Tuesday, June 21, 2005

Perseverance on the bandstand

The Seventh Street jazz band played last Saturday outdoors at the Visitor Center at Multnomah Falls. We played this gig last year, too. Last year it was viciously hot, and I nearly got sunstroke from the sun beating down on my bald head! This year was decidedly different.

There was a forecast of rain, as there had been for several days previously. Here in Oregon, we realize that rain comes and goes, and you can still schedule events for rainy days. We got set up at about 1:00 PM, and the park rangers provided a couple of canvas shelters, about 12x12 feet each. We squeezed under these, and just as we started the first tune at 2:00 PM, the rain started coming down.

Through the first set, the rain increased in intensity. The flashes of light that I first thought were fans taking pictures, turned out to be lightning. Thunder rolled through the gorge, and the temperature started dropping.

We took a break about 3:00, and huddled under the shelters. There was a place where the two shelters came together, and of course, that's where the water ran off in serious quantities -- right onto the trumpet section. We kicked off the second set, and by then, the only audience members still listening were under umbrellas. Our drummer Joel was defending himself from insects that were leaping off the nearby underbrush onto his drumheads and onto his face. All the players were fighting the cold and wet, and our fingers grew more and more numb. We kept pulling the amps closer into the shelter to try to keep them dry.



Finally, we finished about 4:00 PM and started to pack up. This, of course, was the cue for the rain to stop, and we managed to load out without getting too soaked.

I'll be interested in how some of the younger players in the band react to this less-than-ideal gig. It certainly is not the worst I've had. I recall in the '70s, our band went to Detroit to play a one-nighter on an island in the river between the US and Canada called Bob-Lo Island. We had to ride on a barge with the equipment to get there, and it was hailing the whole way. When we got onstage, we found that our gentle prog-rock melodies were being drowned out by the next band -- Brownsville Station -- "warming up" backstage at more-or-less full concert volume.

I think no experience is truly bad if you get a good story out of it.