Although we displayed a lot of Deer-in-the-headlights behavior, our first Casino gig went well. As a 'festival', it was a little disappointing. Carl Solander, who was the MBOTMA member who engaged us said that the publicity was badly neglected: there was no mention in any of the MN or other local 'bluegrass' publications. Other than the Casino site, we had found nothing on the Web. One of the other performers, Mike, 'The Banjo Man', said that because the casino was funding the bands, there wasn't much incentive for promotion. In any event, on Saturday I counted less than 100 paying customers so at $15 a head they were barely covering a couple of the local bands (like us), let alone the national groups.
After playing the lounge shows Friday night, our voices were a little rough from the smoke on Saturday. Because of a rain threat which never materialized, the festival (actually more of a concert), was held indoors in the Casino convention center. Fortunately the concert site was non-smoking, and our voices recovered as the day went on. The chairs were around tables so even with a sparse crowd it didn't seem empty. Although the band we replaced was originally scheduled for 2:00, they switched things around so that we opened at 12:00 noon. This worked out for the best., since that allowed 'Handpicked', a bluegrass band to set things up for the Gibson Brothers, the national group playing on Saturday. We moved some songs from a later set and ended up doing all 14 songs & tunes planned. The crowd increased as we played and the sound system was set up pretty well. (The monitors were never perfect, but when I listened to the other bands play it sounded like they got the house mix sounding pretty well). We were followed by Singleton Street, a Minnesota group, and found out that our tastes in music overlapped quite a bit. They focus on gospel (but not exclusively) and did a number of songs in current or past set lists. In our second set we did Otto Wood, which they had apparently planned to play. They did John Hardy which we had performed at the lounge the previous night, as well as Elbow Room, and I'll Fly Away which we'd played in Milbank, SD a couple weeks before. We had seen and met some of the band members before, but spent some more time talking and getting to know them and swapped CD's (we got the better end of that deal).
The Gibson brothers are from upstate New York and have won a number of bluegrass awards. During their set at 3:00 we found out why. They do great vocals and are backed by a tight band. We had the 'honors' of following them at 4:00 - I think we'd did OK but this was my true Deer-in-the-Headlights 1/2 hour set. Most of the crowd had left for a break and what was left was at the Gibson Brothers CD table while we played. However, I did see a couple of folk who seemed into it (one of them reminded me of people I know in the old time music community).
The most disconcerting thing for the 4:00 set was that we didn't do a sound check and the mikes were hot-hot-hot. They used Shure 58s and 57s, which is what I'm used to; however, I ended up standing at least 18 inches further back then I usually do. We also had our first 'heckler': he was actually about the only person we saw all weekend obviously under the influence. He was bugging the sound guy and Lynn at one point thought he was 'official' - he was also the guy who said 'do some country' (I said - we're doing 'old,old country)... The sound guy apologized after I set, but it wasn't a big deal.
We stayed a bit more and had some of the 'entertainers' lunch and left about 6:30 for home since Lynn was subbing for the organist at Church on Sunday. All and all a 'useful' experience, but a bit more nerve-wracking then we anticipated. However, we did get the 'check' before we left - the biggest pay yet for the Bob-i-Lynn Band.
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