Getting paid to spend a Sunday afternoon playing with my band right on the edge of the Hudson River in Poughkeepsie for an estimated crowd of about 1,200 sounds like a fantastic way to spend a day, doesn't it? Sunshine, the river, a large audience, music - how could that miss? I'll tell you how: rain. Lots and lots and lots of rain. And thunder. And lightning.
Sure the day started out beautiful. We got there, enjoyed some rudeness from the event organizer over how many cars we had brought, set up, and sound checked. Everything sounded good, the sun was out, I had rocked the sunblock so as to not burn from the sun bouncing off the water, and we were ready to go. In fact, we actually got going. We played about 11 songs before it started to rain. And it wasn't coming down hard at first, but to protect our equipment we had to unplug the electric (to the distress of the event organizer who didn't understand why we couldn't have the PA on playing music). But then we looked at the radar. Bad news bears.
It's hard to put into words just how much rain came down and how wet our equipment got. Luckily, I don't have to so much because I took some video:
As you can see, damn. And that rain went on for like 45 minutes at least. It's worth noting that the tents you saw over us are more for shade than for protecting the equipment from that kind of weather. You may have also noticed a couple non band members standing under the tents with us. Those were either event volunteers or attendees helping us hold the tents down to keep them from flying away. Yes, there was that much wind. At one point we almost had one tent fly away and that would've been game over for some of our equipment. By the end of the storm, I was so wet it was like I had jumped into the river itself.
But we got through it, and everything seems to be in proper working order. I shall never forget you, worst gig ever. May we never meet again.
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