Holding On With Dear Life

Today we simultaneously did something very stupid and very necessary. And there wasn't even really a choice in the matter.

About 20 minutes before we were supposed to take the stage, the city manager, the guy who hired us and one of the coordinators of the event came to me in a bit of a panic. We looked to the North and could see ominous black clouds rolling in. There were talks of hail and the storm was coming QUICK. They wanted to know what I wanted to do. I REALLY didn't want to cancel completely. But I wanted to let them make the call. There were already lots of people in lawn chairs with coolers, plus all the vendors who had set up for our concert.

We decided to just move all the gear as close to the inside of the tent as we could and wait it out a little bit. HAHA!! That was funny.

People started bringing in tarps and we began covering everything up. There were 5 other people helping us out. As we were covering the gear and amps and such, the rain started POURING. Thunder and lightening was all around us. We all were working as quickly as possible, but in the blink of an eye, we were all holding onto the tent with dear life to keep it from blowing off the stage. If it had blown off, everything would have been ruined. And I kept seeing images of the tent hitting someone in the face... James, Tim, and I were all holding onto the same center piece and it was STILL lifting completely off the ground even though we were holding on with all our might.

The stupid part? The rods of the tent were metal. Every time the lightening would strike, we'd all quickly let go, but have to grab on again immediately to keep it from ripping off the stage. The bridge in the middle of the tent was bursting at the seems with water and every now and then a waterfall would pour down and soak us even more. I was shivering because I was COMPLETELY soaked from head to toe.

It was a terrible day to wear a white shirt.


Once the rain let up for just a bit, Tim uploaded this pic to facebook:


I love technology... he uploads a picture while we're still in the middle of the storm.

Here's us once the rain stopped...


And here's what the stage looked like.


The entire stage was a pool... my amp had water in it, and James' drums were covered with water. But everything turned out fine. I haven't tried to turn my amp on, but they let us use a hotel room to change out of our soaked clothes. And I used my hair drier to rid my pretty little Marshall of all unwanted water.



I kept saying prayers while we were out there. Once it all started, there was no time to think. It would have been really hard to get away without getting hurt by debris. I heard reports that a lady died just a mile or two up the road from us. And one of the guys with the concert was in shock afterwards. 2 Oak trees had fallen on his house and car while his wife and 4 kids were in the house! But they were all ok. So thank goodness we were all ok. It was quite a way to wait out a storm. I prefer not to get caught like that ever again. It was awful.

Whew. Now we're getting a head start on our drive to Maryland. Hopefully we'll get to at least play our shows there!

Hope everyone is staying safe!
Peace. Love. Fiddle.
~natalie