4th Of July Weekend

Well, here it is. I've been busy and haven't had the spare time to get back to blogging... so almost a week later, it's the weekend report!

Our band was hired to play at the Missouri Wine and Food Festival at The Elms Resort in Excelsior Springs, Missouri for the 4th of July. We ended up turning it into a non-stop party weekend with more music, drinking, eating, and especially laughing... than you could shake a big ol sticky stick at.

First a bit about The Elms. Originally built in the late 1800's I believe, to take advantage of the draw to the area of people from around the world, to the healing mineral waters of Excelsior Springs. Dealing mostly with the affluent class, everything about the hotel was first rate. In the time being, it's burned to the ground twice, had it's fair share of money woes, but is now booming once again and is nothing but a pure victorian hotel class act. About 160 rooms on 5 floors.

Oh.... and it's haunted. More on that later.

Anyhow, we got there on Friday the 3rd, we all ate at a pretty dang good rib joint in an old railroad depot building, then proceeded to play in the bar at The Elms for 3 hours, calling it quits about midnite. On the 4th we played at the festival from noon til 2 pm in sweltering heat, recouped a bit then blew outta there about 5 in the afternoon and went down to south central Kansas City and played at a private party for about another 3 hours.

By the end of Saturday night, we were all played out. My voice was gone, I think I could hit about 3 notes, and everyones fingers hurt so damned bad we couldn't have even picked our noses, let alone our guitars, mandos and bass.


So with that, here's a few pics from the weekend..


The Elms Resort





Inside the lobby from the downstairs bar. (It's always important to locate ALL of the bars first thing. We excelled at this)





Playing in the bar on the night of the 3rd... naughty naughty handcuffs.





Oh here's a good one. A picture of the toilet in our room. I have no idea why this picture was taken, but what the Hell. It's just a fabulous shot... and the toilet functioned flawlessly. Hooray!





We got our soundcheck done about 11:30 am on the 4th, had an EXCELLENT sound engineer at the wine festival. Charlie, you rule! The girls had our merchandise table all spread out...





And then we lit into it. Our friend Paul Rodgers from Iowa joined us and played some kick ass banjo and dobro.










My daughter and son in law came over and listened, they live about 30 minutes away. That's a little girl in her tummy too! She looks just awesome.






A little guy in a green shirt, that had more boogie in him than a can full of worms, just 'bout stole the show. Not a bit bashful, he got right up there with us and proceeded to get his groove on.








A view across the back lawn of The Elms from the stage. It was just an awesome setup and after about 15 minutes into the gig the crowd rolled in. Very VERY nice turnout.






Then we rolled onto to the next gig...lol. This one was a backyard/neighborhood party at a couple of the bandmember's cousins place. We got treated royally, were fed a humongous meal of fried chicken with all the fixings and tubs and tubs of adult beverages and a table of wine. Holy mackerel!









And that was that.


Wait. You were wanting to hear 'bout ghosts in the haunted Elms? Gotta wait til the next post....




BOO!












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