What a pleasant afternoon! This "show" was a test for us. There's a growing trend around here of having live music during brewery tours. Well, it's no secret that we like beer. But, we just wanted to dip our toes in and see what it was all about. So, that's just what we did.
I have attended beer festivals for several years now and, with the growing live music / beer scene combo, I started taking notes of the locals a few festivals ago. After attending North Texas Beer Festival, I figured that I would only contact breweries whose beer I enjoyed so that, if the gig sucked, at least the beer would be good.
One of the first I contacted was FireWheel in Rowlett. I liked their beer, I liked their shirts. I could clearly tell that someone had a good sense of humor. Well, low and behold, Brad (owner) responded to me directly and said to come on down.
Fast forward to Saturday. We showed up a little before 11am to setup and people were already started to trickle into the area. We pulled around back to the beer garden (aka back parking lot) and started doing our thing. It was already getting hot. I think it is was right about 100 degrees at its peak. Luckily, thanks to a city ordinance, we didn't overheat. You see, the way their licensing sits at the brewery, you can not have live music for more than 10 consecutive minutes. In other words, we were instructed to play 10 minutes, then take a few minutes off and have a beer. Then, play ten more minutes and repeat. The area they were pouring beer was air conditioned. I think that, if we had stayed on stage out there all day without breaking like that, we would have passed out from the sun.
With the stopping and starting, there really wasn't much of a flow to our performance. As I recall, about midway, I gave a printout of our set list to a few friends and just asked them what they wanted to hear. It was incredibly laid back, really nice and relaxed. Totally not like a normal concert environment. We drank beer and interacted with the audience like we're usually not able to. Oh, and did I tell you that we drank some beer? They had all sorts of tasty FireWheel brews on tap for us... including a new Peach test brew which was great. My other favorites of the day were the Coffee Porter and the Albino Pumpkin (best pumpkin I have ever tried - and I have tried quite a few). Really nice, drinkable beers, all 3. Actually, I heard from others that the other flavors were really good, too. Those 3 were just really exceptional, to me.
In the end, I would love to play there again. That's just what it was, "playing." We brought people up and showed them how stuff worked, talked about whatever, played with the FireWheel dogs and just had a plain ol' good time. Brad and co's hospitality was excellent. Oh, yeah, and there was a Cajun food truck, too! Can't beat The Lab for Cajun food truck-ism. Beer, music, Cajun food, dogs and a bright sunny day. It was nice.
Be sure to check FireWheel over on FacePlace at http://www.facebook.com/FireWheelBrew and tell them Roy and Sand Dollar Rodeo sent you!
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| My new FireWheel shirt! |
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