I’ve written a couple of articles recently about how it is when things go wrong on a gig. This time, I get to write about a time when things went RIGHT!
Murphy and I live on a wooded mountainside in rural Frederick County, Virginia. But we’re not in the middle of nowhere, because North Mountain Volunteer Fire Department is less than a mile from our house. That’s reassuring. The fire department exists largely on donations from the community, though. Murphy and I, being musicians, can rarely toss much cash into their “Boot Drive” each year, so we donate by playing music for their annual yard party. We get to play music and have fun and see a lot of people, and make our contribution to the fire department at the same time.
When the fire department called this year, asking for a couple of hours of music at their yard party, I agreed to play. But I hadn’t taken the precaution of making sure that Murphy would be in town on that date! It turned out, a few weeks ahead of time, that she had to be out of town. Still, we were scheduled to provide the music. I’d hate to call the fire department back and cancel. I could do the performance solo, but it wouldn’t be much fun. Not only would it be good to have two people on stage instead of one, but I needed help moving the sound equipment and setting it up! What could I do?
Well, I started calling up a few pickers we know and like, and to my relief our Cousin David could play that day. Cousin David is best known for his mandolin picking, but he can also play guitar, bass, or banjo (or fiddle, or drums, or cello) with equal facility. So I was set—whether we found any more pickers or not, we could play a lot of music and have a good time.
On the day of the gig, David called. He said, “My friend John would like to come along to the gig and hang out.” But, I remembered, John is a bass player! I said, “Ask him to bring a bass!” David said, “Would you like him to play?” I said, “Two hundred per cent!” So John came along and brought his bass, and we had a band.
We arrived at the fire hall an hour before we needed to start, and began unloading our sound equipment from the van. We had the customary deluxe bluegrass-music stage (a flatbed truck), so we were in familiar surroundings. We went to work running cords around and hooking all the microphones, amplifiers, and speakers together. Now, both Cousin David and John are quite experienced musicians, and I didn’t have to tell them what to do—like Murphy and myself, they’ve both set up sound for decades. We had our sound system set up, turned on, adjusted, and ready to go in 11 minutes! —a record. We had over 45 minutes left for tuning up, relaxing, and getting ready to play.
