Rockin' the Raintree (or Something)

  This past weekend my band played a little show at the Raintree apartment complex. It was the first time I'd played with a band in front of people since my high school days. We set up right on the grass in the middle of the buildings and under some trees. Luckily, it was a really nice day; warm enough, no chance of rain, still light enough outside, etc. We told people that we were going to start playing at 5 p.m., but we kinda got a late start setting up, so we didn't really get started until after 5:30. It was just as well, though, as we only had our singer's family and my roommate there right at 5. By the time we were ready to play we had a decent sized crowd gathered. I'd say at least thirty people. 

   Right before we started, I started to get a little jittery. It had been a while since I'd played in front of people and I forgot what it felt like. The first song we played was Starlight by Muse. I was on the piano. The drums and bass started it off. Then I came in with the awesome piano riff. The crowd all recognized the song and cheered. Our little show was off to a good start. 

   I won't say it went perfectly. Far from it actually. I made my share of fairly noticeable mistakes and we also had a little bit of interference from Mother Nature (a bee started attacking our singer during one song). The high points of the show were Good by Better Than Ezra, Yellow by Coldplay (I played the lead guitar on that one), and a song our singer Brett wrote called Mr. Lightning. When we'd played all the songs we'd planned on our fans still demanded more. So, we pulled out our old high school prom theme song we wrote so many years ago and tried to shake the dust off of it as we played it for our encore. I was surprised how well I remembered the guitar solo. The former Timpanogos High School students who were there especially enjoyed that one. 

   I had a lot of fun, and we had a lot of girls come up and talk to us afterwards. So, I think we accomplished the purpose of our show: have fun and impress the chicks. I'm kinda hoping we do it again soon.