I messed up and put up another thread with pictures.
The biker benefit was tough cause it was raining. We were supposed to play outdoors, but we set up in the shop. Which was fine with me. The benefit raised close to $5000 for Kenny Feathers, Somerville Police Chief who was injured in a benefit wrestling exhibition. We played from about 1:30 pm til 3pm. We played Crazy Train and I think I did the solo the best Ive ever done it, it just clicked. If you play a lot there are times when things just go into slow motion, and just feel right. Thats always been a tough solo for me cause my band is very physical, dont come expected a bunch of old guys sitting in easy chairs.
We loaded up and headed to a big Birthday Bash for some friends of mine. Our drummer had a pryer engagement so we had recruited another guy, well his wife had an emergency surgery so he cancelled for sat night sat morning. I called another guy that i play with and he just wouldnt do it. We pulled into the party at 5pm to set up and some guy there said I know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy that plays drums. I said tell him to get his ass over here. Matt shows up in an hour and plays everything I throw at him all night. I couldnt believe this guy s could cover all this ground. But he did a fantastic job and you can bet your sweet tailbone Ive got his name in case we need him again.
We also had Gail playing Keyboards. Gail lives across the street from the party and asked to play. She is a Christian musician, but I played with her at a couple of tent revivals I played with thru the years. We put together a basic set list, I told her Chord changes and keys and we went to work. It was different for a few songs playing with the keys but once we got in the groove there were some magic moments. Kevin our singer went on the bike ride that morning and it was actually cold and wet and his throat was bothering him so he told me to just stretch songs and I did. I would throw out a riff to Gail and she would throw it back. I was amazed how the whole night fell into place.
They had fish and BBQ, there were around 350 people there, lots of old friends that had never seen my play and I got to wail all night. We were going to just play til 10pm but wound up playing a full show past midnight. They took up donations for us and we got close to $1200. Amazing we were actually doing the show for freee for publicity and I just wanted to play in front of my mom and dad and neighbors, but it turned out great.
Sunday morning up around 9pm. Headed to Ark for my sons race, I took around 400 pictures, then back to Memphis at 6pm to practice with my other band. Got home around 12 sunday night.
Very full weekend, I need to go to work to get some rest.
From a musician standpoint there is a lot of work and places to play if you just open yourself for it. Sat night I played Louie Louie, The Joker and oh the dreaded Freebird, but you know what the people loved it and we got a suprise paycheck for our efforts and a ton of potential gig prospects. I think I posted that I found a cd duplicator that made 3500 copies of our little demo songs and one suprise original, I got them for .27 cents apiece. This was the deal of the century. I gave out about 150 of them this weekend. We sold $380 worth of merchandise, we did put $200 into the pot for Kenny Feathers.
So all in all I had a fantastic weekend.
