loving the pictures, thanks joe. cowbell is a very serious thing. no but seriously i was smiling most of the time i thought. i was pretty giddy.
it's always been something i've wanted to do, join caedmons on stage, ever since i heard that they would pull random people on stage way back in the early years to play a song with them (usually when they would close a show with Hope to Carry on).
for the past few years i've mentioned it to cliff now and again, but nothing ever came of it. usually when i'm at a show, so is CC's first fan ever, i think he lives in DC. so he has been on stage with a tambourine for the closing number a few times.
this time i knew it would be my best chance at it so i was obnoxious, but made it happen.
i met Cliff and Garett at Applebees in lancaster a few hours before the show and got to chat it up a bit over a yuengling. cliff was having fun playing with his new macbook most of the time between convos about don miller, being independent, and how the wings were too hot for me. Garett and i got a chance to talk about his new CD he is working on, which i plan on pimping for him here when i get more info. I said something to them at that point about joingin them on stage and they said "sure" btu i knew there was work to be done.
I took them to the park for the show, and we hung out backstage for an hour or so. my brother jordan was with us and he enjoyed the experience i think. funny convos on the way there about the amish and rumspringa and such. the line was crossed and re-crossed many times.
backstage i again brought up joining them and cliff said it would be cool. but i knew he would forget to call me up. they soundchecked before the show and i was up there with them. Garett said i could play tambourine or cowbell, and i had to go cowbell. as andy said later, Will Ferrel has made that decision a no-brainer. as the show started i went back into the crowd to join erica, my brother, sister, and bro-in-law.
the set list had the last 2 songs as H2CO and HotP, so i knew when i should make my move. i could wait for CLiff to call me up, but the chances were less than 50/50. so as H2CO started i walked around to the backstage gate. i had talked to the girl back there in advance to make sure i could get in, but the gate was unguarded so i walked right in and right up onto the back of the stage.
i grabbed my cowbell, hiding behind the drum kit, and waited for the first choruse of HotP to kick in and the appeared behind Andy's amps on the left side of the stage. Josh looked over and saw me at one point and was laughing. Then near the end of the song Andy turned around and saw me playing my cowbell with reckless ferocity and was laughing pretty hard. when andy went to jump on the drums, i walked out around the amps and was more in the middle of the stage. the song ended with lots of banging as it alwasy does and that was that. lots of fun.
afterwards cliff apologized for not calling me up saying how frustrated he was with the sound all night. of course i had not expected him to remember, so i was all good. it was late and the band had to get up early, so even though Josh thought everyone was coming to hang at my place (which would have been cool of course), i was ok with going home to bed. it was lots of fun.
basically what it came down to was that i had a fever, and there was only one prescription that was going to make me whole. and you know what? it did.
bryan
