Oh What a Night

Tonight was definitely "one of those nights"... eh em.... where "the show must go on". We get to the Jack (Jack Daniel's Saloon at the Opryland Hotel in Nashville), and everything seems normal. Then Hootie tries to turn his bass amp on... ummm.... makes a really strange loud noise, and then it is DONE. I mean... done. He tried everything, but NOTHING worked. He ended up having to use my Direct box so we could run his bass through the main speakers. But that meant there was no way to amplify the fiddle. We tried so many different options. The only way was for me to try to put the fiddle up to my vocal mic. But you could BARELY hear it.

I tried to play the first set without the fiddle at all. But it just seemed silly. I kept having to skip over songs... I didn't realize just how much a part of the show the fiddle is until I couldn't use it. I mean, Miguel was able to fill in most of the holes but he's already got so much responsibility with his parts since there are no other guitars. He's basically a rhythm AND lead guitarist at the same time! So I just made do with the tiny bit you could hear through my vocal mic. I was on my tip toes every time I played and my hand was cramping up because I was playing as hard as I could to get the most sound out of it.

Then I cut my A string with my pinky nail. It started unraveling, which made it very difficult to play. But I didn't have any time to restring it. So I just had to make adjustments as I played. I couldn't slide my finger at all because the string was so rough from unraveling. It was very strange. That has NEVER happened before. But hey, if there was a night for that to happen.... it was tonight!!! You couldn't hear me anyway!

Then Miguel broke a string. That's pretty common. But it was awesome because it helped continue the theme for the evening.

Then, James' cymbal stand collapsed and while he was playing, I had to adjust it back into place!

And at the end of the night - these very enthusiastic but very inebriated ladies decided to pile on stage. It is usually awesome when people get that excited. Mostly because that is pretty indicative of an incredible show. But there are certain times and venues where it is so stressful.... We have LOTS of expensive equipment and meaningful instruments up there. This specific stage is barely big enough for the 4 of us. And these ladies were very ummm.... clumsy? by that point in the evening... if you get my drift. One of the ladies tried to stand on my fiddle case, and I have NEVER done this before, but I told her to step down over the mic DURING a song. That makes me feel so unbelievably unprofessional. Then she fell down on it, and we all thought my fiddle was smashed. Thank the Lord it wasn't!!! But 2 of the ladies took over Hootie's mic and started screaming into it. They knocked James' cymbols over 3 times before they even turned around and realized there was a drum set back there. There's much more to that story, but it would be inappropriate of me to continue....

Needless to say, I cut that song off early.... even though the guys couldn't see hand signals because there was so much going on... But somehow we all ended at the same time. :)

And it's such a shame. I love it when people get spontaneously inspired. I wish we all had more of that "dance like no one is watching" mentality. We are just VERY restricted by that stage.

But all of this is exactly what made tonight's show, well... tonight's show! We know they won't all be perfect and you just figure out a way to make it as great an experience for everyone as you can. And despite some of the drama, I had a really good time tonight. People from Australia and Mexico were there. A very sweet couple who just got engaged last night were there celebrating. And there was a huge group of people from Kentucky that have been without power for days, so they came to Nashville to get away for a bit! So yup.

Tomorrow night we do it all over again :) My goal = being able to hear the fiddle!

Peace, Love, and Amplified Fiddle