Saturday, May 31, 2008

5/30 - Panini's

This definitely felt like the shortest gig ever. Time flies when you're having fun (or when you're throwing a clock across the room).

We even made a new friend. His name is Craig and he seemed like a very nice boy. He started at the bar, which was about 8 miles from where we were and he moved into one of the booths near us. Craig was mesmerized by Mudcat's guitar playing and with good reason. He came up to us when we were packing it up and talked to us (well mostly to Mud) for a while.

Some of the people who stayed at the bar and the booths on that side of the room were craning their necks to see us and they clapped after every song.

One of the boys who was in the next room playing corn hole kept coming out to where we were when it wasn't his turn to throw. He told us how much he enjoyed listening to us.

Even the young pups were into us. Some of the girls were chair dancing and the boys were tapping there feet.

I think for the most part we were well received. However, there's always one in every crowd...
5/24 - Solon Freeway Lounge

Well, we were back on the patio. This time, the weather cooperated and there were no flying umbrellas.

It was "bowling for the cure" or "bowling for a cause" or something like that. A fund raiser for the cancer society. They had a buffet set up inside with some tasty treats and a big ol' grill set up on the patio for hamburgers and/or hot dogs. There were tons of baskets for the silent auction. Face painting for the kids. The only bad part about this event was that it was scheduled on the holiday weekend, so they really didn't have a great turn out for it.

We did find some back up singers, though. There was a group of teenage girls who were hanging out listening to us in between bowling, so C-Man called them up to the mic to sing with us. They were thrilled. Their parents were snapping pictures right and left. It was very cute.
5/24 - The Brew Keeper

They liked us! They really liked us.

Wow, guess I shouldn't have made that sound like it was a shocking revelation, huh? Anyway, people had fun. We got a lot of compliments.

The brewing room is pretty much all windows, so it's kinda neat to be able to watch what's going on in there while we're singing. However, at one point in the evening the brew room was filled with boys and all the windows fogged up...hmmm...what was really brewing in there?



Saturday, May 24, 2008

5/23 - Epiq Bistro

No wardrobe malfunctions this time. Whew...
However, I did start out with a lightweight top on and then changed so that if we ended up setting up on the patio, I'd be warm enough. Bad career move. Not only did we not set up on the patio, but it was about 112 degrees inside. Thankfully, the smokers (people, not cooking equipment) have no regard for the cold and/or door closing. Since we were right by the door, we benefited from their open door policy with the cool air spilling in toward us.

Vinnie strapped on his guitar and sat in on the second set with us. He was truly the missing part of Project Mojo.

Some guy at the end of the bar spilled his drink and as he was brushing the spillage out of his way, he took the ice and threw it over his shoulder. Oh guess who was on the receiving end of that ice. That would be correct. The look on his face was pretty funny when he realized where that ice was headed. I laughed (more because of the look on his face than the ice flying at me)and then he laughed, so everything was fine. It could have been worse - at least he wasn't throwing tomatoes.

Kevin was celebrating his 21st birthday, so we sang a very special birthday song for him. Not sure if he enjoyed it, but we sure did.

Thursday, May 22, 2008

5/17 – Solon Freeway Lounge

Well, it all started with my very own personal wardrobe malfunction. Just as I was getting ready to leave the house, a button fell off my blouse. Actually, I noticed a thread and pulled it and THEN the button fell off, but that’s beside the point. Let’s just say that if I had left it that way, it would have left nothing to the imagination about my northern parts.

That sent me into girl panic mode and I zoomed around the house like a squirrel in the middle of the road (before the car hits it) and I figured it would be quicker to sew the button back on than it would be to change tops. Sure.

Then I arrive at the gig to find out that it was booked as an outdoor gig for their patio opening. It was about 50-ish degrees and raining (at least we were setting up under an awning so we wouldn’t get soggy and/or electrocuted). And did I mention that the blouse material was very thin? It was. I realized too late that I should have taken the button “falling” off as a sign to have changed tops. But, I figured that I could just wear my jacket for the whole gig if I needed to. Mudcat was nice enough to offer me a sweatshirt that he had in the van if I wanted to change, but I toughed it out.

The rain let up and then stopped by the time we started playing and there were actually a few brave souls out there. And then the rain came back, but brought its good friend Wind Gust with it. So the brave souls turned out to be not so brave after all as they went running inside, while we kept playing.

