Seacrets - 5/27/06 - Ocean City, MD

What an adventure. We sort of lucked into this gig last minute, and I was really excited to make my debut in Ocean City. I've been coming to OC ever since I can remember and have always wanted to play there someday.

Randy and our friend Jess caravan-ed up there and got into town pretty early. We hung out on the beach for a few hours and caught some rays waiting for the other guys and our rooms. Later in the afternoon we got our rooms, and it was obvious they had been used and abused by those before who had come into town to rock. Not exactly glamorous, but it's hard to argue with a free room at the beach.

As we started to load into the club, we had a couple of curveballs thrown at us, the first being that Ken would have to play on a partial electronic set provided by the club instead of his own set. After making a frantic phone call and talking to some folks at the club, we found out that he was allowed to use his cymbals and snare, but the other drums had to be electronic due to a noise ordinance in the town (we were playing outside). Talk about ironic! We always give Ken a hard time about V-drums since Chris Babb used to play them all the time with me. Now the club forced them upon him! They didn't sound the greatest and Ken was a bit irritated at it all (well, we all were), but he was a good sport and rolled with the punches. It would of been nice to know all this before we got into town...

Curveball #2: The stage we were playing on had just been built that morning. In fact, they were still building another stage as we were loading our stuff in. Since Memorial Day weekend is sort of the summer kick-off weekend, I guess things were coming down to the wire at the club. The down-side was that they really hadn't used or even tested a sound system on the stage we were playing, and we even ended up finishing our set up before the sound equipment was in place. Since we were the guinea pigs, the sound was pretty rough throughout the show. A lot of mic feedback, distortion, bad levels--all the things you hope to work out BEFORE you start playing. I got a little unnerved at the whole situation, but I had a beer and felt a little better.

Despite all these wrinkles in the operation, we ended up having a really good show. I mean we were playing on a stage right next to the water at the beach--how great is that? The stage was at the edge of the water and faced the sand where the crowd was standing. The crowd was a little stiff at first, but as the sun went down and the frozen drinks set in, a great sizeable crowd gathered at our stage and rocked with us. The club was packed.

We tried to have some ladies dance on stage with us, but they were quickly escorted off by security guards who apparently wanted to kill our mojo. Actually, Seacrets has a rule against folks on stage due to the liability involved (I mean, these folks were drinking and tried to dance on a stage full of electrical equipment near the water). I brought a lot of CDs to give away and all but three or so of them were snatched up. Good stuff.

I should also mention that I had my first ever "ass-signing" at the Seacrets show. Before we even started playing, a nice lady had affixed an FLB sticker to her rear and asked me to sign the sticker while I was setting up. I was certainly happy to oblige. Another hard day...

A lot of folks were really friendly and bought the band drinks and there were actually quite a few folks who had seen us play before. I was very pleasantly surprised. During breaks and after the show I talked with some folks from home, some LVC'ers, and even some folks who had seen us in Harrisburg. Crazy! It seemed like representatives from all our performing corners had gathered with us at this massive beach party. My brother and some friends from home were in OC for the summer and got a chance to catch the end of the show. It really meant a lot to see all of them there.

Our show ended at 10pm, so we loaded out through a massive sea of people and the catacombs of the club. There were cops everywhere outside and a huge line to get in. After we loaded up our gear, Ken and Chris hit the road since it was early. I hung out with my bro the rest of the night and Randy ended up staying at the club. It was cool to be able to just walk right in all day. The whole "in the band" cliche really works sometimes.

Overall, a really cool gig. Not exactly how I imagined it, but life rarely is. We had a great time and hope we get the chance to come back again soon. I'll be posting pictures on the website either tonight or tomorrow, so make sure you check out the visual supplement.