It was a calm, quiet beginning to Saturday, May 28. Our performance in Greenville for Earth Fest didn't start until 4pm. In order to justify our time and travel, Nic and Eric offered to run sound for the festival...for the entire day. From noon until almost 8pm, Nic and Eric (who traveled from the Detroit area mind you) set up microphones and played with the mixing board to ensure that every act sounded their best in the community center auditorium.
In prior years, the Greenville Earth Fest actually happened on 'Earth Day' approximately one month earlier than this year's Memorial Day weekend time slot. For whatever reason, the festival was delayed and aptly renamed simply 'Earth Fest', a title with no real significance or connection to anything and consequently, no advertising or audience either. Each band came and went throughout the day: setting up on stage, playing their short set, packing up, and leaving before the next band started. Long, folding banquet tables set up in the lobby to display locally made crafts and locally taxidermied animals sat un-puruesed by an an audience that never really came.
Sandwich helpings from the local Subway slowly disappeared courtesy of vendors and musicians who devoured the stacked slices of freshly cut salami and wheat bread with desperate hunger. After we finished our tight and raucous yet sparsely attended performance, Erin and I booked it to downtown Grand Rapids to unwind before setting up at Founders for our second and better attended performance of the day.
It is noteworthy to mention that while Greenville Earth Fest acts saw sparse crowds, my parents and only surviving grandmother drove out special. Having attended other performances of mine in the past, I was thrilled that she could see this project of mine for the first time and eagerly awaited her review. Her response surprised me to say the least performance, my dear almost 82-year-old grandmother said that she did not understand how the third member actually contributed to our sound. The third member to whom she referred is our bassist Nic, whose sound at least would surely be missed. My attempt to explain the important and often under-rated role that bass plays in any band, especially a trio like ours, left an unconvincing impression on her.
If our band was 'Survivor', my grandmother would have voted Nic off the island.
