Last Weekend In Pictures

If any of you have been watching my recent tour dates, you will know that all that was written in last weekend's gig was "private function". The Savoys have returned from our hiatus, and I can't think of a better way to celebrate the return of this "new & improved" act with a road trip to Kananaskis.
The Savoys were retained to play a wedding for friends & family of the band. It turned out that there were no shortage of musicians there, and they were all itching to play.


We played in a large reception hall that had no running water, no "facilities", and there was barely enough outlets to plug all our electronic into. We thought it would be likely that we would blow all the breakers the moment we began to play. Luckily, this was not the case.

This was the debut performance with our new bass player, MA. I think he was a little nervous, as he told me that he didn't sleep a wink the previous night. I think we were all a little jittery, as it took us a number of songs to get into our groove. By the second set, we were cookin'.
Did the crowd ever like the blues. The dance floor was packed for every song. The wine & beer flowed from their bottles and kegs, and in true wedding fashion, everyone was merry.

It wasn't long until the performance turned into a big jam. We began featuring many of the guests on the stage, each taking their turn at the guitar, on the drums, or on the mic. We even had some killer harmonica and trumpet players join us for a few numbers -- and they had killer chops!
Certainly the biggest rush we had, was when we were joined by Juno-Award winning artist Jesse Zubot. We pulled out some Led Zeppelin, and brought the house down with our version of "Rock and Roll", complete with a smokin' guitar solo. Even yours truly played a drum solo at the end of the song.
You can see why they call me "MC Fro". The proof is in the picture.

As the night wore on, it became apparent that we were going to be playing until the wee hours of the morning, and the Savoys were running out of material. I am sure those who still remained at the party were well on their way to having hangovers the next day, and even though they ate up any song we could throw at them, they began calling for some more "traditional wedding band music".

This usually makes any musician cringe with fear. This means Foxtrots, Polkas, Butterflies, Waltzes, and the dreaded "Bird Dance".

And we played them all. Starting with the Beer Barrel Polka (more commonly referred to as "Roll out the Barrel"), and moving to "There's no Beer in Heaven", we even started writing our own polkas, since we all couldn't agree how some of these old songs went. We closed the night with the horrific Bird Dance, and the crowd ate it up.

Even though I can safely say that I have never had so much fun playing polkas and the like, I certainly hope I never have to play one again.

We managed to return to our hotel in Calgary some time after 3:30 in the morning and promptly fell asleep due to pure exhaustion.