Three Nights at The Beacon

When Reed and I found out about this tour over a year ago, we were nervous but not that nervous...UNTIL, we found out we were playing The Beacon. That's when we kinda freaked out.

So it finally happened- July 13, 14 and 15th. To cover the basics- the fruit plate was pretty nice (it even had blackberries- see the picture my last post if you care), and the dressing room was small and kind of looked like a run down youth hostel but it had a little couch so we were happy. There was a sink in the middle of the room and I made the mistake of trying to use the built-in soap pump next to it. A truly disgusting oily brown sludge/slime came splattering out of it. I guess it hadn't been used in a few decades. Somehow I had missed that there was hand soap from this decade sitting right on the counter.

Friday night, my sister and a lot of good friends came to the show. It felt good to know we had some people out there rooting for us. In that nerve wracking hour before we went on, I drank my new customary trio - whiskey (I finally have my own bottle of Woodford Reserve), some Diet Coke and a bunch of honey/lemon/ginger tea. Then I realized it would be really embarrassing if I burped into the mic on stage so I had better lay off the Diet Coke. From our dressing room, we had a monitor of the stage and the front section of the orchestra, and we could see that it was still fairly empty at 7:50. But then Andy (the Production Manager) came to get us and walk us downstairs, as he does at every show about 5 minutes before we go on. Every night at 7:55 when we hear him and his walkie talkie coming down the hallway to get us, I say "here comes The Grim Reaper." It kind of feels like we're being brought out for the knights to slaughter.

After we walked downstairs and were waiting backstage with Andy and his 3 minute countdown, the theater started to fill up more. By the time we went on stage, it was pretty full. I think we played pretty well though I was a little frustrated because an invisible fence of feedback was keeping me from moving around much on stage. Vince (the sound man, not Vince from Erasure) helped me sort out the feedback issue in the next night's soundcheck, which helped a lot. So I was able to move more during the Saturday and Sunday night shows.

Before we went on Saturday night, I was having a wardrobe dilemma and realized that Bobby and Reed would be of no help. So I knocked on the dressing room door of Emma and Valerie from Erasure and posed the fashion question to them. They promptly and definitively answered, thank god. David, the girls, my mom and some really good friends all came to the show on Saturday night. My girls were seated next to my friend Marla, who said she was screaming her head off (thank you and love you MW). She said that eventually the girls followed her lead and got into it. She asked them what it was like to see their mom up there, and they said "weird." Last week, after the St Petersburg show they had told me - "mom, either do better moves or don't move at all." So this time after the show, I asked how my "moves" were. They just shrugged. They said maybe a little worse than last time. My sister told me I needed a choreographer. But then I remembered that I am fifty, and just happy I can still move my hips at all.

Other good friends came on Sunday night.

All in all, it was a very eventful, fun and draining three nights.