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In
the van at 8:45 am, we make a quick stop at the Starbucks
nearby. The Starbucks is run by Rebecca who was helping
at the concert last night. When we see her inside she says
out loud for everyone to hear, "you guys took care
of me last night so I'm taking care of you this morning."
We all had a good laugh over this one. We get our coffees
and we are on the road to Hartford.
Our hotel is another Super 8 but this one is better than
the 'Twilight Zone' hotel that we stayed at
in Delaware. No flies, no BBQ's, and hopefully no
mice. We get checked in and we are able to rest a couple
of hours before we have to head out to our gig.
We all meet down at the van at 7:30 pm to go to the club.
It is about 15 miles from our hotel as the club is in downtown
Hartford. We make the drive and, after some confusion about
directions, we find Blackeyed Sally's. It's
a funky and cool club in what appears to be a hot night
spot in Hartford. There is a lot of activity and hustle
and bustle going on. Some folks warned us about this club
not being in such a great neighborhood but as far as we
can see it is not so bad. Believe me, we have seen worse.
We park out front of the club while we unload through the
front door and then Laurie and I go look for parking. We
find a huge lot that is empty. The attendant says it is
$10 as long as we don't take two spaces. We just scratch
our heads and go creatively park Big Mama in one space.
Back to the club, we set up, meet the sound man, Roddy,
and order dinner. The food here is great and everyone is
ooing and awing over their meals. Susan and I have big salads
with cornbread. I could have made a meal out of the cornbread;
it was so delicious.
We play our first set and the crowd gets into it as we build
each song to a climactic rise. On our break, I meet Zeke
and Paula ,who we met in Memphis this year. Zeke is partly
responsible for us finding this club and for us ultimately
coming here to play. I also meet a fellow bass player, Dan,
who tells me he played during 2000 to 2002 with the remake
of the Animals minus Eric Burdon and Chas Chandler. He is
very supportive and complimentary of the band. Our second
set is also solid and the band sounds good. These sets we
played here at Blackeyed Sally's were long. The first
was 90 minutes and the second was 75 minutes. These are
long times to sustain the energy because everyone in the
band is feeling a little fatigued at this time in our tour.
We get through it though and we are rewarded by the enthusiasm
of the audience.
We load out and head back to the hotel. Our GPS gives some
bad directions to the hotel and we miss it by one exit on
the freeway. I check it out on my iphone and luckily we
make it to the hotel without out any more difficulty. We
have a late check out, 1 pm, so we get to sleep in. Our
drive tomorrow is only a short 2 ½ hours. Cool.
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