I play in the band Latin Society and this past weekend we made a trip to San Antonio, TX to play 3 gigs at the Tejano Music Awards Fan Festival. And what a trip it turned out to be!
I left on Thursday morning, 7am, driving thru to San Antonio the same day. I arrived at the hotel about 9:30pm. My pickup, and '88 Ranger, is most comfortable at no more than 65mph, it'll do 70 or so if I really push it, but the gas mileage really takes a dive. One good thing about driving the Ranger is it is not very comfortable, the seat is a bit worn out. That made it less likely that I would get too tired from the long drive.
We played our first gig on Friday night at 9pm and it was great! Probably one of our best shows ever, and the crowd absolutely loved us! When we finished our set, the MC told us to do one more song because of the crowd response (but meant cutting into the next bands time). After finishing that song, the crowd starting yelling Otra! Otra! Otra! (More! More! More!). Finally the next band said ok, and gave us the go-ahead to do another song. It was great! The crowd still wanted more, but we had to let the next band on the stage. We gave away all the CD's we brought with us, and all the pictures. So on Saturday we made more CD's and pictures.
The Saturday gig was at 6pm, again to a huge crowd. And again they wanted more when we were done. And again we gave away all the CD's and pictures.
Sunday we were scheduled to play at 9pm, but the weather didn't cooperate. We woke up to a rainy morning, then drizzle, then rain, etc, all day long. At the Market Place Square (where the festival was held), three of the stages had problems with the PA equipment getting wet, so those 3 stages were shut down. One of them was the stage we were to play on that evening. After some scrambling with the people in charge we were told to hang around in case a band didn't show up for their time slot, then we would fill in. As it turned out we were given 20 minutes, by shuffling the scheduled bands a bit. We were a big hit again! Once more, we gave away all the CD's we'd made that day, and all the pictures, and people wanted more.
So what came fo this weekend that cost all of us quite a bit to take part in the festival (the bands don't get paid)? We were given a guaranteed weeked gig in Colorado for Cinco de Mayo, for starters. AND, we have 3 offers for recording contracts with 3 different record companies. That's like a dream come true! Now the band is going to have meetings to discuss our options and decide what we want the future of the band to be.
I have pics in the photo album.