Horses and Hotwings

Thursday, 11 August 2005
BenWahBob had another gig at Fairmount Park for the Michelob Ultra Thursday version of Party at the Park. Food buffet, dollar bottles, live music, attractive women, the sport of kings…what’s not to like here?

I arrived later than I had hoped – as usual – so I had to rush through the load-in, set-up, and make a B-line for the buffet before it got too crowded and all of the hot-wings got scarffed. This is one of those tough gigs to get to because of my day-job being in Chesterfield MO. It’s an hour’s drive home to St. Jacob, load equipment, shave/shower, then back-track to Collinsville to the track – all between 15:30 when I get off at work and 18:00 when the doors open to let people into the Black Stallion Room. It’s always tight timewise. People were already rushing the front window seats when the service elevator opened on the second floor and I rolled out my stuff.

So, I buried my face, quite literally, into a tray of various flavors of hot-wings, wiped the goo from my face, tuned my bass, and we were playing at 18:30. Have I ever mentioned how much I love rushing into a gig?

We put the songs through their usual paces, being mostly ignored by those whose turn it now was to stuff wings and pizza into their faces while perusing the race schedule for the horse that would lose them their money. We got the occasional odd request for stuff we simply don’t play, but for the most part we were just background music. So it goes there in the early stages. As the evening goes on, we get more attention – possibly due to the increasing influence of the cheap beer. At one point around the middle of the evening, the dance tunes rolled into the set list. As someone had actually requested Mustang Sally right before we played it, it worked in fairly nicely. This apparently turned out to be a distraction for Dale (go figure), because he launched into the Reader’s Digest condensed version of the song, opting to go straight into the sing-a-long section right away. We all exchanged humored glances and played along. Dale caught this immediately and actually took some jabs at himself over it. I hate it when he beats us to it.

There were a couple of fellas who spent most of the night staring at us, watching every move. You can always spot the musicians from a mile away. We were slightly tickled over that, too. It doesn’t take too much to amuse us…we’re simple people with simple needs.

At the end of the night, we were regaled with a great story of how our husband-and-wife sound crew went to see Jagertyme at Club Richards in Alton IL (mistakenly thinking it was Knucklehead) and were run out in under two minutes because of the near-deafening volume level. They said it actually hurt to be in the club – even on the other side. The Jagerdrunks would be proud.

I packed my stuff, which takes all of about five minutes, and headed for the door. Bobby and I stood around and talked for a bit, exchanged some gear and some money when we got outside (he’s selling off some of his PA gear), and headed for home. I think I had one of the early Dream Theater CDs in my player – Falling Into Infinity, maybe – for the short trip up the highway…reminding me of my desire to acquire a Chapman Stick.

Another one in the proverbial can. We only did the Thursday night this time, as they decided to split them up for awhile. I had the rest of the weekend off for a change. I didn’t even have to work at my day job on Saturday, so it was like having a real weekend. Dawna invited me over Sunday night for dinner/birthday party for her oldest son Derek and me. Since we had watched most of the T1G bootleg DVD the previous weekend – which was very cool – we curled up on the couch and watched Last Samurai again. All in all, a pretty good weekend.