Pennsylvania

We eventually ended up in Johnstown, Pennsylvania to play the Flood City Music Festival. We’ve been in the general area in the past, and played lots of shows in Pittsburgh but this was our first time to Johnstown. We arrived at the right time and unloaded our stuff then took a shuttle a little way down the road for some catered food. I asked our driver how big his town was and he thought for a long while before responding “I have no idea”. O.K. then… He was just being honest I guess as it depends if you include the surrounding counties…

Before we knew it was Showtime. We were introduced by a local TV personality sporting a nice white pair of pants and the games had officially begun. Did a nice long set of old and new material and some old-timey standards we’ve been throwing into the set lately. Summertime is the time for sing a longs!

We used the house monitors instead of our inn-ears to save a little time and cranked them up good and loud. In conjunction with a huge P.A. system it felt like a rock show. It sure is easy to sing when the speakers are making your voice sound louder than a jet taking off. After the show we hung around the merch booth and sold a bunch of stuff and met a lot of nice people. At least they seemed nice. Truth be told I didn’t actually get to know them that well:) It would have been nice to stick around and watch Donna the Buffalo perform but we had a bit of a drive to get to the hotel in Pittsburgh.

Speaking of Pittsburgh, we played at a place on the outskirts of town called Your Inner Vagabond the next night. Sunday nights are often tough to draw a crowd and tonight was not about to prove to be the exception to the rule. The place itself is really cool. It’s a coffee shop in the front and a music venue in the back with a middle eastern meets the Middle Ages theme similar to The Grotto in Knoxville if you’ve ever been there. Or the Afghan Horseman in Vancouver. Or some of the trippy scenes in I Dream of Genie…You get the picture.

The show itself was kind of the opposite of the night before in terms of volume, energy, cheering etc…but it was still fun in somewhat of a subdued way. The people that did show up were very appreciative and supportive and seemed happy to be there. The band seems to be pretty good about trying our best every night whether there are five or five thousand people in the audience. Or fifteen. And sometimes its shows like these where bands meet diehard supporters that will follow you till the day you hang up your hat. And they say you are only as good as your last performance, and as far as we know you only live once so there’s added incentive to sing our little hearts out every night!”