We were booked for a return to this special needs school way up in northeastern New Jersey for a 10 am show, and though it wasn’t an early show, the traffic made a 1.5 hour trip over 2 hours and we got there with 25 minutes to spare. No problem for us but the head teacher was worried.
They loved the show last time (several years ago) but the teacher wanted more music and less talk, thinking that the kids wouldn’t get the history lesson. We agreed but it also put pressure on me to selectively edit as we were doing the show. It’s been awhile since we did the show last so I was a little off my game. The sound system was screwing up at the beginning as well. It was a rough show (to our minds) but it didn’t seem to matter to the kids and the many teachers. The live music was what saved the day.
We weren’t communicating well, not looking at each other for visual cues when we were extending the music and I was dealing with what to cut out in the script. It was not our best gig but we were lucky that we didn’t have to play a perfect show to make a difference for these kids.
A long day on the road and a hard gig. Tomorrow, another long drive for a 8:15 assembly for 500 middle school kids. Back to back, baby!