Aubergine, Audiences, and Autumn

While Friday’s concert was a Field House, Saturday’s was our first true Gym Job. I should have been prepared for the interior after the drive to the concert site – every street light flaunted a large purple flag with a white paw print. The gymnasium was a study in aubergine – everything from the bleachers and folding chairs to the signs on the walls was colored purple. Thinking about how our uniforms would look against a purple background made my head hurt.

The sponsors bent over backwards to make the concert a success. We had camera-folk following us through our warm-ups and the concert, and the audience was our most enthusiastic yet. (We played our first God Bless America!) A nice surprise was seeing Rachel from PAO sitting in the second or third row next to her mother. It’s always nice to see a face from home, even this early.

The shorter tour allows us to visit each state a little more in depth, so most of our drives are shorter than years past. This was quite evident today, our first Sunday Enroute Concert. Typically, in the past, the departure would be mid-morning with a lunch stop somewhere near the concert site. This made concert preparation difficult, with no time to warm up before loading the buses. Today our departure was set for 1240; plenty of time for warm-ups and lunch before leaving.

Kuss auditorium was our first “real” hall – a large stage with an extensive backstage area – the Backstage Band on La Fiesta finally had the space to stand together without elbowing each other. (I’m sure the crew enjoyed the ease of the load-in today.) For a Sunday afternoon game-day concert, the crowd was quite large. Sara was on her game today, both in her moderating and her singing. She adapts her dialogue so easily to the events of the day and has a feel for the locale that never ceases to amaze me.

Sunday evenings are sacred on Tour. Even though we have only been on the road since Wednesday, Sunday nights are the smaller milestones on the way toward home. It gives everyone a chance to recharge their batteries and enjoy a relaxed meal without watching the clock or choosing food without regard to its effect on your embouchure.

Several of us stepped out of Tour to visit Chris’ In-Laws, Vic and Jan. They so willingly opened their home to us and laid out a veritable feast with great pleasure, offering to get us anything we wanted that might not be on the table. There was plenty of room to spread out and plenty of people to meet. I spent some time talking to Susan, Vanessa’s sister, as she explained “Buckeyes” to me; intensely rich little balls of a peanut butter concoction partially dipped in chocolate. After hearing how much butter (three sticks) and powdered sugar (one pound) went into her chocolate marshmallow bars, I didn’t ask what went into the Buckeyes.

We gravitated to the deck and the pleasant weather, sitting under the enormous tree that shades the deck during hot summers. As the temperatures dropped, Jan passed out a pile of sweatshirts and hoodies while Vic built a fire in the fire pit. Darkness descending, out came the marshmallows, hangers, and sticks. Snuggling into the borrowed hoodie, I thought roasting marshmallows in the cool night air was the best way to end our first Sunday.

Back in my room, my hair and clothes smelled like the fire. Closing my eyes, I could see myself as a youngster, sitting before the fire on a cool summer evening, camping with my family in the mountains. Maybe I won’t Febreze the shirt just yet.

For Jay's Aunt Renee: