Borders Books

Hi All!
this is a little longer of a blog than normal...

Yesterday, Friday June 9th
I started my first day of vacation, we went to Selea's first grade graduation, which was cute.. who has ever heard of a 1st grade graduation??? not me.. but it was put together well.
After that is was a day of La Resa and I just driving around doing some shopping type things.
At about 2pm I got a call from Mark, who is the bass/guitar player for the group "Centerline" it seems that he got a call from Borders books because the store in Beaverton had a last minute cancelation from a group that was supposed to play there. Mark and Centerline had a full schedule and didn't feel they could perform that night, so Mark recommended our little group "RTR" to Dan the marketing guy at Borders.
I had to scramble to figure out if we could do it or not. Mike was tied up in class all day, so I couldn't contact him. I forgot Stephanie was working that night to cover a shortage in Mgt. staff. I didn't want to lose the opportunity that was given to us because ever since I saw a young lady playing at Borders, and also since seeing "CenterLine" perform there I thought it was a cool place to play, and I kind of set it as a goal of mine to play there. This thought/wish was forming before the thought of the forming of the group.
I wanted to lock in the night so we could do it, so I called Dan directly and spoke with him and told him we would do it, even if it meant me performing solo.
I knew also that Mike had a big practice set up for that night for his main group,
"DreamLand Cafe".
Dan explained the arrangement to me, not a paying gig you can do this and that etc. to which I agreed, obviously I have a paying day job so I didn't care about that.
I got a hold of Linda, Mike's wife, as I was talking to her, Mike came home, and said he could do it.
Long story short, got there at 6pm to set up. Mark was kind enough to do our sound check set up, did a great job, and actually stayed the whole time (show was 7 to 9pm).
Mike and I ran through our Sunday night line up (minus the crucial ones with Stephanie) we did an hour long set then took a 15 min. break and then played another 45 mins. We played a lot of stuff that we hadn't played in a long time, and some we had only done 1 or 2 times before. Mike was great, remembered a lot and winged it on the rest.
We made some mistakes, but laughed our way through it. We had some nice compliments from the crowd, met some nice people. The whole "Centerline" group showed up.. that was special to me because I like their music and sound, they were very supportive and gave us a lot of great Kudos, this meant a lot to me.
I think we opened the doors for some "Borders Books" tours in the local area.
Dan said we were doing him a big favor..and that he could start booking us for August and beyond, covering local stores including Vancouver.
What an opportunity this was for us... it turned out great.
It happened so fast I didn't have time to get nervous.
Thanks also go out to the Francos who seem to always show up at a moments notice when it comes to seeing me perform, this was their first time seeing 2/3rds of "RTR"

Nuffa Dat'

PS) we played at a local coffee house on Thurs night, no amplification just acoustic, that was fun also, very small crowd.. but it was good experience.

Andy