This weekend, my band, Hardtack Jack, had our debut performance and gig at the Iowa Renaissance Festival in the Amana Colonies. It was simultaneously a great time and probably the worst fest experience I’ve ever had. Allow me to explain.
The bad part was mainly the weather. It was really, really bad. Saturday it rained pretty much all day, not all that heavily, but enough to basically restrict us to our covered stage area and the trailer. It was also chilly, and the combination of the two seemed to keep patrons away (and I can’t blame them).
Our first few sets were a little rocky—I screwed up notes several times, partly due to nerves and partly due to cold fingers. I also sang one of my shanties in the wrong key. 😛 For that reason it was probably good that our audiences were pretty small, especially on Saturday morning. But by the end of the day, we were getting in to the groove a bit more, and we were asked to do a song at the closing gate show. We did “Whale of a Tale,” which everyone seemed to enjoy, and then we all sang “Health to the Company” and it was very nice.
That evening we went to dinner in the Amana Colonies, at a place called the Colony Inn that had delicious German food and fruit wine. I should have brought some of the wine back, but I kind of forgot about it in all the chaos that ensued over the rest of the weekend…
Sunday it rained most of the day again. We had a bit of a break when we were able to play a few songs outside of our stage. We acquired a fan who listened to us for quite awhile and requested a few songs and sang along. He actually stood uncomfortably close to us, but he was a nice enough guy. At about 4:30 the torrential rain hit—it rained so hard that we couldn’t even really do our last show, because the rain on the roof was so loud we couldn’t even hear each other. This went on until around 6, and flooding ensued. Everyone’s cars were near to flooding, getting stuck in the parking area, and my bandmates S & J’s trailer that we were using as our home base got seriously stuck.
For dinner, S & J planned to stay in, but they were kind enough to let me drive the Suburban so I could accompany C & JP back to the hotel they were staying at and eat at the Ox Yoke, which was nearby. There we encountered a woman who had been at a couple of our shows on Sunday. She had requested “something by Gaelic Storm” right when we were already about to play a Gaelic Storm song, “Lover’s Wreck.” Strange coincidence! Anyway, we had an interesting conversation with her and she told us she took some pictures of us, and she exchanged cards with C so hopefully we can get copies of some of them.
Adventures of an Introvert 