The 2005 Blue Plum Festival in Johnson City kicked off this weekend and The Reagan Boggs band performed at one of the early shows on the main stage at 5pm.
This is my third year at the Blue Plum and my first year performing and it was great to be there even though we performed in a monsoon.
The streets were filled with people and craft vendors when I arrived and I unpacked my gear during the performance of Bag A Cats Alan Gamble plays drums in this band along with the Reagan Boggs band, so he had the luxury of leaving his gear on stage. Earlier, Blue Rapture performed too and Greg Smith was with that ensemble.
As we were getting our gear ready to jump on stage, I took some pictures around the stage and ran into Robert Pickle and Jeff Cates who were running the PA for the evening. I must say that this was one of the most professional and massive local event PAs that I have seen on display anywhere in this corner of the state and hats off to Pickle to another world class audio experience.
By the time we got to the stage, lightning and dark grey clouds were coming in from the Southwest. We knew we were getting ready to get hammered and as soon as we set foot on the stage, the rains came. The guys had taken extra care to prepare the stage ahead of time for rain, but before long it was pouring off the edges of parts of the stage.
Kevin Light and myself had picked the right side of the stage, but Greg Smith didn’t have it so lucky. When the winds started to blow, sheets of rain started coming in to the left side of the stage and I really felt sorry for Greg, but he kept right on playing without missing a note and I was impressed.
Needless to say, our audience was pretty thin because of the rain. There were a few die-hard music fans who stuck it out in the streets and under umbrellas, but for most of the people, they were huddled up under awnings in downtown.
As far as the performance, despite the circumstances, this was one of the most easy-going light hearted gigs that we’ve had in a while and our effort had little mistakes. The stage sound was great and I had to be very careful because the monitors were hot!
After the show, Pugs Subs invited Reagan, Tony, Anthony, Rick and myself over to try one of their great philly subs. This guy is an animated Philidelphia deli owner and his restaurant is plastered with photos taken over the course of his business featuring customers, artists and now us on his walls in Johnson City.
The rest of the evening was spent exploring the various stages. Ridgeline with Jed Patterson, Jason Crawford, Kevin Light, Chad Light and Mo Canada were playing in between one of the streets next to King’s Coffeehouse. That’s where I saw Virginia Ground frontman Jamen with his brother. I led Jamen to the beer tent and ran into Jarod Bentley and several members of Meredian and The Everybodyfields.
Tim O Brien was on stage when I saw George Vanbuscar with Scull Soup. They were putting on a Taco Pimp party at A Hideaway later that night and it was good to see him too.
My friends Danny, Tracy and Caroline joined us later in the night and we ventured out into the damp evening to catch some of the other bands. We visited a celtic shop, caught the first part of the Ridgeline set at King’s Coffeehouse and later watched another great Virginia Ground set at Gatsbys. I had hoped to catch Scull Soup at A Hideaway, but the truth is that I had a few too many beers and the night had been a long, wet and exciting, fun event.