Friday night I joined my comrades to play on the square in Murfreesboro, TN. Outdoor concerts have their challenges. Usually it starts with waking up the morning of the gig with an eye on the weather. One thing rain brings is cooler weather. But as last weekend's post-rain outdoor baptism proved, when the sun comes back out, the rain vaporizes up into the clouds and cooks everything in it's path. Guitars and amps don't react favorably to these conditions--neither do singers nor musicians.
In the spring of 1980 I was enjoying the opportunity to travel and see North America in it's entirety for the first time. When we were kids in the 60s, my folks packed the station wagon one summer and we made our way through Yellowstone, The Grand Canyon, Jackson Hole, and everything in between. The wonder that the big sky displayed in those landscapes was awesome. When a storm was brewing, the best thing to do was to find shelter and wait it out because it was going to be ominous. Zooming forward in time, this 1980 trip brought back these memories as me and the band worked our way across western Canada, slogging through the thick mud of the fairgrounds where we played. We were guests of the Hell Drivers, a popular Canadian stunt driving crew out of London, Ontario, that dazzled audiences with their car jumps, roll-overs and other death-defying feats. We also shared the stage with a marionette troupe. Needless to say, we had to make due with the summer weather on the prairie and all of it's fickle behavior.
Not only was mud a concern, dust and heat were also enemies. Pedals, amps, mics and sound systems were always vulnerable to failure when dirt was present. We had to cover our gear with whatever we could muster so that the Hell Driver's dust storms wouldn't find their way into our stuff. Mic cords and P.A. cables took a terrible beating. We had to take wet towels and clean the entire length of each before rolling and packing them into their cases for travel.
Still, after all the hassles with playing outdoors, it is the most fun I ever have as a musician. It reminds me of the time, while as a kid visiting Disneyland in Anaheim, bands rose out of the ground on an elevator-like stage at the Tomorrowland Terrace. The sound of it was incredible to me as I circled above the terrace on my rocket ship. I wanted to play there one day (that dream "sort of" came true in 1981 when I played for a week or so at Disneyworld in Florida). When on an outdoor stage, I love to turn up my amp and let it get a little rowdy (we put our amps in sound-proof boxes at times to cut down on stage volume...so cranking it up is a treat!). The rain held out Friday night. The square was filled with worship and great music. This trumped all of the hassles that lead up to the event. I'll worry about the dust later.
My funniest experience playing outdoors was at Camp Garner Creek in Dickson TN with Ben Davis Project. The outdoor pavilion had some lights on either side of the stage, big florescent tube lights. We played an opening set just as the sun was setting. After 20 minutes or so, we went back up on stage. The sun was pretty far down. You could here bugs chirping away in the grass. We started playing and they turned the stage lights up but not the side lights. The next thing I know I was covered with bugs attracted to the brightest thing they could find, Me. I was breathing them in and squishing them all down the neck of my bass. I turned around and nobody else seemed bothered. The bugs found me and quit there. It took two or three songs for them to dissipate. So I'm choking and swatting bugs and everybody else is just looking at me strangely. They finally started getting everybody else, but not nearly as bad as I got it.
ReplyDeleteYour outdoor fiasco trumps any of mine, Jeff!
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