Yeah, this was a big one. I tuned up all the new guitars, practicing Wednesday wth the yellow flame-job, for this one.

This gig is in the RV parking area across the highway from "Insidious" raceway, which I will refer to instead by its original unpurchased name Sears Point.

We arrive as the last funny cars are qualifying on the track about a mile away. We know they are still qualifying because every few minutes another pair make the quarter-mile run with such deafening thundrous noise that I cannot hear what someone is saying right next to me. It revives fond memories of the years when we have attended this event and stood at the fence fifty feet from the cars, not only *hearing*, but *feeling* these monstrous machines in a deeply personal way. (Imagine, if you will, operating a jackhammer. Now imagine that you are operating 20,000 jackhammers simultaneously. Now, imagine that the 20,000 jackhammers cover a quarter-mile in less than 5 seconds from a standing start, reaching speeds over 320 mph within that time, with you still hanging on only because your release reflex hasn't yet kicked in. Imagine the noise that would make, and multiply it by 100, and you will understand that NASCAR is for sissies. But I digress.)

We arrive and set up our stuff, and the sound guy comes and sets up his stuff. We do our sound checks, which to me are oddly sterile moments of listening to my naked and unaccompanied guitar and voice and trying to determine if I can hear myself enough, then playing the beginning of one song and trying to determine if everyone else can hear me.

We are set up with an RV as a backdrop. This is actually one of a group of RVs corralled into a neat rectangle with sumptuous shaded quarters in the middle. Whenever I see RVs again at a dry and dusty KOA or suchlike, I will remember this little oasis in which young people drink gin-and-something in the early evening hours, with Bloody Mary fixin's still on the table from breakfast.

The qualifying having ended at five, some VERY drunk and VERY sunburned people stumble into the campground, many of them remembering me from last year and shaking my hand.*

The magic hour of seven o'clock arrives and we plow into the first set with not only vigor but vim too.

Let's see, what went wrong first? We lost power midway through the second song (a favorite place for mishaps—this is where I broke a string on my first gig), then we lost partial power later (just Greg's, so we could still commentate on his progress to the milling crowd).

I don't drink before the first break. Then I race to catch up with the others. Miscues and outages notwithstanding, we make a decent enough impression that there is a significant crowd before us as the second set begins. The second of four is our strongest set: kick 'em below the belt while they are still sensible to pain, that's our motto. By the time the fourth set comes 'round, they won't remember whether we sucked or not (but we still have tricks up our collective sleeves throughout the four sets).

At the first break, I seek and find beer and meet many new friends. I also notice that one reason people have liked "us" so much is that three young women have been dancing atop the RV behind us, threatening to but never quite removing their tops. I get pictures, and then hand off my camera to Greg's sister-in-law.

Set two rivals any set on any teenager's chest, as long as she keeps her shirt on. By the end, darkness has fallen, the sweet smell of nitro has infused everything, and those gin-and-somethings have transformed us into very good musicians indeed! There are a good 3-400 people crowded into our little corner of heaven, and at least two of them have a score to settle, and must settle it on the ground in front of my monitor. I worked hard to get the right sounds to come out of that monitor, so am pleased when they are escorted off by their respective friends in southeast and northwest directions, respectively. One of the fighters I recognize as a man whose hand I shook earlier.

We have agreed to end Set Two early, so announcements can be made and a man can play the national anthem on the trumpet. And my general impression is that he manages to blow every shred of humor--and then some--out of that trumpet. Spike Jones might've hired him on the spot.

Guys appear in Big O Tires shirts! (I don't know about you, but the LAST thing I want in my tire is a big "O"--better to go over to "Triple S" and have it go "sss...") They are obviously racers (or incredible morons trying to look like racers). No, they are the former; the entourage of Ron Capps, who has just finished qualifying 6th in his Dodge Charger funny car--very likely one of the guys drowning out conversation from a mile away three hours back. He thinks he might like to do a bit of drumming, and we oblige him since Carl who owns the drums isn't around at the moment anyway. He sits and does a little rat-a-tat-tat, but he is not done with us! (Nor us with him: I insist the drummer gets to drive the funny car tomorrow, and Ron says he left the keys in it.)

Things get a little fuzzy here, but we do move on, and find Ron Capps singing along on a couple of songs, boosting an auction item with his own stuff ($300 for us!), and making Whit Bazemore jokes that everyone but 3/4 of the band gets.

By the fourth set, I am just very focused on getting the songs right and getting to the end, but also... VERY FOCUSED. I've really only had maybe three beers in two hours, and may well be the lightest boat in the water, whatever THAT means (no, it means I'm probably more sober than anyone else here.) We are hemmed in by drunken revelers who appear to love us for no good reason. Someone decides we should cut it short three songs before the "end," and bring back some favorites, as an "encore" set. So we REdo some of the second-set songs and peel through the final few of the fourth, loud and sloppy and with all molecules in Brownian motion. With one song left to go, we hear the sheriff has arrived and suggested we call it a night, and we feel that he speaks with ineluctable wisdom, and so pack away our guitars and amps and wires and drums, "confident in the knowledge we've deafened a few."

I really enjoyed this gig WHILE IT WAS HAPPENING--a first, really, as in previous gigs I've fought nerves through the first 1-1/2 to 2 sets and somnambulated through the rest, enjoying them only in retrospect. People liked me, merely for the act of dragging a plasticine teardrop-shaped object across the taut strings of this block of wood with wires wrapped 'round magnets that connected to a big heavy magnet and about 144 square inches (that's one gross...) of vibrating paper, somehow creating a noise that perhaps approximated, for them, the sound of a funny car passing fifty feet away at two-hundred-and-tonic miles per hour. I am honored that they like what we've done, and realize that artists who say they are there for the fans, and that it's nothing without the fans, they're not just mouthing pleasantries, but telling the ABSOLUTE TRUTH, which is, it ain't NOTHING without people listening and liking it. And I wish I had learned this simple fact at 12 or 13, that when you find yourself in a show, you do your best to make it a show.

* I wasn't here last year.

Photos don't do it justice: http://www.born-today.com/Vacations/2006/07/07-29.htm