9 artists, 8 hours of rehearsal, 3 hour show!
Somehow, this came off with barely a hitch. The show was supposed to last two-and-a-half hours, but you could see the potential to run over from the earliest stages of rehearsal.
Rehearsal itself STARTED at 8am !! Each artist was allotted 40 minutes, but before that happened we had to get set up & sound checked. With the backline crew loading in at 6am, there was no way they were ready for us when we (the backing band) arrived. So everything started about 90 minutes late. It was miraculous, therefore, that we actually finished no more than 30 minutes behind, and actually had time to rest up before the main onslaught.
The show was divided into 3 distinct genres:
1: Blues/rock:- Jimmy Hall (Wet Willy, Allman Bros, Jeff Beck), Dave Jenkins (Pablo Cruise), Randall Hall (Lynyrd Skynyrd)
2: R&B: – Howard Hewitt (Shalamar), Evelyn “Champagne” King, Skip Martin (Kool & the Gang, Dazz Band)
3: Rock: – Wally Palmar (Romantics), Fran Cosmo (Boston), Kevin Chalfant (Journey).
9 artists, 27 songs! What more can I say?
I ended up playing drums for most of 13 hours. Good thing I’m relatively fit.
The show itself was scheduled to end just after 10pm, but we ran over, and ended up coming up against the “hard curfew.” Probably not a bad thing, as I was toast!
But, we did it again! Every time we pull a rabbit out of the het, the client expects a bigger rabbit next time…..