Whoooooosh!

I don't know about you, but I tell you  what, time is just flat flying for me anymore!  It just seems like yesterday I was just getting out of college, and I'd just started playing with my first (original music playing) band, Free Dirt.  That was back in '95.  Here it is 15 years later, and we're doing it all over again (for one night, at least).  We had a pretty good run back in the day - played a lot of great music, drank a lot of beer.  A lot of beer.  I'll never forget the night I was leaving Riverport after some concert and I heard one of our songs on KSHE 95!  Holy cow, was that awesome!  It was on a "Smash or Trash" kind of contest, and we were going up against another local group (albeit a much more popular, world-touring local group) the Bottlerockets and I think we actually tied them for votes!  Woo Hoo!  Coincidentally, most of the BoRox will be playing at the show tonight.  Brian Henneman and Mark Ortmann will be there, and I think their other guitarist, John Horton will be there on bass, as well.  Brian is an amazing talent - played lead on the first couple of Wilco albums, as well as all of their own stuff.  I was even lucky enough to have him play on a couple of songs that I wrote with my band Rocket Park. 

Anyway, we practiced last night, and although it's been about 5 years since we've played together, it sounded like we'd never stopped practicing.  That's what I loved about this band - "The band that could always end it right", as one of the lyrics in our song "Rude Pets" stated.  We were always tight as a drum!  And that didn't change last night, even with a gimpy drummer!  Our drummer had surgery on his elbow just a few weeks ago to fix some nerve damage he had, and he doesn't get his cast off for another week or two!  I was so afraid that he'd be playing with one arm - I was trying to go through the songs in my head to see how he might be able to pull it off - what I might do in a similar situation.  But, he can actually grip the stick better now than he could before the surgery, so everything's just peachy!  He's gotta lay off a little bit, but mostly we're still as powerful as ever!

Well, it's getting late - time's a-flyin' again.  Gotta go get ready for the big rawk show!  Get ready to have your faces rocked off tonight, Tap Room!