Archived Edition of Chromatic Musings

JoS @ Lord Culpeper

Tonight, the three of us headed out to Culpeper VA for a last minute show from James Turner (our booking agent). Culpeper is out there. Like an hour and forty minute drive one way kind of out there.

This was the first time I had ever set foot in Culpeper. It reminds me quite a bit of my hometown, and I don't mean that as a compliment. If you ever want to watch the mating habits of the moden day redneck, this would be a good place to start.

The venue itself was in the basement of a restaurant/hotel/bed & breakfast. Seven foot ceilings, with a rather out of place nautical theme as the decor. While we set up, there was probably a half a dozen people hanging out. Unforunately, that was going to be our crowd for the first set.

The management also asked us to turn down. When I say turn down, you really need to understand what I mean here. We were down so low that I could clearly hear the conversation of the group of people at the other end of the bar over our playing.

As the night wore on, more people came in and the energy (and volume) picked up. For some reason, the bar didn't seem to like this, though. As people would get up and dance for a bit, one of the bouncers would come over and talk to them and they would go sit back down. I have no idea what he said to them, but it happened pretty consistently. Maybe this is another place that doesn't allow dancing. I had always thought that Footloose was just a fictional movie from the 80's. Silly me.

Towards the end of the night, we reran a few songs at the request of the audience. Normally, I hate to do that, but tonight we made the exception because we needed to fill some music as well as get any kind of reaction from the crowd. One of the tunes that we repeated was Sweet Home Alabama (which has to be one of my more hated songs -- only three more times do I have to play it!). As we were playing it, a group came into the bar. They apparently share my distate; they wrote us a note saying

We have been all over this town trying to get away from this song, and we came into here and you're playing it. So we have to head on out now.

Believe me, I share the sentiment.

Posted by Casper at May 15, 2004 03:45 AM