Lynn and I don't quite know what to expect when we play at the Bluegrass Festival at the LCO Casino in Hayward, WI this weekend, but we didn't hesitate to accept the gig when we got a call a week or so ago that a band had canceled. I'm familiar with and know some members of two of the bands performing: Singleton Street and the Blue Drifters, but otherwise we will know very few people in the audience. Lynn likes to say that 'playing out' more& more means that we're leaving the comfort zone of playing in front of friends and family: this gig will definitely achieve that! The festival itself is outdoors, so it should be similar to playing at the Homegrown Kickoff. Since we do mainly old-time duets, we'll probably announce ourselves as playing 'roots-of-bluegrass'. We're doing two 45 minute sets which is about double what we've been usually doing; however, all of the songs and tunes we're doing for the festival sets we've performed before and in our run-through Monday & Tuesday, they all went reasonably well. (There are a few we'll touch up tonight and Saturday in the Casino hotel room).
The most interesting and challenging thing is that we are also playing two sets at the Casino Lounge on Friday night, alternating with the Hand Picked Bluegrass Band. I have no idea what to expect: we are duplicating some of the festival songs - but are mixing in 5 or 6 new ones (and skipping the same number from the festival sets). The festival set numbers are all 'traditional' where I play guitar or mandolin - for the lounge sets, I'm doing a couple of 12 string numbers as well as some Norman Blake and Gillian Welch songs. One of our worries is how smoky it will be (hopefully, the air circulation is good). Living in Minneapolis, we are used to bars without smoke.
We're starting to work on getting some Bob-i-Lynn gigs for the fall and I was thinking it would be good to start checking out the 'Regional Festival' Circuit for next summer - I guess this gig just gets that ball rolling a little earlier than I figured. I'll probably post another installment some time next week relating what actually happened in Hayward.
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