Grantblings

S&US Tour Diary – April 6, 2013 – Hamilton, Montana

(Again, these are just sort of barfed out. No spelling to grammar checks at all.)

April 6, 2013

Our housing in Hamilton, Montana was pretty amazing. A set of three cabins up in the hills above Hamilton. Rustic log cabins but really, really fancy. Each room had a private bath and the upstairs room that Peggy took was like a mini apartment with a sitting room and a kitchen.

I woke up around one and worked out then had some breakfast. They had provided us with a fully stocked kitchen and some great fruit which I devoured. Because we’d arrived so early in the morning, shortly after waking up it was time for us to caravan to the theatre.

Hamilton, Montana is a small town. The 2010 census puts the population at around 4,300. Our performance venue? The Hamilton High School Auditorium. It was a great, modern facility though. No green room or dressing rooms but the band room and choral room provided both. Our bathrooms were in the gym locker room. Sounds weird but it was really great. The people who hosted us really took care of us right.

The show was a bunch of fun. We were a little nervous as on the ride to the venue our host told us how they’ve had shows were people walk out because the president’s name had been mentioned. Another act had a large number of walk outs because they’d done a song about greed. Hamilton is conservative. But the crowd was really into the show and we had a great time. Even got a partial standing ovation.

Remember yesterday when I wrote that the Alien Barbershop makes my brain melt sometime. Tonight it did times 1,000,000.

If Patrick has a few good suggestions he’ll usually have the audience vote on which one we should do. When he asked for a topic he got three: Gay Marriage, Ballet and Moonshine. Instead of having the audience vote he said, “Great! We’ll do all three!” Meaning he had now just obligated me to do all three topics in one song. All three topics in one, four line song. Plus I had to do the bunnies in the bit before.

Here’s what I came up with…

We’ll do fifth position
On our honeymoon,
Me and Fred
Drunk on shine of moon.

It was a hit. I felt a little cheap with that rhyme but it was the best I could come up with in that short amount of time.

Other great structures were a Film Noir set in Darby, Montana (Hamilton’s rival city). So lucky our host had told us about Darby on the ride to the venue. Also did a fun Lucha Libre scene where my name was El Burrito and Ted’s name was Mild Salsa.

After the show we retired back to our cabins, grateful to not have to travel immediately after the show was wrapped. We hung out in Patrick’s cabin which was the fanciest of all of them. Tyler built a fire and we all socialized for a bit.

After not too long I headed back to my cabin to write a bit and then get to bed, I was wiped out. I was very grateful for the cabin being out in the middle of nowhere. It made it pitch black in my room and I was out. Was just a little bummed the sky was overcast as I’m sure the viewing of the nighttime sky is pretty amazing where we were.