Post
by BenjaminWells » Mon Apr 04, 2011 7:38 pm
First of all, I can't thank everyone enough for the great wisdom. This is a great community.
Banjo player left the new toy at home and played wonderfully.
So, the gig went off like this: the day before the show I received word that the other warm-up band had a "scheduling conflict" and wouldn't be playing, so could we double our set time from 25 to 45 minutes. "Yes of course" was our reply. When we arrived, it was snowing sideways... full-on blizzard conditions, with a mobile stage set up at the base of Peak 8 at Breckenridge. During our sound check, the wind shifted and the snow started coming right in on us. About the third time I had to wipe the snow from the top of my Martin, the stage manager called it and we went inside.
We passed the two hours in the green room jamming and listening to the production crew deal with the possibility that Cornmeal might not make it due to the storm. At one point someone asked how much material we have. That's when I realized we were in for something epic.
So, we play our first song, which went well. But our fingers were frozen and our instruments were out of tune already. And, our fiddle player's 100 year old fiddle was getting wet. Someone passed out hand warmers. After two full minutes of finger thawing and tuning, which felt like an eternity, we started our second song. And the snow kept coming, harder and harder. After the second song, the chief engineer let us know that Cornmeal was not going to make it, and could we play two 45 minute sets? "Hell yes, no problem!" was our reply. By that time it had become personal between us and the weather, and we weren't going to give up.
So we played, thawed, tuned and played some more... and some how made it through an epic gig. Hell, we even did an encore! And, I think the experience brought the band closer together. The sound system was incredible, and it was our first time playing with an engineer mixing us FOH and a separate engineer mixing our monitors. We could all hear each other between the gusts of wind... what's a few frozen eyebrows?