The hotel manager tells me that Michael and I are in the newspaper today and, sure enough, there’s a nice picture of us hanging out at a coffee joint. There’s a couple of quotes and then a sidebar suggesting that Michael may have been hung over at yesterday morning’s show! This is pretty outrageous, as Michael does not drink. “He said “good-morning” several times” said the reporter. Go figure. I guess people find what they want to find. This won’t help our “no show” problem from the day before. It’s really not bad, and we make jokes about it the rest of the day, saying “Good Morning” to each other and “I don’t remember what happened last night after I went to sleep.”
After breakfast we head down to the HooDoo Tent again where Michael is to give the harmonica workshop. Nick Moss is doing a solo thing as we walk in. I’d only heard him with his band, so it was nice to catch him on his own. I’m not sure what the workshop was, but it featured a good hour of 12 and 16 bar blues solos. A very good, listening crowd today.
Michael got set up quickly for his harmonica workshop and was joined a few minutes later by Steve Mariner, who sat in for a few tunes, including a fabulous harp duet on Michael’s “Long John.” After this, Michael got his rack back on and played a bunch of songs. It was the biggest and quietest crowd we’d (rather he’d) had to play to during the festival, and he tore it up. How many one man workshops end with standing ovations?
The guitar workshop is next, and host Brian Blain has invited me to take part. I play the early part of the workshop before leaving to get to our Delta show. Yup, great crowd on Saturday afternoon! A pleasure all around.
Back at the Delta we have another busy night, but relax with dinner after the show. Below is a pic of me with our Tour jacket winner!
We don’t need to rush off anywhere, but need to get an early morning start for New Glasgow, where we will be playing in mid-afternoon. So no end of festival parties or jams for us. Packing out we notice that one of the house SM58 mics is missing. After searching through our gear we report it missing to the night manager. He doesn’t seem too worried, but we don’t have it, and I don’t want to hear about it later.
We swing by the festival offices and pick up our merch, our merch money, and our pay envelope. Back at the hotel, half an hour later, I conduct inventory, balance the gig and merch sheets, and tear open our pay envelope from the Festival. The cheque is not signed! And we need to leave first thing in the morning to get to our next show. I jump back in the truck and head for the festival offices, it’s after 11: PM now, and the post festival parties will be starting soon. Thankfully someone is still in the office. Calls are made and Erin arrives to cash me out. The AD has Blackberried her, and our pay has been shorted by $300 for the missed show. Yes, legal. Somebody said we could afford it. I said, “do you know why I do 100 shows back to back? Because I have to.” We’re just two old blues singers in a van. Gas costs $100 a tank, and we’re very sorry we missed that show that nobody knew about. Good Morning. Good Morning. I guess this is the way the world is sometimes.
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