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Current mood:  adventurous
Have you ever tried to get a 12-piece band with all its equipment out to an island for a sunset show on the Saturday before Labor Day - a.k.a. the Last Weekend of Summer? That's what we did this past weekend, and let me just say right now, it's not the easiest thing in the world to pull off. But pull it off we did - through a LOT of really hard work and with the help of a lot of amazing people.
In the entry before last, I told you about our trip to Fire Island two weeks ago in preparation for this weekend's gig, and how we were miraculously able to raise the money we needed to make the gig happen. Now we were faced with actually getting all the physical details set up for the show - the equipment, the stage, the electricity, and of course, the promotion.
David and I were on our own with the problem of transporting all our equipment to the island, so we made a plan to take everything over on the last ferry Thursday night in order to avoid a lot of the human traffic to the island for Labor Day weekend. David's wonderful father drove us in the van to the ferry dock, where we unloaded most of our equipment, including our PA and sound board. (The rest of the equipment would be coming over Saturday morning/afternoon with our musicians.) We knew we had a lot of stuff, but seeing it all laying out there next to the ticket booth made us realize how hard this was going to be. It was practically a mountain, no lie. I had called the ferry people in advance to make sure we could bring the equipment over on the passenger ferry, and they said it wasn't a problem - but they didn't really have a clear understanding of how much stuff there would be. Mostly because I fudged the truth a little bit when they asked. Teehee. Oops.
When the ferry arrived behind schedule, we knew we had to move fast, and we started lugging the incredibly heavy equipment as quickly as we could onto the dock. Luckily, the boat was staffed with a regiment of strapping young men, who helped us out immensely (albeit begrudgingly). Somehow, we managed to get everything loaded onto the boat in record time. Gasping for breath, we boarded and settled down for the 30-minute trip to Fair Harbor. Phew!
Once the boat docked at Fair Harbor, there was another mad scramble to get the equipment OFF the boat - the ferry crew guys were NOT happy with us - but we did it. Then there was one last haul during which we had to transfer the bulk of the equipment to the Fire House, and the rest of it went with us to Aunt Pam's house, where we were staying. Double phew!
Once all that was done, we enjoyed a few well-deserved drinks at Le Dock and called it a night. Triple phew!
The next day (Friday) was all about promotion and preparation. We had made arrangements for an order of pallets and plywood with which to build a stage, but our order never went through. Crap! What could we do, what could we do???
We had to let go of the idea of having a real stage, which was hard. But David came up with the idea to have little elevated islands for certain parts of the band - specifically, himself, the girls (me and Deb for this show), and the horn section. The idea was to use the pallets that had accumulated on the dock from various freight shipments, stack them on top of each other, and maybe put some kind of protective covering on top. We weren't sure it would work, but we gathered the pallets we needed and planned to deal with it the next day while we were setting up for the show.
We spent the rest of the afternoon hanging posters in the surrounding communities, securing our electricity source (thank you to the doctor at Fair Harbor!), and getting in some badly needed beach time (we managed about 15 minutes.) Then we had a lovely home-cooked meal at Aunt Pam's - we really cannot thank this amazing woman enough - and a couple of drinks at Le Dock. We called it an early night because we knew the next day would be intense.
Intense isn't a strong enough word for how hard we worked on Saturday. And happily, we had help from a lot of difference sources. My friend Andrew and his friend Derric came in from the city just to help us out - and they were incredible! David's dad Mike and cousin Juliana were an enormous help in building our three mini-stages. By four o'clock we had everything set up, and it looked fantastic. Here's the whole band on the set-up we put together:
Looks pretty darn good, right? I was incredibly happy with it. We even used the stripper pole platform (sans pole) from the other weekend's casino party as BroJo's personal stage, so that he would be higher up than anyone else. It all came together and looked great!
And the show was PHENOMENAL. You can view my entire photo album from this performance here:
Fire Island Show Photo Album on Facebook
From all the comments we got from people who were there, this show really meant something to the community, and as a performer, you can't really ask for more than that. The Love Revival Revolution made a huge impact on Fair Harbor this weekend, and I couldn't be happier or more fulfilled.
The only sad part was leaving the island yesterday. It's after Labor Day now, and we probably won't go back to Fire Island until next summer...it's a beautiful place filled with beautiful people, and it now inhabits a very special place in my heart.
Next weekend, we're hitting up Philadelphia for the very first time - stay tuned for a detailed account of that adventure in my next entry! Until then, stay righteous, my lovelies!
Big love,
Samia
a.k.a. Seoul Sistah #1
www.jointherighteous.com
4:35 PM
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