A bright note with a reminder

I got a call today from Tim, the other half of Jim & Tim with a bit of good news. We’re playing Elburn Days this year on the 22nd of August at Noon for three hours in the Beer Tent. I played that gig with Tim three years ago, as a matter of fact, it’s what got Jim & Tim started, It just took 2 1/2 years to come to fruition, that’s a good gestation period, right?

I was actually filling in for Pete who was gigging with Tim at the time. Now being a classically trained singer, I had a lot of work in front of me to do 3 hours of classic rock, but I was definitely excited at the prospect of working with Tim. We had a few rehearsals and it came time for the day and it was one of the worst weather days you can imagine.

It had been raining the day before, in fact, they shut down early because of the rain and cancelled events. Sunday wasn’t faring much better, but you never assume a job is cancelled until you’re told so, so I jumped in my car and drove over. It was sloppy from the previous day and it was starting to rain again. We got there and set up, only to find out that all the bands were cancelled from the night before and it was looking like they were going to cancel them that day too, just waiting on the call. So we start playing to a very, very small crowd.

Then a few more came…and a few more, but still nothing big. the crowd grew little by little until we hit the three hour mark and they asked us to play another hour. and at the end of that hour? More people and they asked us to play another hour…well, long story short (or is it too late for that now?), we ended up playing for 7 1/2 hours when I was basically only prepared for barely three. and in the meantime, word had spread and we had the biggest crowd of the day when we stopped playing and the crowd was begging us to keep going. You can read about the reaction in my first blog. I had to be pushed out of my parking spot, the ground was sooo soggy my car sank. It was a great day and left me with a great story.

And now I get to go back this year and play again. That’s what cool about it all.