Acoustic Alternative & Orchestral Metal Share The Stage: Happenstances – From The Mind of McFarland music blog.
You never know what’s going to happen out on the road. You plan the entire tour meticulously, doing your best to account for every possible contingency, but sometimes life intervenes and takes you down an unexpected path, which is what happened a few days ago in El Paso, Texas. What I had expected to be a standard coffee shop show turned into an entirely unanticipated juxtaposition of my acoustic alternative music with orchestral metal… and we were able to share the stage with no conflict or backlash!
As a quick note, I’m leaving the name of the venue out of this story – the people that I dealt with were (at least for the most part) not at fault for what happened, and I don’t wish to cast aspersions on a venue that was wonderful enough to book me in the first place. If you really want to find out where this happened, the sleuthly among you can likely track down the Facebook event related to this.
Anyway, I’d had my El Paso show on the books for three months, had received confirmation, sent out my posters, and had every reason to believe that things were on track. I arrived in town around noon, grabbed some lunch and found a coffeeshop outside of downtown (easier parking) to get some work done. I was about to do a few promotional posts on Facebook regarding the show, when I noticed there were two official events listed for that evening: “Folk show”, which I assume referred to me, since many people see a solo artist on an acoustic tour and assume there’s folk music involved, and another show, listed at the exact same time.
Featuring 7 metal bands.
I immediately knew something wasn’t right, so I packed up and got to the venue right away. I quickly discovered that the person who had originally booked me at the venue had quit a month prior, and had promised to contact all the acts he had booked to let them know the show was cancelled. He had failed to do so.
I ended up hanging around outside while waiting to hear from the owner on how the situation was going to be handled, chatting with an amazing group of guys in an orchestral metal band called Bow Prometheus, who were on tour themselves from Dallas. After a few minutes of chatting, and me sharing my sad story, either their guitarist Steven or their bassist Jeremy (memory fails), said, “I don’t care. As far as we’re concerned, you’re playing the show.”
Thus acoustic alternative and orchestral metal got to share the stage in one of the odder happenstances I’ve encountered on tour thus far. And you know what?
It was awesome.
I got to play in from of one of the most energetic crowds I’ve seen in a long time. The audience got an unexpected change of pace, which much to my surprise was accepted wholeheartedly. At the end of my set, Rusty Wayne, lead singer of Bow Prometheus, came up to me and said, “You melted a lot of metalheads hearts tonight.”
Maybe I should book more shows with metal bands!
-MMcF
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Unleaded rhythmic alt-pop fuels singer/songwriter and two-wheel troubadour Michael McFarland’s engine. Michael McFarland in the simplest summary? Writer, Rocker, Biker, Geek.
For Michael’s Music, Cd’s, Downloads, Merchandise, live show schedule, music blogs, music videos, and everything else you want to know about McFarland, visit the Michael McFarland Website at http://michaelmcfmusic.com/
