Thursday - The First Performance

Today started with helping Dave navigate the Tornado Warning in the area. He was traveling with the trailer with 60mph winds in the area. Fortunately he made it in without issue.

We were really unsure what the day would bring. Steve didn't receive many details so we weren't sure what to expect. We all headed downtown to see how it would all work out. We got to the Bluegrass Inn to see Aaron Kelly performing. He is a 16yr old boy with a nice voice. Rumor was that he has already been selected for the next American Idol show. We'll have to keep an eye out for him next year. He was done right at 2pm so we had to rush to get everything setup. The stage was very small for a 7 piece band so we were packed in pretty tight. There was a very basic sound system so we had to quickly decide what would be powered through the PA.

Tammy Malone was our guest vocalist for the day. We went through her songs and had to do some improvising as she pulled out a few things we didn't expect, but it was all good.

I know I sound partial, but after walking around the strip a few times I just didn't hear any bands who were doing music like we were doing. This seemed to be confirmed as slowly people started to peek their heads into the door and enter the club to listen to us. We got a great reaction from the crowd and made a little money in tips. Overall, it was a good performance dispite the rush required to get us setup and going. Now that we had done it, we knew we would be more efficient on Friday.

The most notable things from Thursday's performance were the visits from Wank and O'Brien from HANK FM to check out the show and the appearance of of Mark Johnson. If you look on our CD, many of the songs were either written or co-written by Mark. This was his first chance to hear his songs played live. He had a good time and we were really happy to see him and get to perform the songs he had written. For me, personally, that was the best part of Thursday's performance.

After dinner, we took off around the strip to see what was going on. We ended up spending most of our time at Robert's Western World. There was a group playing called the Don Kelley Band. This band included Dave Roe (bassist for Johnny Cash), and a tremendous young guitarist named JD Simo. You can see them on YouTube. We also saw Tommy Tutone at Tootsies...you know...Jenny, Jenny...8675309.

After that, most of us called it a night. We knew that Friday would be a really long day so we didn't stay out too late. One pleasant surprise was a phone call from Tom telling us he would be down to play on Friday. That was really great news!