On Thursday
morning we again tried unsuccessfully to connect with Mr. King by
phone. We still had his Jazz Fest parking and admission passes that
he would need later that day if he was going to gain easy entrance
to the fest. Robert tried to make things easy by dropping them off
at a friend's house we knew Earl would include in his entourage. The
band members all arrived backstage and we began greeting the many
Earl King fans who began
stopping
by: No, we hadn't seen him yet. No, we didn't have any extra back
stage passes. No, we didn't know when he would get there but yes,
we'll tell him you stopped... A few minutes before we were to begin
setting up onstage Dr. Bob received a call on his cel phone letting
us know Earl King would not make the gig. We were told Earl was in
need of medical attention and that an ambulance would soon arrive.
I quickly let the stage manager, the head of festival productions
and representatives of WWOZ- the radio station that had contracted
with
us to pay to broadcast the show live- that Earl would be a no show.
'OZ chose not to broadcast us without Earl but everybody else told
us to get on out, play our show and
wished us well. Although the band was very concerned about the state
of Earl's health the show had to go on. We had a few charts with us
that we had planned to use to open the show but otherwise the band
was quite unprepared to play the entire one hour show by ourselves.
We didn't wish to disappoint anybody about whether Earl would make
it to the show so we announced frequently from the stage that Earl
was probably not going to make his scheduled performance but, strangely
enough, very few people left the tent. As we neared the end of the
set I took a vote from the audience on whether they would like to
hear us play some Earl King songs without Earl. The vote was nearly
unanimous: "let the good times roll!" We quickly turned
John Lindberg loose on "Trick Bag" and followed up with
"I'll Take You Back Home
(a song Earl has dropped from his list but we've kept in ours) and
"It All Went Down The Drain." The crowd was with us and
I kept spitting out tunes, oblivious to my surroundings. As we started
our last song of the Fest I finally turned around and saw that Dan
was dangerously overheated. It might have been 90 outside in the sun
but inside the tent, without much air
circulation, it was well over 100 degrees, the air was stale and not
moving and it was very humid. Dan was as red as a man should be from
the waist up and we were just starting "The World Is A Ghetto,"
a very physical song for him. Thankfully we finished the set without
killing Dan and when we ended the set we were rewarded with a standing
ovation. I was surprised and gratified by the audience's response
to our efforts and I know the band was pleased as well. We had kept,
and entertained, a full house in the Blues Tent. As I wandered around
the festival grounds in later days many very nice people approached
me and praised our show. Positive remarks have continued to come in
from unusual sources; last week Craig Kent, our friend/Tortilla Flats
Jug band member/cab driver, picked up a fare and was conversing during
the ride when he found out the fellow had been to Jazz Fest. Craig
asked the usual questions concerning who he saw and liked and the
man told him he had seen the Butanes and they put on his favorite
performance of the fest! Craig replied he knew us well and of course
the fare was impressed to have found the most intelligent and musically
aware cabbie in all of Minneapolis. It is a small world!
