Last piping gig of the season
Today was the Riverfront Arts & Food Festival, formerly known as Festival In The Park. This is the event that I got heat exhaustion last year and had to walk off stage halfway through our performance or pass out. No problem with that this year. It was nice and cool, but a tad overcast. We were given parking passes to park in the reserved lot right close to our performance stage. Phil and I got there around 8:15. By 8:30 or so, we had a quorum of pipers and started warming up. Charles, our leader, spent about 15 minutes tuning his own pipes, then got us as close to in tune as possible. One of my tenor drones howls like a wookie if I don't maintain a constant pressure, so I rarely have it uncorked in performances. However, this morning, my other tenor was closing off at playing pressure. Very frustrating. So I was thinking I had to play with Chewbacca-drone. Luckily, by the time we played at 9:30 the good one had warmed up and was starting to cooperate, so I re-corked Chewie.
Just before we went on stage, one of the festival techies waved at us and it was a former covenmate we hadn't seen in 6 years. We wished me a good performance and was talking to Phil during the performance. The performance went well, but we zipped right through our perfected repertoire. Charles, Bob and Bill did solos to fill in time. Before our closing number (Scotland the Brave), Charles asked me if I wanted to do a solo. Nope. I don't have anything worked up to performance standard yet, and even if I did, my lips had reached their limit; I couldn't keep a seal around the mouthpiece, so the bag wasn't inflating properly.
The excitement of the morning was brought to us by the stage lights. During our first number, I started smelling something hot. It was the same smell that is emitted by a hot woodburning tool. I was slightly worried that something might be on fire, but also figured it might be the normal smell from a stage spot array. During the second or third set, I caught something out of the corner of my eye that looked like water or bird poop falling from the front of the stage. A little later, I was looking towards the spot when it started throwing of lots of cinders. A couple minutes later, the shorting light blew out the whole light array. A couple minutes after that, the techs turned on the lights, but all the yellow spots were out.
So, after our set was over, Phil and I wandered through the booths of the festival. Mostly overpriced folksy clothes and wooden toys. Down at the "food" section of the booths, there was a spice and tea vendor. I got some slightly overpriced chocolate tea (black tea and cocoa) and black tea. Then it was back to the car and home, where we've been vegging out ever since, watching "Dirty Jobs" on the Discovery Channel. The host, Mike Rowe, is sorta hot. Do any of you Bay Area denizens have any dirt on him?
Just before we went on stage, one of the festival techies waved at us and it was a former covenmate we hadn't seen in 6 years. We wished me a good performance and was talking to Phil during the performance. The performance went well, but we zipped right through our perfected repertoire. Charles, Bob and Bill did solos to fill in time. Before our closing number (Scotland the Brave), Charles asked me if I wanted to do a solo. Nope. I don't have anything worked up to performance standard yet, and even if I did, my lips had reached their limit; I couldn't keep a seal around the mouthpiece, so the bag wasn't inflating properly.
The excitement of the morning was brought to us by the stage lights. During our first number, I started smelling something hot. It was the same smell that is emitted by a hot woodburning tool. I was slightly worried that something might be on fire, but also figured it might be the normal smell from a stage spot array. During the second or third set, I caught something out of the corner of my eye that looked like water or bird poop falling from the front of the stage. A little later, I was looking towards the spot when it started throwing of lots of cinders. A couple minutes later, the shorting light blew out the whole light array. A couple minutes after that, the techs turned on the lights, but all the yellow spots were out.
So, after our set was over, Phil and I wandered through the booths of the festival. Mostly overpriced folksy clothes and wooden toys. Down at the "food" section of the booths, there was a spice and tea vendor. I got some slightly overpriced chocolate tea (black tea and cocoa) and black tea. Then it was back to the car and home, where we've been vegging out ever since, watching "Dirty Jobs" on the Discovery Channel. The host, Mike Rowe, is sorta hot. Do any of you Bay Area denizens have any dirt on him?