This past Saturday we were in Fergus, ON, for their 175th Annual Fall Fair. 175 years! That’s a long time. The weather was pretty good. The skies were clear and the sun was out, but it definitely had the crisp feel of a fall day. The whole event was pretty interesting. They had the Golden Helmets there, unfortunately we missed them. They had already finished their demonstration by the time we arrived to set-up. For those of you who don’t know who the Golden Helmets are they the OPP’s precision motorcycle team. Think the Snow Birds or the Blue Angels on motorcycles. OK, maybe not as cool as fighter jets but they are still pretty impressive. They also had an OPP helicopter and the Lumberjack Company was doing a demo competition. Hats of to the guys who hustle up those poles while carrying chain saws. The big event was in the evening, a truck and tractor pull. Pretty incongruous steel pan music and tractor pulls, but music is for everyone, right? I have to give credit to the audience they really enjoyed us and we had a good time. Plus the event was pretty easy work wise. They already had a tent and a stage set-up and we could pull our truck right up to the stage, so unloading was a breeze.

Well this past Saturday was our last full performance of the summer. While I am sad to see it go I am also happy that we will get back to learning new songs and hopefully doing some school workshops and community clinics. That’s the great thing about it just when you are ready for a change of pace, voila! The performance went well. It was at the Parry Sound Airport’s 8th Annual Fall Fly-In. It’s kind of fitting, we started the year at the Parry Sound Dragon Boat Festival and we ended it back in Parry Sound. Little history fact for you, our very first public performance was in Parry Sound way back in 2001. There was this cray little plan that runs on two 15 hp motors. Can you believe it? They also had a Fokker triplane (maybe better described by saying, The Red Baron’s plane) and a Sopwith biplane. Also some guy flew in with a pretty cool stunt biplane. I heard that they had 3,000 people through out the day. The runway was super busy. I sure am glad I wasn’t the guy on the ground directing all the air traffic.

We are just eating dinner as we wait to start our performance for the Hospice Muskoka “Summer Sizzler” Charity Benefit at the J.W. Marriot Rosseau Resort & Spa. Boy, that’s a mouthful! This is the second year we have participated and it’s great. It’s a beautiful setting here at The Rosseau. We are set up on the Lakeview Lawn. The name says it all. It is right behind the main building up on a bluff that overlooks Lake Rosseau. The weather is perfect! It’s nice and warm but not to humid. Maybe next time I’m here it will be as a guest so I can just kick back and chill.

I’m sitting here at my computer more than a little disappointed. Tonight’s concert for the Festival of the Arts in Huntsville has been canceled. Normally we would already be setting up, but not this evening. Something about a tornado watch. It seems hard to believe as I am looking out my window and the weather is actually starting to clear but that too is part of the forecast, the calm before the storm, I guess. It makes since. We really can’t risk being caught out in the kind of storm that is predicted, besides who would come? A lot of us really like this performance it is such a nice setting. The park at the town docks makes for a perfect little open air amphitheater and the audience is just great. Oh well, it is not to be this year. Here are a few pictures from last year.

Last weekend we had one of the best weekends ever! The Dwight & Kearney performances are perennial favorites for us but this year beat all the other years we have done. What’s not to love about perfect weather, a long weekend, awesome music and fireworks?!?! This year we tried something a little bit different. We started our performance at the normal times, around 6 PM. (There is something really nice about not having to wake up at 4 AM in order to set-up for a performance, maybe someday we will have roadies.) We did the normal sets and then when it was nice and dark we decided we were a little tired of the regular lights we use and BOOM! off went the lights and on with the black lights. That’s right, if you weren’t there you really missed out! We had new shirts that have fluorescent design on them and everything white was GLOWING! It was AWESOME! Talk about a pumped up crowd and when the audience is like that I can’t explain what it feels like to be one of the people giving that to them. Let’s just say if you think you are having fun watching/listening/dancing to our music you have no idea. We have 10 times more fun doing it!

In Dwight there are usually lots of people by the last set and when you look out over the water there are tons of lights from boats. I have had people tell me that the music sounds amazing when you are out on the water because of the way the sound carries. In Kearney I was playing along having a good time and I could see that we had quite a few people inside and around the tent but I had no idea how many people were actually there until afterwards when I was watching the fireworks and they lit up the sky. You could see that there were hundreds of people sitting and standing on the side of the hill just below where we were performing. I was blown away by how many people showed up.