The wind uprooted the table umbrellas and sent them hurling through the air like javelins. Thankfully the wind was blowing away from us. It was fun to see someone else turn into a squirrel in the middle of the road when the servers tried to catch those airborne umbrellas that were like giant Mary Poppins umbrellas, until they folded up and became weapons…

Not to be upstaged by the wind, the rain came back again. This time with a vengeance. That seemed like a good time to take a break. Mudcat became Carl Spakler when he told us that the heavy stuff wouldn’t be coming down for a while.

When our break was over it was still raining and had turned even colder, which meant there was nobody on the patio. The manager told us to move inside, so we did. Then it became an odd man out kinda gig.

The Miller Lite girls were there and I’m quite sure that their parents are so proud…and thankful that they chose that profession over being strippers. It was very amusing to me that grown men would gladly wear a plastic necklace with flashing lights as long as it was given to them by a stripper, I mean Miller Lite girl.

One of the TVs in the bar was showing a Seinfeld episode, which was fun to watch as we were singing and I could follow it since I pretty much knew all the lines. Perhaps I should be doing something else in my spare time…


Tuesday, May 13, 2008

5/10 - Mel's Crow's Nest

Well, it was definitely animal print day. On the way to the gig we saw a leopard print motorcycle (honest). Once we got to the gig, there was a woman sitting at the bar with a purse of patchwork animal print, another woman sitting in a booth had a zebra print purse, the hostess was wearing a leopard print top and oh yeah, and so was I. Geesh. And let's not forget my animal print rug.

As we were carrying the equipment in, I noticed a sign in the parking lot ~ "Harley parking only. All others will be crushed." That kinda cracked me up a bit.

After all the equipment was set up, Mudcat and I went outside and sat by the fire ring. However, there was no fire in it at the time. We didn't care. We sat there staring into it, which
made for interesting looks and/or comments from passersby.

The place was pretty hoppin' and everyone there was very nice to us.

The cutest little girl was on the deck just on the other side of the wall-o-window from where we were set up. She was running back and forth (made me tired watching, so I'm counting that as exercise) and with each step she took, her little shoes lit up. Why don't those shoes come in adult sizes? I really wanted a pair. When she finally got tired or bored, she stopped running and stood at the window watching us. Then she put her face against the glass and smooshed her nose all up. It sort of made me feel like we were an attraction at the zoo (please feed the animals), but anyway when we were done with our song she started jumping up and down, clapping. Now that's what I call a positive response!

And we had a brief moment of "Aqua Man meets the Polka King".

Other than that, I got nothin'.

Sunday, May 11, 2008

5/9 - Solon Freeway Lounge

This place was way different than I expected, but in a good way. It was a bowling alley with a lounge/patio, but I didn't know about the lounge/patio part at first. I honestly thought that we were going to play in the bowling alley where you couldn't hear yourself think between the bowling sounds and the 8,540 kids (in my head count that's how many kids were there). Then I spotted the lounge area.

It was exactly similar to the Driftwood gig. Play inside...no, why don't you play outside...no, no
play inside...geesh. We played inside.

One area of the ceiling over the tables in the lounge was pretty cool. It was painted to look like the sky and it had miniature biplanes and triplanes and dirigibles (isn't dirigible a great word?) hanging from a track lighting kind of thing.

This place is quite popular for dads. They get to be good dads by taking their kids bowling and then the kids can bowl and the dads can sit in the lounge drinking barley sodas. Their kids ran in every now and then to get more money and then ran back out. Everybody was happy.

Well, not everybody...but, that's a whole different story.


Tuesday, May 6, 2008

5/2 – Slim & Chubby’s
This one was a whole band gig and thankfully, we had a big old stage to spread out on. As Anno put it, we had some real estate.

The stage also doubled as the dart throwing section of the bar. Thankfully, no one decided to throw any while we were playing.

We had to wait until the Cav’s were done playing before we started playing. I just love basketball. Or not.

There were a couple guys sitting at the bar who were really into what we were playing. Even when they went outside to the smoking area, we could still see them through the windows cheering us on.

And we had a couple of dancers, too.

Oh yeah, there was some chick who wanted to hear Journey. C-Man did his version of it and she was all kinds of happy. Then, during the next break the real song was playing. Talk about a happy girl. Geeze-o-petes. She was standing up on her chair cheering.

Then there was the odd sound check at the end of the gig…