Who'll stop the rain? No one. But we have tarps.

Last weekend, we traveled to the town of Gatesville to play a private gig for a Memorial Day weekend party. Well, actually, we traveled through Gatesville to a ranch just outside of town.

Our GPS faithfully led us all the way to town, through town, down a country road, then as we got to a fork in the road, with nothing but rolling landscape on either side, it announced, "You have arrived at your destination." All we could think was, "I hope not."

Johnny called the host, who guided us from where we were to where we actually needed to be. He led us over a very cool, but we feared rickety bridge, past a totally tricked out mailbox, up to giant red, steel gate with a code box. We drove through the gate, and there was a house to the left, and for just a moment, we wondered if that was our destination. It wasn't. That was the caretaker's house. To get to the main house, we had to drive a gravel road through the property, which was beautiful.

I wanted to take pictures of all of these things, but we didn't want to be late, so we didn't stop to take snaps. But once we got there, I was able to get the camera out. When we arrived at the main house, we were greeted by this sculpture:

The party was already in full swing, so we parked as close as we could and started unloading.

Within minutes, we had a whole crew of volunteer roadies helping us unload and take our gear to the back patio. We liked these people already. From our spot on the patio, this was the view:

Very nice. The house looked unassuming from the outside, but they had some bling going on inside:

Those are African safari animals around the rim.

One of several stuffed and mounted unfortunate souls adorning the walls.

This was positioned on the wall in the bathroom in front of the toilet
- a little reading to entertain you while you enjoy the go.

This was my favorite piece - a foot stool in front of a matching chair.

We set up quickly, with nothing left to do except change into our show clothes, when a few drops started to fall. We grabbed our trusty gear tarps and started covering our equipment. I grabbed my clothes and went inside the house to change and get gussied up, thinking that by the time I was done, the shower would have passed. When I came out 20 minutes later, all hell had broken loose.

There was an absolute downpour going on. Joe was holding a tarp over his drum set, trying to keep it from blowing off, and Johnny and our host, Sam, were running around doing their best to make sure everything was covered and sweeping water off the patio to keep it as puddle-free as possible. When the rain finally let up, this is what we were left with:

My bass rig 

Joe keeping the drum tarp in place.

I wasn't sure that we'd be able to play - the last thing you want to do is light up wet gear and ruin it. But we also really didn't want to have come all this way and not get to play, and we didn't want to disappoint our client. We gave it a little time to make sure the rain was truly done. While we waited, our awesome hosts hooked us up with an insanely good steak dinner:

Johnny was soaking wet, which he didn't like (thus the thumbs down), but it didn't stop him from putting the beat down on the steak. 

Johnny thought the tarps had done a good job keeping the most sensitive equipment protected, so after we had fortified ourselves with steak (and peach cobbler - that went too fast for me to even get a picture), we got to work with towels to see what we could do. Sam brought out a leaf blower, and between the towels, brooms and leaf blower, we got everything to a point where Johnny thought we were safe to play. So we did. 

And we rocked! People danced and sang, and by the end, we had someone ask us if we had any merch we could sell (we had put away the merch table after the downpour). "Why, yes," we said, "We DO have stuff we can sell you!" Our super fan of the night was 2-year-old Aspen who danced non-stop, including one stretch where she just ran in circles, and periodically stood in front of us with her arms outstretched - taking it all in. Yeah, baby. Music!!

When we packed up for the night, we once again had a whole crew of people who helped us haul gear out to the van, and Sam sent us on our way with a nice tip and beverages for the ride home. We found out that many of the folks at the party, including Sam and his lovely wife Patti, were from Midland-Odessa (he's an oil man, and this is his vacation ranch), and I'm just going to tell you - you CANNOT beat West Texas hospitality! You're not going to find nicer, more accommodating or helpful people anywhere. 

We headed home, stopping only to take some pix at the bridge:

The van is a little apprehensive

Another great experience, meeting some great people and traveling to a cool place I wouldn't have otherwise gotten to see. I love this band.