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SummerSounds, St. Clair
Park, Greensburg, Pennsylvania |
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Home
Pretty
Boy's Corner |
July 30, 2010 |
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Up
at 4:45 am to get showered, dressed, and packed. We meet downstairs
and load Big Mama by 6 am and get on the road. We get a treat
seeing the sunrise as we drive east. We make it to the border
and we get through in less than thirty minutes. I guess it
is easier returning to your own country rather than going
into a foreign one. We pass through Buffalo, Erie, and Pittsburg
on our way to Greensburg. Everyone is in good spirits but
just a little bit sleep deprived. We help a fellow Sprinter
driver - Big Mama is a Sprinter van - jumpstart
his vehicle at a rest stop and continue on our way.
After some confusion about directions to the hotel - what
else is new - we load in our bags at the hotel and head off
to St. Claire Park in Greensburg. It is a short drive to the
park and we are helped in by Judge Dick, a volunteer for the
promoters. Gene, the head honcho, greets us and everyone once
again pitches in to help us get our gear onto the outdoor
stage. The venue is an amphitheatre in a beautiful park setting.
There are 5 to 6 rows of seats directly in front of the stage
and a grassy hill behind these where people can bring in their
own chairs. We are told that the park will fill up and that
they have had up to 5, 000 people on some of the events that
Greensburg has put on.
We get our gear set up and the sound guys, Brandon and Dan,
who own and run Impact Audio, take charge. These guys are
superb. If you ever need sound done in Pennsylvania, give
these guys a call. They have two large speaker arrays for
both sides of the stage and eight bass bins, four on each
side. Everyone got their own monitor and they had no problem
accommodating the girls with their in-ears monitors. The coolest
thing about their set up was that the monitor mixer was wireless.
Dan would walk around the stage and ask each of us what we
wanted in our mix and hear what we were hearing and throughout
the night adjust as we needed. How cool is that? I'm
finding that I like to have a little bit of the bass in my
monitor which allows me to hear the bass better. This keeps
me from playing too hard and heavy. I'm glad that Tom
likes it too. The mix sounds awesome from the stage and when
I venture out to the stage front I can hear that the audience
is going to get a treat.
They give us some food - Chipotle - at the stage
and after everyone gets their fill they tell us they want
to take us out to dinner at a new restaurant in the area.
We decline until after the gig as we need some time to rest
and get ready for the night. It is about 4:30 and we play
from 7 to 9:30 pm.
It was nice to relax back at the hotel but now we are on our
way back to the amphitheater. We get to park in our same convenient
location - always a plus - and see that the amphitheater
is very full. The weather is great. This week things have
cooled down and it is not stifling like it was the weeks before.
This comes as a relief to everyone.
Merch Girl, aka Susan, heads off to set up the sales table
while the rest of us get our instruments ready. This is going
to be fun. We kick off into our first couple of songs and,
being that this is not a blues crowd like you would encounter
at a blues festival, we are not sure if they are going to
really get on board. But by the time Laurie gets into a long
walk around solo in 'Keep on Believin'',
or we do 'One Little Thing' after she has related
how the song originated, we have won them over.
Our first set is one hour long and they audience is sounding
like they are having a great time. Talking to folks between
our sets I hear the comment that we are really tight and that
it seems like we are all having a lot of fun. My response
to this remarks is, "Is there any other way to play?"
Being tight is something we work hard on. One person made
the observation that when we come to the end of a song we
don't have to look at each other like many other bands
do. We just know. Cool. CD sales are brisk and Merch Girl
is busy.
We play our second set after a short break and it seems no
one has left. The audience came to hear some music and we
came to play it. We blues and rock for another hour or so
and get asked to do an encore. It was really cool to hear
the audience roar when Laurie asked them if they wanted to
hear another song. We give them 'Café Boogaloo.'
I am told at the end of the night that the estimated crowd
was around 2,500 which is one of the bigger audiences we've
played to on this road trip.
We get packed up and say our good byes to everyone who has
helped us be a part of this concert. In the van, everyone
is feeling pretty good after such a successful show. On our
way back to the hotel, we stop at the restaurant we were going
to have dinner at and pick up the food that we pre-ordered
before the show. I'm saving mine to eat for lunch tomorrow.
We get back to the hotel for some sleep. We are up and out
at 8:45 am in the morning for an 8 ½ drive tomorrow
to Hartford, Connecticut.
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