Monday, February 21, 2011

Mid-Winter 2011: The Evolution of a Bass Player

Every year we go to the Mid-Winter Bluegrass Festival in Denver. It's always Presidents Day weekend, and we get a room at the Ramada Inn and play our instruments all weekend with friends and strangers. This past weekend, the event was really special because I got to play on stage and I came home feeling that I had just experienced the high point of my musical journey so far.

Our band, Steel Pennies, opened the festival by playing the first slot on the main stage. The room is a big ballroom and it was full of people. We had practiced a ton to get ready, and it was so exciting! Our set went over great. A lot of people came up afterwards and complimented us on our performance. That was at 11:45 on Saturday morning. Saturday evening we played again on the small acoustic stage, and everything again went great. We felt we played well and it is really fun when you are riding up the elevator and strangers tell you how much they enjoyed hearing you play. Our practice and lots of debate over the set list definitely paid off.

In addition to having two successful performances, I got to pick with some very stellar musicians and that was also very exciting for me. What a weekend!

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