Joust!

We've been flinging a LOT lately :) 'Tis the season!

Today's Spring Fling Concert was at Indiana University Southeastern.

Alas, it was raining... again. But as always, everyone makes the best of the situation! The inflatables, the stage, the food, the cotton candy and popcorn and the students all moved inside for a little more indoor kind of fun. :)

The best part was that behind the audience was where the jousting inflatable was set up. So the entire time we were performing... people were jousting and knocking each other down. Entertainment for the entertainers! :)

I have to pause, though and say a big GET WELL SOON to beautiful Zyriah. The sweetest little girl - that was WAY into our sound check (and especially my amp since it has a Z on it). She was playing in one of the bouncy inflatables and broke her wrist :( Her mother texted one of the organizers from the hospital because Zyriah wanted a signed poster from the band. Isn't that just the sweetest thing??? HOPE YOU'RE FEELING BETTER ZYRIAH!

The guys raided the inflatables after the show. I didn't quite get to the jousting in time for pics... (but James and Miguel duked it out and it was quite funny) BUT I caught the guys at some of the other places. :)

David... in the boxing ring... alone... with oversized gloves... after he tackled Zach and ran off Miguel... he wouldn't stop bouncing, so the pic is blurry :) Only adds to the awesomeness.


James and David played basketball... I played skee ball... I LOVE that inflatable skee ball exists.


We drove 6 hours up to Bowling Green, Ohio tonight. It feels so good to be in the hotel early!!!! It's only 12:30. So amazing. PLUS it's the best hotel ever. There's a Starbucks, Chipotle, Waffle House, and Jimmy John's all within walking distance. Upon discovering this, Miguel let out a giant AHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!! WHAT ARE WE GONNA DO? WE'RE GONNA HAVE TO EAT EVERYTHING!!!!!!!

Peace. Love. Fiddle.
~natalie

Mt. St. Mary's University.... Older Than Chile

Seriously... it was founded in 1808 and Miguel said they are celebrating the Bicentennial this year in Chile!

Mt. Saint Mary's has a gorgeous campus, located atop a beautiful hill... and it is the oldest independent Catholic college in the U.S. Their spring fling had to be moved indoors today because of rain... but it was no less exciting! Inside the cafeteria, they had a big ole stage for us, mechanical bull, flavored oxygen, old timey pics.. it was awesome!

We were really happy to arrive this morning. We arrived at the hotel around 11:30am after driving all night long. James and I make such a good driving team. We each took a couple shifts and managed to get enough rest while the other was driving to take over again after a few hours. It ended up being about 13 hours total.

The show was awesome - the students were all right up at the front of the stage and I sold OUT of my first cd! We have more ordered, but tonight the last of the most recent batch was sold. Always a good feeling :)





Signing the headphones!


The school is located really close to Camp David - The President's Retreat. We're on Season 4 of the West Wing on DVD in the Van right now, so that was really cool to find out!

It's time for some relaxing with the guys... bed time later is gonna be amazing.

Peace. Love. Fiddle.
~natalie

Reinhardt College Goes With The Flow

Whew. What a day.

I think we have spoiled our Suburban to be on musician-time. It protested as we were leaving the parking lot at 7:30am... Just completely shut down before we even turned onto the main drag... kind-of like my brain at 7:30am.

Luckily, we were right across the street from a GM Dealer!! We called a tow truck and he actually recommended a different Dealer... but even that one was only half a mile away! We've never broken down surrounded by GM Dealers.
So, they tried a bunch of different things, but after a couple of hours it became apparent it wasn't going to be a quick fix and we were gonna have to miss the show. We were supposed to play at 12, we were 90 minutes away, and at 11 they were JUST isolating the problem.

Amazingly enough, they were able to get all the parts in to fix it TODAY. AND even MORE amazing - the school was able to work with us and postpone the show until 7pm tonight!!!

One tiny glitch... they didn't quite get the fuel gauge connected, so our fuel gauge permanently reads "EMPTY". But we didn't have the time to let them fix that if we wanted to make it for the postponed show. So we'll just have to fill up every chance we get to make sure we don't run out of gas! :) We'll fix that later...

I can't believe the school was still able to make it work for an evening show. But they emailed all the students with the change, printed up new flyers with the new show time and even said it was the best turn out they ever had for an outdoor concert!

Can't believe the day ended up turning out so well. But we are all spent. I don't miss feeling like this. There was a lifetime of these "OH CRAP." moments with that first Suburban. When it happens now, I just count my blessings it's not every other day.

Peace. Love. Fiddle.
~natalie

It's Official. Miguel is REALLY Important

WHEW.

We are always prepared for it to be difficult to enter the military bases. For obvious reasons there should be LOTS of protocol involved when civilians are allowed on base.

