Tags: Anne Jacobs, Leslie Kaplan, Lisa Orinn, Scott Altizio, tom sweeney
This is the first of several entries about the Arts & Music festival. I was on the stage the entire day, but no one wants to wade through that much text so I’ll break it up into three postings.
The day dawned grey and wet. The entire weekend had been pretty much a wash, but remained positive that the skies would clear in time for Sunday’s event. Even as we rehearsed at Lisa’s on Friday, listening to the rain, I assured everyone that Sunday would be great. After all, (a) the weather was ALWAYS wonderful for the Arts & Music Festival, and (b) I was the MC for the 3rd Street Children’s Stage, and so things just HAD to be good.
It was positively pouring when Lisa picked me up Sunday morning at 10:45. I said some unsavory things under my breath as I loaded her car. It took me three trips, not because I had a lot of swearing to do but because I had three back-to-back gigs and needed to bring the proper gear for each one: acoustic guitar and banjo for Music Together, banjo and mandolin for Erin Lee & Marci, and mandolin and electric guitar for The Fuzzy Lemons. Of course each gig required its own assortment of tuners, pedals, stands and related accessories. Plus I had to bring the CDs for our merchandise table, and remember to print out parking permits at the last second…
Did I mention it was pouring?
We arrived at the 3rd Street site and saw a positive sign: Scott Altizio and Tom Sweeney were hard at work, setting up gear. They’d procured two tents, similar to the ones the artists themselves were using to line Washington street, and they’d set one up on the stage and the other over the mixer. The rain slowed to a drizzle, and we were eventually able to power up the P.A. and even do a soundcheck. Anne and Leslie showed up, as did my sister from CT. They headed across the street to Panera, along with my wife and child, to keep dry while I hung out with the sound crew and waited for the rain to stop. Fortunately the hardware store across the street was open and I was able to buy a big floor-squeegee, a powerful tool for pushing standing water off of the stage.
The rain never really stopped entirely during the Music Together sets, but there were some intrepid Hoboken families present (two or three, anyway) and they seemed to enjoy themselves. One family of British origin even braved the inflatable slide, which at this point was a giant waterslide. It takes a lot more than drizzle to keep the Brits indoors.
I just want to take this opportunity to say that Anne and Leslie are extremely talented and a lot of fun to perform with. They both have a lot of stage presence and an amazing ability to harmonize. We wound up doing both of our sets in full, 12 songs each and no repeats except the Hello and Goodbye songs.
As MC, I was supposed to be keeping track of the time (in fact Scott had asked me to bring a clock so he wouldn’t have to) but I gotta tell you, there were at least three conflicting versions of the schedule floating around out there, and since I was either a member or guest of every band that was performing that day, I decided just to let things roll. So Music Together started late and ended late, but no big deal, as Erin Lee and Marci were up next… [continued]
-- Weather When Posted --
- Temperature: 52°F;
- Humidity: 56%;
- Heat Index: 52°F;
- Wind Chill: 51°F;
- Pressure: 29.82 in.;