Whirled Tour
The past two weeks, I had the awesome opportunity to perform bluegrass music eight times. I recently became the Hicks with Picks bass player, and last week I was on bass for another show at WRFG 89.3 Atlanta and for a set at our church's annual bluegrass festival. I finished last week filling in for Jeff on banjo at our usual Sunday Gospel at the Rock.
I also played a special set at the Rock Spring Bluegrass Festival because we only had three bands and needed four. So Mike Nugent got his teacher, Georgia bluegrass dignitary Sonny Houston, to join the two of us and form a trio we called the Sans Banjo Boys. We did an all-gospel set with Mike singing lead and playing mandolin, Sonny on guitar and backup vocals, and I played bass and moved my mouth as if I was singing backup too. It was a real treat to play with Sonny, who I have seen play at the Red Light Cafe with Curtis Jones.
Then this past weekend was my big five string pickin' debut, bringing the last 20 months of obssesively practicing banjo to an important milestone. It started Saturday morning, where I played banjo and we were the opening band for the Emory Presbyterian Church Bluegrass Festival. I was as nervous as a turkey in the fall, but it worked out pretty well. Attached is a video, although the wind blew the camera so that I am just out of the shot on the right. You can see me a little bit in this clip, although the song cuts off early.
Jeff Dore, our male lead singer and guitar player for the weekend wasn't feeling well, so we had to make a bunch of adjustments. We played at Gospel on the Rock Sunday AM with Allison Foster and Julia Kirk on vocals with Mike on guitar and vocals, and me on banjo. Then we went back over to Emory to perform for their 11 o'clock worship service. We were joined on bass by Rebecca Larson and on guitar by John Miller, both officers of the local SEBA chapter. Emory has a beautiful church, and we had a good service, even with the last minute personell and song changes.
Our final act was extremely cool, as we were the last band for the Oakland Cemetery Sunday in the Park. Oakland Cemetery is a very historic Atlanta cemetery that was mostly filled up in the 1800s. People dress up in vintage Victorian costumes for the event (hence my top hat), there are several great food vendors (including Kate and my favorite Paloozaville corndogs) and a variety of entertainment. The monuments are extremely ornate and you stroll between the graves of confederate army generals and people who were prominent enough to have their own mausoleums.
We played Oakland with Patrick Hodges on guitar and Pat Powers on bass, who also played with us on Saturday at Emory. We had some struggles, but we had our moments and a great time doing it. The crowd seemed to like us, and playing in front of people who had been drinking all day didn't hurt.
If you would like to see more video of these events, check out my YouTube channel at donthacker1322. If you'd like to hear the whole song Pilgrim on the Road, you can see the clip of it from the Oakland show.
Submitted by donthacker on Mon, 2011-10-03 14:25
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