Rocking our way on out of the Relay for Life

Me being the total and complete rock star that I am, I wanted to make sure I didn't lose too much sleep during our concert. So I actually went to sleep at 5 PM on Saturday, and slept until 10 PM. YES! Then I woke up, exercised, took a shower, and we met at the Palkovitz's for practice at 12.30.

We ran through our set and we were very tight and very good. How exciting, since this is our first show with the new lineup. We're psyched to go and rock.

We load up our now considerable amount of gear, since they told us that all they would provide was electrical plugs. Nothing else. And we get to the Field House at 2.30 AM.

We're confronted with a sleepy looking campground outside. A field of tents and sleeping people. And a small 4 feet by 4 feet stage with some lights and folding chairs scattered about.

"Is that our stage?" Drew asks.

"I hope not." Is all I have to say.

I run into the Field House, looking for someone in charge. I find a girl with a Relay for Life shirt.

"Oh, I'm glad you're here. We didn't have a contact number. The last band that played got lots of complaints from the neighbors so we wanted to know if there was anyway you could play an acoustic set without any amplification?"

An acoustic set without any amplification = some dudes singing around the campfire. Not a bad thing to do, but certainly not worth staying up all night. Incidentally, there were already some dudes singing around a campfire.

I ask if we could have moderate amplification, for the bass, and the vocals, and to mike the acoustic guitars and drums.

"We really just don't want to have the cops come again."

OK, hard to argue with that.

I ask if there is anyway we could play inside, if the schedules could be switched around.

"No sorry, we really can't."

The girl was nice, it's not her fault the cops came and people complained, so I'm not going to be Mr. Mean about this.

Drew and I and Shane had driven seperately from Ian and Collin, and we want to find them. We find them inside.

And now we are told that we have been moved into the inside schedule. SCORE!

We'll have from 3.30 until 4.15 or 4.30, we're told.

There are actually alot of people inside. Walking around the track, hanging out in tents, some sleeping. . .

The solo acoustic guitarist before us stops his set at around 3.30. We're all set up and ready to go by 3.40.

One of the girls comes up to me before the show and says, "The acoustics are really bad in here so the less powerful the sound the better."

I nod even though I have no idea what she means by this.

Shane lets loose with a little drumming just to test the sound. The reverb is pretty incredible in the cavernous room. Some people cheer. I think, "This is going to be lots of fun."

We jump into our set. Energetic and tight, we're having fun. .. people seem like they are into it. We get through our first 2 songs.

The girl approaches us and tells Collin she needs us to turn down by another half. That there have been lots of complaints already. She assures us it's not the music, just that it's too loud.

Our next song is an acoustic one anyway, so we do turn down. But here's the problem. We have live drums. You can't turn them down! And we have to be able to hear each other. So we do need some sound. But we manage through the next song. I have to say though that some of the wind has been taken out of our collective sails, at least mine. We didn't come to sing people gentle whispery lullabies.

The girl approaches me and asks me to make an announcement that she hands to me on a piece of paper. I dutifully tell everyone that there is a pie eating contest outside, and that everyone should go to it. (And leave our cacophony of madness, apparently!)

In our set, the song after the acoustic number is by far our hardest song. Well, we're turned down, but here goes.

We play it with energy, sounding pretty good I think. It is now 4 AM, still another 15 - 30 minutes to play.

The girl comes up to us and says, "OK, thanks the next band needs to set up now! That's it!"

SHUT DOWN! Boom it's over.

We all had to laugh. What else can you do.

Here's the thing, why invite a full band to an event like this? You know who the complaints were coming from? People who were trying to sleep. Yes, about a third of the people there were trying to sleep. Of course they were going to be upset. If they just wanted small acoustic acts that played to the seats directly in front of the stage, they should have told us that -- we could have done that! But with live drums and all, that's just not possible.

Positives from the night
1.) I think we sounded pretty great as a band, and now have confidence that we're ready to commence playing with the new lineup.
2.) The DJ there loved us, and hated how we got shut down. He does hundreds of events every year and said that he might be able to get us to play some of them.
3.) I ate very good french toast after the show at the Eagle Diner. Of course the unfair thing was that I had to order the "Hungry Woman's Platter" to get it.