Beloit Gig

Saturday morning I met Travalon for coffee, then we spent the early part of the afternoon at the local zoo. It is a very nice zoo, especially considering that it is completely free. I couldn’t get the black swan to say “Hello” this time (like it sometimes does), the flamingos were sleeping instead of dancing, and the red panda was nowhere to be found, but otherwise it was a lot of fun. We had lunch outside at the ZuZu Café because it was such a beautiful day.

Then I drove with most of my bandmates to Beloit for a gig. We had to learn a new repertoire for this gig because it was an English country dance session, like what would have been done in Jane Austen’s time. Many of the songs were in G or D, so no problem there, but there were a few in keys we don’t usually play in, like B minor and B flat major. I had gotten together with Hardingfele and practiced the music, since I was unable to make it to band practice, and things seemed to go fine. During the actual gig, we spent a lot of time sitting around while the caller (who was from Iowa) taught the dance moves to the participants, who were mostly college girls. Then we had to play each song about a million times in a row. Because the dance moves were so complicated, it took the caller longer to teach them than she must have expected, because she cut several dances out of the program. Of course, they were all songs in G; the ones in the harder keys stayed on the list. There was one song where the chords changed every beat, so I gave up and played harmony on that one. Hardingfele had mentioned there was a hip hop bar in Beloit that we could go to afterwards, but it was well after 10 and we just headed home. I did have to miss Catzooks’s boyfriend’s birthday party for this gig, but it was fun, and I did get paid. Nothing like getting tens of dollars for a gig to make one feel like a real musician!

Famous Hat