Playing with a cowboy band, you eventually get the opportunity to play on a cattle drive, or a multi-day horseback ride for cowboys. Lucky for us, it was not required to actually ride in with them so we drove. This one was to take place in a field, on a mountainside.
It took a good hour-and-a-half to make it to the little dirt road in the Rocky Mountains, and another 20 of diligent, calculated maneuvering to make it to this place. At one point the two-track was no wider than the pickup - with boulders on one side, and tall pines on the other. I had ridden up with Dad in his black Dodge truck, and I am confident we wouldn’t have made it in my little Suzuki.
We then had to carefully find the right road to get to the stage. Past the rows and rows of tethered horses, tents, rocks, giant fire-pit and makeshift bar, to a tiny, puzzle-like parking lot. Seeing as most of the materials and gear had been horse-ridden in, it only makes sense. It was still just a field.
This all should have been a clue that maybe their version of ‘sound system’ that they were to provide for us, might be a bit… rugged. It was exactly how they had described it, in the vaguest terms. But there weren’t enough channel inputs for us to have the 4 instruments and all 4 vocal mics plugged in; 8 channels in all. Instead, they had 6.
So, we decided we would share vocal mics, like in the movies. What the movies don’t portray is how you have to smell someone else’s breath while you do this. And if someone happens to chew tobacco, or has been drinking whiskey, or forgot to brush their teeth, you get to live it first-hand through the nostrils. All. Night. Long.
Everything was covered in dirt and dust – mics, mic-stands, cables, mixer, everything. The ‘stage’ wobbled whenever someone shifted their weight too hard. The ceiling was low enough for the fiddle player to bump his head if he wasn’t careful. And being in a field means that we needed a generator.
If you’ve never had the pleasure of having a generator for electricity, it can be capsulated in one word – LOUD. The system wasn’t quite loud enough to drown it entirely out, even though it was behind the trailer-stage.
Having gathered all of this in the short time it took us to sound check, the bar-keep came over to take drink orders. A little bit of spirits can take the edge off, and this edge was only getting sharper and sharper. So we ordered. I told the guy ‘Sprite’, since alcohol never seems to help my playing, and he was off.
On his return, I got a huge plastic cup of fizzing goodness. Without thinking too hard I took a swig. For some reason instead of ‘Sprite’, he had heard ‘Sprite and Whiskey’. He brought over an extra which was also fused with that Tennessee goodness. I asked for some water, expecting the worst.
There were benches set up for people to sit. Granted, they were hard wood benches, but benches all the same. It was getting dark and the firepit was in the back of all the rows, in the road by the saloon tent, where they were serving food and libations. And being cowboys, they were in no mood to sit. So, the first couple of songs were rough as we played to an un-interested crowd of boots by the fire, and the 4 dancers down in front.
This all was shaping up to be a memorable evening. An overall feeling of ‘Well let’s just stay in the frying pan’ began to manifest. After all, we are professionals and our job is to sound the best we can for the circumstances, right?
I forget when exactly they showed up, but the two gentlemen that were responsible for hiring us came and sat on the steps at the side of the stage. Somewhere along the line, I overheard them talking about the bottle they were sharing and it happened to be top shelf…something. Brandy, whiskey, I can’t remember what. But after a couple of minutes they were having the greatest time, singing and carrying on with us. At one point during the kick-off to a particularly bluesy rendition of ‘Folsom Prison Blues’, I distinctly remember hearing them cheer us on. ‘Get it boys! That [groove] is downright nasty!’
They made my night. After that, everything was dandy.
We played the rest of the 2 hours left for the few dancers and the good-ole-boys sitting on stage with us. Then we loaded up and did our best to navigate through the slow-moving herd of cowboys in the road and follow that two-track-trail back down the mountain. In the dark.
It took a good hour-and-a-half to make it to the little dirt road in the Rocky Mountains, and another 20 of diligent, calculated maneuvering to make it to this place. At one point the two-track was no wider than the pickup - with boulders on one side, and tall pines on the other. I had ridden up with Dad in his black Dodge truck, and I am confident we wouldn’t have made it in my little Suzuki.
We then had to carefully find the right road to get to the stage. Past the rows and rows of tethered horses, tents, rocks, giant fire-pit and makeshift bar, to a tiny, puzzle-like parking lot. Seeing as most of the materials and gear had been horse-ridden in, it only makes sense. It was still just a field.
This all should have been a clue that maybe their version of ‘sound system’ that they were to provide for us, might be a bit… rugged. It was exactly how they had described it, in the vaguest terms. But there weren’t enough channel inputs for us to have the 4 instruments and all 4 vocal mics plugged in; 8 channels in all. Instead, they had 6.
So, we decided we would share vocal mics, like in the movies. What the movies don’t portray is how you have to smell someone else’s breath while you do this. And if someone happens to chew tobacco, or has been drinking whiskey, or forgot to brush their teeth, you get to live it first-hand through the nostrils. All. Night. Long.
Everything was covered in dirt and dust – mics, mic-stands, cables, mixer, everything. The ‘stage’ wobbled whenever someone shifted their weight too hard. The ceiling was low enough for the fiddle player to bump his head if he wasn’t careful. And being in a field means that we needed a generator.
If you’ve never had the pleasure of having a generator for electricity, it can be capsulated in one word – LOUD. The system wasn’t quite loud enough to drown it entirely out, even though it was behind the trailer-stage.
Having gathered all of this in the short time it took us to sound check, the bar-keep came over to take drink orders. A little bit of spirits can take the edge off, and this edge was only getting sharper and sharper. So we ordered. I told the guy ‘Sprite’, since alcohol never seems to help my playing, and he was off.
On his return, I got a huge plastic cup of fizzing goodness. Without thinking too hard I took a swig. For some reason instead of ‘Sprite’, he had heard ‘Sprite and Whiskey’. He brought over an extra which was also fused with that Tennessee goodness. I asked for some water, expecting the worst.
There were benches set up for people to sit. Granted, they were hard wood benches, but benches all the same. It was getting dark and the firepit was in the back of all the rows, in the road by the saloon tent, where they were serving food and libations. And being cowboys, they were in no mood to sit. So, the first couple of songs were rough as we played to an un-interested crowd of boots by the fire, and the 4 dancers down in front.
This all was shaping up to be a memorable evening. An overall feeling of ‘Well let’s just stay in the frying pan’ began to manifest. After all, we are professionals and our job is to sound the best we can for the circumstances, right?
I forget when exactly they showed up, but the two gentlemen that were responsible for hiring us came and sat on the steps at the side of the stage. Somewhere along the line, I overheard them talking about the bottle they were sharing and it happened to be top shelf…something. Brandy, whiskey, I can’t remember what. But after a couple of minutes they were having the greatest time, singing and carrying on with us. At one point during the kick-off to a particularly bluesy rendition of ‘Folsom Prison Blues’, I distinctly remember hearing them cheer us on. ‘Get it boys! That [groove] is downright nasty!’
They made my night. After that, everything was dandy.
We played the rest of the 2 hours left for the few dancers and the good-ole-boys sitting on stage with us. Then we loaded up and did our best to navigate through the slow-moving herd of cowboys in the road and follow that two-track-trail back down the mountain. In the dark.
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