I’m going to be perfectly honest here. I love festivals and all they have to offer, but I would take a regular venue over playing a festival any day of the week. For instance, we were playing in an ampitheater type situation on Sunday and the soundtech from Gigs Music, Dale, did a great job! However, it is still a situation where you have no control over your time or sound. I was so stressed it took me a 1/2 hour to get my head in the groove, and that’s 1/2 our set list for the day. Not to mention starting at noon, hell I’m not even awake yet at noon, much less playing music! 🙂
That being said, we are incredibly grateful to Jerry Fergusson and Crescent Brewery for being so incredibly supportive of CYMRY. He’s a very good friend, him and his whole clan, and we love them! We had a great day and I saw friends who came out to support us and showed us a lot of love this weekend, plus, bonus I made some new friends. I had a chance to get with Tim Smith, President of the local Scottish Society and he is very cool! We talked about next year’s festival and I think we are going to try to tie in the Welsh society. We should all be working together to make it a great event.
I also had a great opportunity to take some great photos for Crescent Brewery and Jerry. I think the pic of Rick at the taps is a good one and of course the pic of the security detail, Rick Morris and Tim Smith and the guy whose name I still don’t know came out really good. I should call him “The Unknown Kilt Guy” :). He’s the one in the middle. Rick is on the left and Tim is on the right. All in all, it was a great weekend, we were paid very well for our time, but I just wish I could have wrapped my head around the songs a lot quicker. We did a Fleetwood Mac medley, which I never do in a normal performance, but it was different.
A gentleman came up to me after we were done and said he wasn’t as fond of the Welsh music because he couldn’t understand a thing I was singing and I think he thought when we were announced as Celtic he was expecting leprechaun’s with shilaleighs to go dancing across the stage. At the very least he expected fiddles and pipers. When I say we are Celtic I mean it in the most sincere description. I sing in Welsh and I play songs from other modern bands from Wales and Ireland, but we also play other music such as Fleetwood Mac, Styx, Led Zepplin and more because no one wants to sit there for an hour listening to me sing in Welsh. Many of the bands here in the US that are Celtic are following a renaissance pattern of violins and flutes and the whole “show” thing rather than following the actual roots of the music.
At any rate…it was really a wonderful event and we are so grateful to have had the opportunity to participate. Thank you to everyone that came out to support us, Kevin Butler from Switc Her, Maria Camario, Rich Brown, Amanda Pridgen, Zeniff Rodriguez, and there were more but it was a busy day and I can’t remember who else I saw. Peace my friends. Next up Crescent Brewery n the 17th, and frankly I will be glad to get back to regular gigs. But, keep your hats on, I will soon be talking in abundance about the “Celtic Festival” on September 21st…..WEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeee
CYMRY 