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| photo cred: Peter Olson |
The ride from St. Louis...more corn than you would believe, and the straightest stretches of interstate I've ever been on.
We soundchecked in the early afternoon. A few interesting characters lined up early for good seats. It's forever disappointing to see that the residents of small town America are not the quiet, simple people that they are in the movies. The girl (an adult) in green pictured below alternated between a pacifier and cigarettes during our time on stage.
Agh! I ended up with my gear in the sun. Boo. Passing clouds made it bearable. By the time we began our set, things were pretty comfortable, though, with temperatures in the mid 80s.
The backlined keyboards for this one included a Nord Electro 3 (which Bencuya took) and a Nord Stage (which I got). Even though there's a lot of extra crap on the Stage, I really like it! Maybe for my next upgrade. Then again, it weighs twice as much and costs $3,000. Hmmm.
No in ears on this gig. I could hear everybody fine, but I really missed them--probably as much at soundcheck as I did at the performance. What a drag to go back to going through every instrument and everybody saying whether or not they want it in their monitor! The in ears system (and the saved monitor file loaded into the monitor desk) has eliminated all of that.
By the time we began our show, we'd picked up a little bit more of crowd. Maybe a couple of hundred people were watching? It was decently full back to the front of house position. Their reactions were on the subdued side, though. For us on stage, it's a little unnerving when we're not a home run. I guess that's what the way it goes when you're the opener.
Here's a video from our gig:
Following our set, we ate dinner and walked around the festival. I never got close enough to see an actual pizza on a stick, but I was intrigued.
Kool and the Gang was pretty cool to see. The seemed to be twenty people on stage.
The next day, we traveled in reverse--85 mph shuttle vans driven to St. Louis and the a flight home. My trick of pre boarding the plane was unsuccessful, and then I noticed the gate attendants discussing the fact that I had too many bags (two gig bags and a backpack), so I handed a saxophone off to Mark Cobb until we entered the jetway, at which point he handed it back. So annoying...
