I am home from watching three great blues players tonight at the Rose Music Center at Huber Heights.
We arrived early enough to grab a bite to eat and we were literally the fifth car from the entrance to the amphitheater when we parked.
One problem with watching shows in the state of Ohio; there are no small people here. I don’t know what it is, but even the small people are big. Even Jeff, the guy who walked us to our seats was big and he was old.
I always hope, right up until showtime, that the person who sits in front of me will be a midget.
But no.
I get the seven-foot tall Yugoslavian basketball player on steroids every time, except tonight was an exception. I got a woman with very possibly the widest neck known to man. I spent several minutes surveying her neck which was attached to quite possibly, the biggest head known to man. I measured her neck as eight inches across.
Her noggin?
I estimate her gourd to be a foot wide, you know, Herman Munster head.
Really.
Mercifully, my wife Karen, the Domestic Despot, switched seats with me so I could sit behind her husband, who seemed to tire easily and decided to sit down for the concert.
The first act was a young kid named King Solomon Hicks and he set the table with a smooth half-hour set.
Following him was Kenny Wayne Shepherd’s childhood friend and blues guitarist Eric Gales and he was a badass and a great showman and he popped a 45-minute set out and the audience really responded to his act.
After about fifteen minutes of switching out equipment and final setup, the Kenny Wayne Shepherd band hit the stage.
Why is it that at every concert or show I go to, there is always one drunk chick waving her hands over her head from side-to-side as if anybody except the idiot in the last row is going to join her “movement?”
And the audience was old; I mean some of them made me look good. And what is it with all these white hairs (or no-hairs) that think they are grasping at one last vestige of their waning existence as they make Texas Hook ‘em Horns hand signals like someone might mistake their wrinkled, sour bodies as a youngster because they think every concert is a Metallica show?
I will say this about me. My once bulbous, rock-hard buttocks have now been replaced by two softballs. This, after sixty-nine mostly physically abusive years, a leg amputation, and a massive heart attack requiring eight (count ‘em) eight stents to keep blood flowing through my heart.
But those softballs were bouncing all over the place tonight, let me tell you. My stump was killing me as we mostly stood throughout the night, but it was worth it. I am still trying to toughen it up for when my band Sedona, starts getting gigs. I refuse to sit down to play rock and roll and blues, but when you are playing, there is no pain.
It’s when you stop.
Stay well.
