Medieval Nights

This party was a wedding reception for Jami and Kelly. It was at the Hotel Intercontinental. The rooms look amazing. They have a medieval theme going on. I love that era. I sometimes have this fantasy of being a knight rescuing a maiden trapped in a high tower with a dragon that I have to fight. Um... Back to the gig.

Tobey assisted me on this gig. Actually, she practically lead it. I don't think I've ever had an assistant do as much as Tobey did. She handled most of the details during the evening, coordinated with the wedding planner (Renny Pederson), dj'd, etc. There were times when I wasn't sure what to do with myself. I normally do all the things that Tobey was doing. What I noticed was how nervous I am at my gigs. I think I take on a lot of responsibilities at my gigs because I don't want to feel the fear. Or maybe it's because it gives me a good place to channel the fear.

The crowd loved to drink. At one point during dancing we played a drinking song set. They swayed back and forth with a bear in one hand raised up high while singing along to such favorites as “Friends in Low Places,” “Sweet Caroline,” “Piano Man,” and “Ring of Fire.”

We had a pretty good dance floor most of the night. We played everything from hip-hop to classic rock to jazz. One problem was that we weren’t in the sound. What I mean by this is that we weren’t in a good position to hear the music; we weren’t in a place where we would hear what the crowd would hear. Although the party was a success, I feel like it would have been more satisfying for me had I fought for a different location. I can relate it like this, it’s like watching television from a different room. It’s like reading over someone else’s shoulder. It’s like being in a movie theater and sitting in the first row all the way over to the side and having to crank your neck to see the movie, but you don’t really see it because the whole time you’re thinking about how two-dimensional the movie seems and it totally ruins the suspension of disbelief. It’s like watching the same movie but the location in the theater doesn’t matter and someone’s phone goes off. It’s like watching a play and an actor can’t remember his/her next line and there ends up being this really long silence until someone off stage whispers a line to the actor just loud enough for everyone in the theater to hear. Yeah. It’s kind of like that.

--Jonathan Hood