Beale Street Festival in Memphis was thunderous and wet. The storm came on us in gusts, one of which hit the festival with a downpour so strong that it took out the power to the entire festival and a few of the surrounding city blocks, bringing a sudden halt to the loud and confused noise coming jumbling from the stages. It was pretty beautiful actually.

In not too long the festival crew had gotten the sound system back up and running, though the rain persisted. Our set began relatively on time, but after only our fifth or sixth song all the instruments equipment were getting far too wet and both my fiddle and Chris' mandolin pre-amp had shorted out completely, rendering our little instruments mute to virtually everyone except us on stage.

Sean, Chris and I jumped down off the stage (which, while en-route from it's edge to the muddy ground, I found to be deceptively taller than I'd estimated in that split second before hopping off - but the ground was very squishy, so it all worked out ). ...we had intended on playing acoustically in the crowd if for only the handful of people close enough to hear. But then Chief, our new guitar tech, came down with Chris' vocal mic and held it in the rain for us to sing and play into so that the rest of the crowd could hear.

Eventually, our new road manager, Eric took Chief's place so that Chief could help pack up all our stage gear. Eric said that during the 2 songs for which he was risking his life, he could feel the electricity all through his body.

It probably was not the brightest moment in any of our careers but everything did end up just fine and, so far as I know, all are without electrical burns or other injury. Special thanks to the guy who lent my fiddle his poncho.

From Memphis, we booked it on to Merlefest where we got to spend two days off.

I don't know when was the last time I attended a festival I was not hired to play. We had originally planned to spend our off days in Nashville, but then realized that all of our friends in town would be playing out of town at Merlefest so why shouldn't we spend our days off there instead? Everyone in-charge of the festival was very nice and accommodating so thanks very much to them for letting us crash their party.

I had so much fun. And though I would have loved to have played more, with all my free time I was able to hear lots of music and had a grand old time running around from stage to stage with no obligations to be anywhere at any certain time.