Bearded Pigs in Atlanta

The Bearded Pigs will be playing after the banquet at the joint Southern Chapter/Mid-Atlantic Chapter meeting in Atlanta next month.  So there's been a lot of pigchat via email over the past few days.  What equipment can we bring and what do we have to rent?  Who's getting to Atlanta when?  What new songs do we want to try?  Is there going to be any time to rehearse?  This is rehearsal.

I fantasize about getting us all together in a house somewhere for a long weekend when we might actually have time to work through some arrangements instead of always making it up on the fly.  Practice time in Phoenix consisted of Bruce, Duke and I having lunch the day of the gig and talking about where we might put drum breaks and lead guitar in a couple of the tunes. 

But the logistics are daunting.   Time, place, expenses.  We're all pretty busy in the first place, and getting ourselves into the same place at the same time is a struggle in itself.  Piggybacking onto conferences that we're going to anyway is about the only way we can do it -- although for Atlanta, Bruce & SG are making the trip solely for the gig, and for Savannah we all (except for SG) went just for the chance to play. 

We got a very nice thank you from the Executive Director of the Medical Library Association for the contribution we made to the scholarship fund this year ($750).  But the Thicket Society funds only cover the direct expenses for the annual MLA meeting; whatever is left over goes to the scholarship fund, and we can't draw on it to support any of our other activities.  So any other times we might get together we've got to be willing to cover the costs ourselves.  We'll put the open guitar case out in Atlanta and hope that people continue to be generous.

The success of the band continues to baffle and delight me.  Every time we play, and I look out at the crowd of people who are very obviously having a great time I think, "But we're not that good..."  I guess it's similar to what happened with Liquid Prairie years ago in St. Louis -- we were pretty crude musically, but we put off enough goodtime energy that it didn't matter.  We were more fun to hang out with than many a more musically accomplished band.  The Pigs are like that.

Comments

[Michelle]

I think it is just great that you all can get together to play and that you are doing it for the scholarship fund. I know I couldn't do that and sound even half as good. But then again God didn't give me any music genes, I can't even clap to the rhythm to save my life.

[Bruce the Almighty]

The Big Pink Guesthouse in Clarksdale for a long weekend of jamming sounds good to me!

My fantasy is about you guys coming to Europe to play at an EAHIL conference (where incidentally there is great interest in the Band..) - I was daydreaming at the conference dinner in Cluj of having the lights down and then the opening feedback from "Perfectly Good Guitar" (after some perfectly good Romanian wine...)

and IFLA is in Quebec in 2008 so there might be an opportunity there????