The past 48 hours have been a blur as we've worked on getting copies of clear blue trickling ready for this weekend's show. The drive out to Brooksville was pleasant, the weather was gorgeous, and the Hernando Art Festival was in full swing when we arrived and got settled in. Jae and I took note of the "fair food" that was all around us and dove right into a fried fish stand. We've had enough grouper now to last us through hurricane season.
We met one of the organizers, Brian, who booked us, and knew that we had two band ahead of us, so we kicked back and enjoyed the music. Weaksauce played reggae, and we met them coming in. The lead singer, Justin, was very cool as a person, a great vibe from the get-go, and then he was really great on-stage, great voice, solid bass player. The band overall was a lot of fun to listen to. 28 Gates followed, and they were solid as well - everyone in the band was quite impressed with the caliber of the bands on the bill. Somewhere during this set, we began gearing up for the show - so all was more a blur until we were on-stage. That happens, when we're ramping up for the set, everything that doesn't have to do anything with the music just floats away on the breeze. We were introduced by Patti, the lady who had been roped into emceeing for the day, and we kicked off a short set (my bad, I thought I got a signal) that got wonderful response. It never fails to get my heart pumping hard when I see someone nodding their head or tapping a foot or, my favorite, coming over and setting up one of those foldable chairs in a bag, which indicates that they have liked what they heard from afar and are coming closer to settle in for a spell. Love it love it love it!
Of course, the way we change gears, you're never guaranteed a style of music at any point, but hopefully they're staying for the overall effect, the stories, the celebration of musical diversity, the positivity, that's what we hope folks take with them (and a CD too.)
Everyone did killer - seems our tempos were a bit slow, but that could've been us vibing off of the crowd, mostly older folks who were drawn out by The Crests, who sang "Sixteen Candles" back in the day, and tore up a great set with some incredible singing and an old-time schtick that was refreshing. What an honor to open up for these guys!
So all said, Brian liked us and wants us to come back and do some other shows, which we'd be all about. We packed everything up, having sold our first copies of the disc, and headed back to Orlando, loaded what we wanted into the rehearsal space at Randy's house, and then sat around and talked, laughed, the usual. We have one more show, in Eustis in July, other than that, we're not booking any more shows for a while because we've all got a busy summer, but more on that later. This was a fun show and another big perk to being in this band. We see more neat things like this than your average bar band. That's a big blessing. We also met quite a few really, really cool people - Richard Bolack, who helped me with gear off the stage, how humble and humbling is that? Nate from 28 Gates, Justin from Weaksauce, all people that we had good long chats with, and it makes you just glow to know that there are people of this caliber all around you - it's encouraging when we come together and meet, add one more to the ever-growing number - increasing awareness of each other in the physical, getting a sense that what we dream of is not impossible, and that which we hope for is not unattainable.
With that - I'm off to celebrate my one year anniversary with Jae, in the place where we got married - Key West. Memory's of Memorial Day, sounds like a song, perhaps it will be written before too long......
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