Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Last Night at Father Hennepin

Father Hennepin Bluff is a strip of park land nestled between Main St. and the Mississippi River, on a bluff on the east bank of the river just north of the Stone Arch Bridge. There's a great view of downtown Minneapolis just across the river, and the park board started having live music there in the last year or two. Last night was my first time playing there--I was booked for a show in August of last year, but as everybody knows now the 35W bridge collapsed on August 1 of 2007 and the site was being used to coordinate recovery efforts so that show was cancelled.

So I was looking forward to finally playing there. It's a new venue for the parks, so it hasn't established a regular clientele of music fans yet, the way Lake Harriet Bandshell has. Still, a few people equipped with lawn chairs gathered before the show, so that was a good sign that people were beginning to expect something happening there.

Dennis had a recording session with one of his other bands, so it was just Bruce Thompson and I for this one. I hadn't done a show alone with Bruce before, and it was good. We missed Denny's horn on some songs, and there were a couple of songs we didn't even bother playing because they feature Dennis. But it went well I think. We had a small but attentive crowd, which I always prefer to a large inattentive crowd.

And man, were we lucky with the weather! Earlier in the day Jessica Berg (who books the venue) contacted me about the possibility of canceling due to the chance of storms. But by show time the sky was blue and clear. About 45 minutes in I noticed a wall of black clouds approaching from behind. We kept playing right up until the black clouds were right overhead, and announced we could do one more. My buddy Kirby Binder (thanks for coming Kirby!) yelled out "Move To Mexico". So we did that song and got out! When I got home everything was wet--apparently there was quite a drenching that managed to miss us at the park.

Next show: The Acadia Cafe July 17.

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