B.B. King

After finishing the Jack Johnson load-out at 12:30 am this morning, I got into my car (I had luckily packed up my tent and everything earlier) and set out on the 2 ½ hour drive to the Maryhill Winery where I arrived at 3:45 am, laid down in the back of my car for about an hour and slept so that I could get up and be there for my 5:00 am call to start getting ready for the B.B. King show. If it wasn’t for the fact that I could come home and sleep all day the day after, this would not have been a smart thing to do, but I did manage to work all day on one hour’s sleep after having worked a concert the day before.
Luckily, the equipment arrived in waves and we did have a decent amount of downtime in between unloading trucks, so it was all do-able. Again, hammocks were hung up underneath the stage and a lot of naps were taken.
B.B. King took the stage at 7 pm, or at least his band did, he came on and strapped on Lucille at 7:15. I was on show-call so I didn’t get a chance to experience the show from in the audience, but I got to see a B.B. King show nonetheless (kinda from the side, backstage)I love this job, in one week I got paid to see two of Britain’s most important Heavy Metal bands, and a legendary Blues guitarist, you really can’t beat that (well, you can if you throw in meeting the artists, but that very rarely happens, and has yet to happen to me). Surprisingly, the Winery only sold about 2000 of the available 4000 tickets to the show, but the empty seats didn’t seem to bother B.B. at all, he played and talked and laughed with the crowd and for an almost 80 year old diabetic, put on one hell of a show.