It was called Dina Hall, Dave Fry and the Southside Ramble and it turned out quite nicely. We were booked for the 4:30 slot at Liederplatz, a good time on a Sunday afternoon. A good crowd was on hand though the warmth and humidity was heavy. Ed McKendry played electric, Kris Kehr on bass, George Hrab on drums with Dina and myself leading small sets of our material. George had never played with Ed so there was a small element of doubt, but not really. Actually the newness of the situation made everybody play with their antennae up.
I did some stuff to start off with, Blue Heartland, Barrelhouse and July (with Juli coming up to sing – boy, what a wall of vocals when she sits in…) and followed with Shoo that Fly with Dina and Juli up. We cooked on all of them with Ed nailing some fine leads.
Dina came up for a short set of her songs. I was ready on mando, capoed and ready to play in A. She started the first song in G, I flipped off my capo and then she said, oops, wrong key. I quickly put my capo back on but I was wildly out of tune. I motioned to the sound man to turn me down so I could tune out of the mix. Not an easy fix, so I sat out.
I did Legends and broke a string, made it through the tune, just slightly out of tune and called for Dina to come up and do a couple of her songs while I changed my string. The band did a great job.
I came back for Lessons from Pete with our new arrangement and jam at the end and we did a fine job. Dina finished up with It’s All Right with some good mando and guitar leads and we finished there without doing Dixie Chicken, which was okay in my book.
Nice reactions from Godfrey’s folks on the set, remarking on the good energy on stage that the audience could feel from us. Pretty amazing group of players to pull this off on a main stage situation.
I’m beat but not really looking towards some time off from playing.