Bowling For Furniture!
Ok, so we weren’t bowling for furniture. Really, we weren’t bowling at all. But, we did have a nice time while everyone else did their thing.
Early in the year, I had seen an ad in one of the local entertainment rags for “Bowling with the Bands” at a place called Cowtown Bowling Palace in Fort Worth. You know me, I’m always interested in playing different places. So, I gathered and sent the info over to our booking agent. That brings us to last night...
It was a unique setup. They have split lanes, as in there are lanes on each side of the building. So, rather than having us set up out there on the lanes, they put us in the middle facing the bar so we could be seen and heard equally from both sides of the alley. We setup, do our sound check and then they kill the lane lights and fire up the blinky lights. If you’ve never been to “disco bowling” or whatever they want to call it at your local place, it’s kind of fun. Just imagine a dance club with bowling balls. It kept me entertained.
The show, itself, was challenging at first (for a couple reasons). First off, I had the bright idea to go to a Cheap Trick concert night before, get up early the next morning and go to Best Little Brewfest In Texas (aka beer fest @ Texas Motor Speedway), then make my way to the show after a couple hours of attempted napping and sing until 1am. I was a little tired. Luckily, energy shot kicked in after a few songs and that was no longer an issue. I won’t do that again prior to playing. Well, at least not until I have a few extra roadies.
The next odd thing was the crowd behavior. It took us a good hour or so to realize that we were not bombing. Umm… people were bowling, it was included with their cover charge - of course they are going to bowl rather than stand in front of band! As the night went on, people stuck around, bought drinks, and we received quite a few compliments. Some really kind words – like the police officer who kept an eye on us during most of show. I thought I must be in trouble for something when he came up to me after we had finished… then he bought a CD. He said that he works this event every weekend and that we were the best sounding band they’d had through there in a long time. He said that they used to have random metal bands, etc. that would run off the crowd. I’m glad to say that we didn’t run anyone off. The guys in charge were very complimentary as well. It was a really pleasant experience once we got used to how it works. So, yeah, mark your calendars… we’ll be back there on August 24th.
Stay gold,
RH
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| Blinky Lights at Sound Check |
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