Tags: Ashley Vitha, Madison Square Park Conservancy, Moona Luna
We’ve officially kicked off our outdoor summer concerts, in a big way! The dream team at Pressler Collaborative scored The Fuzzy Lemons a sweet little gig in the heart of Manhattan. The annual Spring Kids Fest opens the curtain on the Madison Square Park Conservancy’s annual summer of fun, and the Fuzzy Lemons were thrilled and honored to be a part of the action!
Check out the Park Conservancy’s release here. Sounds great, right? And it was! It was a beautiful spring day and the park was swarming with wonderful people out enjoying the event. The line-up of talented performers also included Moona Luna and a whole batch of jugglers, stilt-walkers and the like, which made for a pretty eclectic crowd milling about the stage.
Longtime readers will no doubt recall that I’ve gone on at length about technical issues in the past. And this event did offer its share: Ashley, the awesome young woman in charge, informed us in a pre-event e-mail that they only had an 8-channel mixer available. Needless to say, band e-mails started flying. Should we bring Dave Entwistle? Should we bring our own mixing board and snake?
Instead, the Lemons took a very different approach, and I’m proud of the band for it: We decided to roll with it. I think it must have been Brandon, Maker of Set Lists, who suggested that we leave out the sax, mandolin, clarinet, keyboard and accordion, and just use the 8 inputs for our most basic line-up of guitars, drums, bass and vocals. That still left us with a great batch of songs and made life a LOT easier, from set-up to soundcheck to the set itself.
And guess what? It worked out great, and the band and the audience had a blast! Sure, we could have used more vocal monitor, and Kipley got a little hoarse towards the end, but on the upside we were done with soundcheck so early that we got a head-start on our set!
We even did some impromptu jamming during soundcheck; I started a little three-chord riff, and the rhythm section joined in, and soon Dana, Kipley and I were coming up with things to sing so we could test our mics. It was a hoot, and the audience had no clue that we were making the whole thing up as we went. (Well, maybe they suspected)
Speaking of the crowd, we had a good one! Kids and grown-ups were jumping, wiggling, dancing, and having a great time. We got some 50 new names on our e-mail list and sent some happy folks home with the CD.
The Park’s summer event series is booked solid for this year, but Ashley has no choice, she’s gotta book us for something now that the inescapable appeal of the Lemons has been made clear!
Photos courtesy of Ashley Vitha
The crowd grooves to TFL!
-- Weather When Posted --
- Temperature: 81°F;
- Humidity: 62%;
- Heat Index: 83°F;
- Wind Chill: 81°F;
- Pressure: 29.82 in.;