Rockin' out down South

I just returned from the South where I did my first real dueling gig. I worked 4 nights and one afternoon with several different piano players and drummers. Armed with my 55 memorized songs I am proud to say I kicked some butt. Each night was different, with Saturday night being the absolute craziest. The club was filled to capacity. There were 3 of us that rotated on 2 pianos, so it was 1 hour onstage, and 1/2 hour offstage, then back up again. The drummer was situated downstage behind the two baby grands. The audience on Saturday night was packed with a lot of military guys that had just arrived stateside from Afganistan and Iraq, many of them finished their final tour and were getting out of the military within the week. We were rocking, we were getting filthy and we were having a ton of fun, and the room loved every second of it. So this is the payoff for all the work and the practicing and the memorizing...and it's damn worth it! So now, the work continues...learning and memorizing more and more songs and comedy bits. But, what a payoff. This could possibly be about the funnest job in the world. The next post I'll tell you about the redneck drama.