Since we are supposed to be here, we've never had any issues with getting on. But today well... not so easy.
For some reason, the computer system would not allow them to enter Miguel's information. He's a permanent resident, not QUITE a citizen, but he has a social security number, license, and green card.... (has been here for 4 years AND is married to a beautiful corn-fed Nebraska girl) But he lost his wallet in PCB and is still waiting on his replacement green card, so he didn't have it as extra proof today. But he had his license and in Tennessee, you can' get a license without a green card...

After a couple of hours of speaking to one person and then the next, showing all the proof he had, yada, yada...

The Commanding Officer of Pax River Navy Base gave Miguel special permission to be on base today. So Miguel is WAY more special than the rest of us here!!! :)


The Barracks Bash at their BRAND NEW Liberty Center was awesome. They had planned to do a big outdoor concert, but they decided early in the day to move it indoors because there was a 50% chance of rain. And as we've learned before.... better safe than sorry!! Their new facility is great though. It was funny because the best place for the stage was where they normally show movies. So there were what I will call half-walls up to act as dividers for this part of the room. If I were taller, it would have helped. But unless you were standing in front, you could only see me from the neck up! And I noticed that when Miguel was soloing, I am sure you couldn't see his guitar... which is just funny to think about! But it mattered not to ANYONE in the room. They were full of free hamburgers and hot dogs, and were singing along!

Not sure what it is lately about these soldiers all being drawn to the ladies pink tee... but I hope this continues to happen!


Charlene is 6 months pregnant and had me sign this poster for little James to be born in 3 months!


It's a "Michael from Tennessee" sandwich!


And another TN boy who grew up in Lawrence County right down the road from me! He's even worked Mule Day before :)


TOM!!! He took care of us all day!


I kind wish I was looking at whatever he's looking at... because it looks like a lot of fun:




Peace. Love. Fiddle.
~nat

Rhode Island College

First outdoor concert of the year was today! You know Spring is trying to come out when the outdoor shows start getting booked. We haven't played outdoors since Ribfest in St. Petersburg this last November.

We played at Rhode Island College on their Quad for a BEAUTIFUL afternoon show.

On my way to the stage... THIS is what I saw:

"Fiddler" with an arrow pointing to the stage. CLASSIC!

Plus they had one of the LARGEST posters I have ever seen of myself up on the wall! And they had hundreds of flyers they had been handing out to the students. It takes a LOT of people to put on a great show. SO MUCH goes into planning, preparing, promoting... and attention to detail is KEY. This group knew what they were doing! Oh... and having a raffle in the middle of the show doesn't hurt either :) Someone won a $250 gift certificate to a music store!!! SO COOL!
(I loved that they handed out free hats and bandanas to everyone, too!)


We played a 2 hour set and we were only the start to the day. They had a HUGE carnival tonight, too. It looked like a LOT of fun.

Nate was our main contact. He was wonderful to work with. He called me this morning because they couldn't find part of the stage. We have requirements in our rider that he was trying to fulfill. He left me a message saying he would "go in EVERY building on campus if he had to in order to find the rest of the stage... if what they had wouldn't work" :) WHAT A SWEETHEART! What they had was fine, but they ended up finding the missing pieces anyway. Plus, Nate is going to TSU for a semester in the fall!!! He just wants to be close to country music which I think is just the coolest thing ever. Who knew that you could trade semesters with Rhode Island College and Tennessee State University!?!?


I ended up selling my very last RED Peace, Love, Fiddle, T-shirt from the first design! :) I can't tell you how accomplished that made me feel :)


George pretty much stole the show... not gonna lie.


These girls were adorable. They were dancing and singing with me the whole show.


Kristen and Sadie made it! They came all the way from Boston :)


Kristen got some great pics that she has already uploaded onto facebook :)



And my good friend Sarah got to come today, too. We ended up getting to spend a bit of time together this afternoon and again this evening. I normally am not in a city long enough to do things like that. I was so thankful to get to spend time with her!!!


And I have gotta say - James is SUCH A CHAMPION!!! He drove the ENTIRE night last night. It is currently 1am and he is JUST NOW going to bed. I at least slept a few hours in the car while he was driving. But him? Not a wink. And we ran errands this afternoon... so the time we had planned to nap (before Lost came on!) ended up getting filled VERY quickly.

But we are staying at the Biltmore in downtown Providence. It is a beautiful hotel. And it is so nice to get to stay in a really nice hotel for more than 8 hours. :) Nice hotels are by no means a necessity. But we sure do live it up when we have one!

Tomorrow? We drive to Norfolk Virginia. But we wait until check out to leave. Oh yeah.

Drumroll please. I'm going to bed!

Peace. Love. Fiddle.
~natalie