – there was just a lot going on.

There was a moment at the Bend Roots Revival on Saturday night as Mosley Wotta was rhyming over the sounds of Empty Space Orchestra when Sound Check looked around and thought, “Damn, this is kind of crazy.”

Not the bad kind of “crazy,” but the sort of wow-there-are-is-a-ridiculous-amount-of-people-here-just-to-see-local-music sort of “crazy.” The main stage set up outside the Victorian Café, which housed half of the festival, the rest of which took place across the street at Parrilla Grill, was packed on both Friday and Saturday nights for the all-local and all-free festival. It seems that Bend Roots has really hit its stride in its fourth year, serving as a testament to the quality of our local music scene. And we can thank organizer and founder Mark Ransom for that…which the crowd did several times over the weekend.

Bend Roots started a day early this year with a Grateful Dead--inspired Thursday night showcase featuring quaint bluegrass provided by Back from the Dead and a full set of Dead covers by tribute act Rising Tide.

Friday night kicked off at Parrilla with a searing set by Ransom’s all-star act, The Mostest, that included some incredible covers, including a four-guitar-fueled take on the Allman Brother’s Band’s “Whipping Post.” Across the street, Leif James and the Struggle dished out rock-laced Americana with the lead man’s familiar growl serving as a perfect background for locals to sip their Pabst tall cans—which seemed to be the unofficial beverage of Bend Roots.

Saturday provided the meat and potatoes of the fest, with a bevy of singer-songwriters taking the stage, including Erin Cole Baker, the awesomely bluesy Joanna Lee, and the poppy acoustic sounds of the Sweet Harlots. As night neared, the real treats of the weekend appeared, namely in the form of Ruins of Ooah, the dance-o-matic trio headed by didgeridoo player Tyler Spencer. As El Dante funked it up on the Parrilla Stage, the aforementioned Empty Space and Mosley Wotta set began, which brought on the aforementioned mass of humanity (maybe as many as 500 people).

Sunday, marked as a family day, included plenty of stuff for the kids, but also Bend Roots’ most rocking acts, like the Dirty Words and the Autonomics. As night fell, Moon Mountain Ramblers closed out the festival with the sort of high-powered acoustic brew that’s made them a mainstay at events like this.

As Sound Check drove past the festival grounds Monday morning, we couldn’t help but long for another weekend like this. Hey Mark, whaddaya say? Can we do this again next weekend?