We were invited to come and play at the Old West End Festival in Toledo’s Old West End. (Hence the name….) It’s a beautiful old neighborhood with super old homes that used to be one of the fanciest places in town to live. Unfortunately, the area hit some hard times and became a little run down and dangerous. But thankfully, a group of people decided that the beautiful old mansions and homes needed to be saved and they set about making a little oasis in the area and it has blossomed into a beautiful and desirable neighborhood again.
So when we were asked to donate our time to their fundraising efforts, we said sure! We love having an opportunity to get bluegrass music out to the masses. We call it a PDB. (Public Display of Bluegrass!) And I think all bluegrass bands need to do as much PDBs as they can. To help grow and encourage the love of this music.
But aside from that, it was a fun afternoon! A bit hot towards the end, in the tent, but it’s always that way I think… summer, hot music, and a long set and you’ve got hot and red faced musicians! But we loved playing for the groups that were passing through, as we were the food tent entertainment! Many bands and musical influences were spotlighted in the music tent throughout the weekend. It was neat to hear the different musical styles coming together to help raise funds for the neighborhood efforts.
This was on of the first times that Jeff, Tim and Rob were all “plugged” in… using pickups instead of mics. It’s slightly controversial in the music, but after encountering sound system after sound system where things are so rough, it’s nice to be able to have a little more musician control over your sound. And I don’t think it sounded any different, than say a good sound system would be. Just the banjo and Wilson’s rhythm guitar were not direct. We used mics. I’m not sure how a banjo would sound with a pickup… might be interesting! Who knows?
Jeff is giving me the “Oh my gosh, we’re gonna need a new banjo player soon” look after I really flubbed up two whole lines on this song that I sing all the time! HAHAHA…. Don’t know what happened… my brain was not ready and it just didn’t come out. Oh well… it happens. Sometimes more often than others… I used to think I would NEVER be able to remember songs and play the banjo. You don’t see too many singing banjo players for some reason. I think it’s partially because of the three finger style of playing, it’s a busy thing. You’re picking much more than the others are, to get that banjo style sound of Scruggs bluegrass. And as a result, a lot of banjo players will stop playing to sing, or go into a backup style of sorts. I decided 5 years ago when I first joined a band that I was going to learn to play and sing at the same time. And I can. But every so often, the words come out a little funny and I stumble. I guess we all do. One of my goals this year is to really work on memorizing all my songs well. We’ll see how that goes!
Well, it was a lovely day and we really enjoyed it and hope that we can help out again some time!
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