Giggin' out

Last weekend we played three gigs in the span of 24 hours. Which is as exhausting as it sounds.

Friday night, we made the trek down to the Joliet area to play at a benefit for one of Barret and Doc's high school friends. He's undergoing chemo for a brain tumor, and his family and friends got a golf outing together to raise some money for him. We played outside on the golf club patio. The crowd was pretty big and the response was okay. The sound was a little touch and go... we had no monitors, which is always troublesome for singing. But overall I think we played pretty well. We debuted a version of the David Bowie song Heroes, which went off really well. We do the shorter version of the song, and I just get to kind of scream my head off, which is fun.

Saturday during the day we played the Rock Around the Block festival, which runs for about 3 blocks on Lincoln Ave. Despite it being hot as hell, it went really well. Musically, it was probably one of the best shows we've ever played. I could tell from the first song, that things were really happening. We opened with the oldest tune we play, Hold On Tight, and it just sat perfectly. The sound was amazing, both on stage, and by all accounts (well, Gina's account) in the crowd too.

The guy running sound was the on-call sound manager for the band The Donnas... so he had his shit together. Crowd-wise, it was a little strange. The area right in front of the stage was devoid of people, namely because it was asphault and had to be over 100 degrees in the sun. But when I looked out a little farther, there were people standing in every bit of shade checking us out. We gave away a ton of CDs and the rep from the promotion company that ran the festival seemed to like us.

After grabbing a quick nap in our air conditioning, we piled in the car again and drove up to Libertyville to a bar call Mickey Finn's to play a late night set. The bar had a neat little music room upstairs and treated us very well. Free pizza and beer. Need I say more. The set was underattended, but it was really just gravy after the show we played in the afternoon. I can see why touring bands are so tight.

By the end of the 3rd show, even though I was tired, there were things available to me, both on guitar and vocally, that aren't usually there. Muscle memory I guess. We play the Sheffield Garden Walk this weekend, opening up a day that finishes with 10,000 Maniacs playing the very same stage.

Should be fun. And hot.

Fun and hot. Sounds like a plan to me.

jbg