Played fun, but brutal one last night. The brutal part was the drive. 140 miles/ 2-1/2 hours each way.
The Lake of the Ozarks Blues Society has a monthly jam, and the host band is paid, and paid pretty well for a weeknight gig. And splitting 3 ways (Charlie B3 organ trio), made it work even better on money side.
Cool bar in a nice lake resort. My second time playing for LOTOBS, so some familiar faces/jammers. Our drummer in this group Ricky "Party" Hardy, rode with me. Ricky is a 64 y/o black guy. Singing drummer. Sings blues and soul stuff the way all white guys wish they could. Also a veteran player who worked with all the black heavyweight blues guys in town. So, 5 hours in the car of some pretty cool stories.
The blues society always starts out with an acoustic jam at 6, then we started at 7. Got set up in plenty of time, and hung around the acoustic jam guys. There was a guy playing a resonator. Asked me to sit in and play his resonator, while he played some harp. There was also a women playing flute (let the innuendo, begin.) Man, don't need to be jonesin' about getting a resonator, but it was pretty cool!
Gig went real well. Big crowd including the blues society, players, and people who were just there at the resort. We did a strong hour set, and started working jammers in. So, I had about an hour break before the guitar jammers ran their course.
Gig was 7-10, so back on the road around 11. After dropping Ricky off, in the hood, back home at 2am. Actually no worse than a 9-1 job at home would have been. I am still on a total alcohol hiatus (3rd week, I think), and I think that made a huge difference in being able to get through the gig and the drive 3 hour gig, plus 5 hours of driving,following a day of work (I took off an hour early.) Felt pretty good, even when getting up at 6am!
