Chapter 12

Saturday morning was nice and cool; I was energized and up early, ready for a good run. I was gone for a little over an hour; when I got back all three girls were in my bed talking again. “You all just stay right there, I’m going to shower and clean up; and no, I’m not joining you; Kelly wore me out last night,” I told them.

“That’s not what we heard,” Becky and Irene giggled; then went back to their conversation.

I was in and out of the bathroom fairly quickly, and got a couple cat-calls as I got dressed; I headed for the main house. Carol, JB, and Angie were already there; I told Angie the girls were up but not moving very fast this morning, she took a pot of coffee and headed for the pool house. JB and I chatted with Carol while she made a light breakfast; we were all still a little bloated from Thanksgiving. Bob joined us, and eventually the girls; soon we were planning the day. We expected Tom after noon; Bob, JB, and I were going to develop a play list, and decide what else we needed; the ladies decided to go shopping again, the sale was still going on. Bob, JB, and I moved to the studio and did a little more rehearsing; once Tom got there, we really went to work. By 4 pm we had a pile of equipment to take and we loaded it into their van; which turned out to be a full-sized van with windows and doors in the front third with seating for 5, and a cargo/work space in the back with shelves and bins for equipment. Bob, JB, and Tom were going to drive it to the club and meet the rest of us there, I was to take all the ladies in the Buick.

The ladies got back with another bunch of bags; then headed off to shower and get ready. The guys thought we were pretty much ready to go; then our ladies showed up all decked out in dresses, skirts, and heels or cowgirl boots. They surprised us with matching pale blue t-shirts with ‘the no-name band’ stenciled on them; we didn’t look bad, and seem to have acquired a name, I think. The guys took off in the van, a little bit later I got all the ladies in the car and away we went. We met at the club and I helped get the stuff from the van inside; then we all walked down the street and had supper in a nice restaurant. As we walked back Kelly and Irene got a chance to see some of the town; we had almost three hours to kill so we visited a couple of the other clubs and did a little dancing, the girls having a blast.

We got back at the club we were playing at around 8:30; it was time to get setup. This club was bigger than I expected, seating about 500 with a dance floor; the management set the ladies up at a large table near the front, and off to the side a little. The four of us guys got up on stage and started getting things arranged and connected; I wasn’t a lot of help and soon Bob just put me on my stool with my bass and mic plugged in and told me to just take it easy. The juke box was playing for most of this, when I started checking the tune of my guitar and trying a few chords, the juke box was shut off and the half-filled audience started to focus on us; meaning, mostly me. I glanced at Bob; “Just talk to the folks, we’ll be ready in about 5 minutes,” he told me; talk about being thrown into the deep end of the pool.

I took a little breath and starting talking into the mic; “Good evening; according to the guy who knows what he’s doing, we’ll be ready to go in about 5 minutes. Get your drinks now and make your bathroom run; you probably don’t want to miss any of this.” I looked at Bob; he gave a thumb’s up and motioned me to continue as they continued to work. “We got tagged to fill in tonight a couple days ago; this is my first time at this, I’m not sure how good we’ll, but it should be entertaining. The good news is that the rest of the guys have been doing this for years and have hundreds of country songs at their fingertips. The bad news is that I started playing about 3 months ago and have 4 chords down; also, I know mostly rock and roll and Motown, so we’ll be doing a mix of all three.”

I looked around and the guys were almost ready; Bob was and sat down on his stool next to me and started tuning up. “I was hoping you weren’t about to leave,” I told him; “I’m not really lonely up here, but it’s nice of you to join me.” That got a little laugh from the crowd; Bob took over for a moment and introduced us, then turned it back over to me with a grin. Okay.

“Like I said,” I announced to the crowd, “we just started doing this together, so if we make a couple mistakes, don’t hold it against us. I told my girlfriend that we need to embrace our mistakes; she gave me a hug.” It took a couple seconds, but that little joke got a nice laugh. “Work with me folks,” I grinned; “I promise it won’t get any worse than that.” I joked a little bit more as JB and Tom got tuned and ready; then Tom started the bass intro to ‘Folson Prison Blues, and Bob started singing; we were off!

We got a nice hand for that one, so Bob followed up with ‘Ring of Fire’; another round of applause, we seem to be good. I was a little hesitant; but my singing of ‘16 Tons’ went over quite well. I kept adding little quips and jokes between songs; the audience was at least chuckling, so I kept it up. We switched to the Beatles and did ‘All You Need Is love’ and then ‘Hey Jude’ with JB singing lead and me harmonizing; I got the audience singing along for most of the many “na, na, na’s” at the end; we had the crowd with us. The ending was a bit ragged but we finally got that song wrapped up; I told the crowd we all needed to work some more on that one; another laugh. We switched to some Motown; I could see the crowd knew “Heard It Thru the Grapevine’ when Tom started the bass line and I started singing; they were still with us when we followed up with ‘Papa Was a Rolling Stone’.