Whoa...that was a week
mood: relieved
I am now breathing a bit better. It's tuesday morning and the stress of playing my first Winnipeg Folk Festival is over. The past 7 days have been crazy. Last week I needed the CD's to come in, I needed Rob's broken/sprained knuckle to heal, I needed two rehearsals, to host (with some heavy weights on the panel) my first workshop, to play during the perfect storm, to try and not drive myself crazy worrying about the band show and topping it off with a quick performance in front of 20 000 peeps. I am alive, and am better for the whole situation. The weekend was thrilling and taught me much about how I handle stress and more to the point how I don't handle stress. Seemed like fate, I literally had an entourage of friends surrounding me (when the artist in me came out) and that "self-deprecating JP" showed himself. They showed me some new breathing techniques, kept me laughing and just helped me stay positive, because being hyper critical is one of my strong suits.
The shows themselves went great. The workshops felt awkward only in that most of my songs are riddled with crazy chord progressions, therefore it was plenty difficult for the other musicians to join in and "jam" as the crowd so eagerly wants. That sucked, but that's maybe the only challenge to being a square peg in a round holed event. And Saturday, oh my god, it was 5 C with the wind chill, with rain and hatred from the sky, and I watched one of my favourites, Bela Fleck play with no distain or visible angst. He was like one of the ships on the Deadliest Catch tv show, charging towards the wave. Everyone at that workshop was tough. If they went on, we knew we were playing no matter what. On Sunday the full band set was probably my favourite moment of the festival. It was tight, the view from stage was full, and I mean really full, of bodies stretching out to the back hill, and they were into the set. The set list was the best yet, and every second was satisfying, I'm going to use that hour as a happy thought if I ever find real pixy dust. At night, chaos ensued just prior to Rob and I playing to the main stage audience. First it was "you have 20 mins", then "Mr. Davies wanted to go on at 8:45 sharp", so it was down to 1 song, then it became settled on two songs...The thousands of people looked like colourful blurry dots, and it was kind of weird. Harder to connect, which could have also been due to the briefness of the set, but it's another challenge I'm really looking forward to conquer in the future. But we did it, and I felt good after. And Ray even thanked us during his set, for opening up for him, your welcome Ray.
The craziest part of the weekend was, the 4 hours prior to every show/set I would be a nervous jerk, then when I got backstage, or started laying down my chords on stage, everything vanished. No butterflies, no sweating, no worst case scenarios, it all evaporated in an instant. That was cool...and eerie at the same time.
And now as I begin getting CD's ready for distribution around the country, and on the internet, I want to let people know, they will be available soon. Online at first and in stores by fall. Thanks for your support, and for everyone who was at the festival, thanks for clapping and for not booing or throwing hemp products on stage in protest of a pop act rockin out.
JP
JP on 07.15.08 @ 04:30 AM CST [link] [2 Comments]