Sam butted in before I finish my thought about a cool Celtic name.
“Gotta go, got the mayor on the other line. See you Thursday. And thanks Wiley, thanks a lot.”
I wasn’t kidding about the Irish part. They weren’t of Irish descent, their parents had emigrated when she was ten and he was seven, Moira still had a bit of a brogue when she was excited.
We thought it was cool when we saw the flyers saying the band Two Thirds Irish were going to open the festival.
Finally, it was time.
…………………….
There is always that quiver, than first rush of adrenalin when you take a stage. Jimmy and I were used to it, but it never gets old. Moira just barely remembered the feeling. She was glowing. I hoped it didn’t morph into nerves.
To be the very first act of the festival, there was a pretty good crowd, maybe four or five hundred people. The stage was set at the bottom of a hill, on a side street. It created a natural amphitheater. You had to furnish your own seating, but most knew this and had brought folding chairs.
We did the sound checks quickly and were ready to go. Sam introduced us.
“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the twentieth annual Crockett Music Festival.”
He gave a rundown of acts that would appear over the next three days. I was surprised to learn the headliner was Chance Blaze.
“Now, let me introduce our first band, playing together for the first time, Two Thirds Irish!”
We had talked it over, we were supposed to be a rock act, so we decided to let it rip. Jimmy started out with his drum solo, while Moria kept time by ‘chicken scratching’, stroking the strings while keeping them muted, and we launched into ‘let It Rock’.
It was plain the crowd wasn’t expecting this level of energy and skill. By the time we had finished they were paying attention.
We went straight into ‘Paranoid’, followed by ‘Pride and Joy’ and ‘Wild Thing’.
The crowd started to grow as more people arrived, and the cheers were starting to come.
We slowed up a bit and Moira sang ‘Perfect’, by a one hit wonder from the eighties, Fairground Attraction.
We stopped and let everyone catch their breath and work the crowd.
“Everybody doing all right?” I asked.
A few nods and some cheers. It was early, after all.
Moira wasn’t about to let them off that easy.
“Come on now. We’re all on vacation here. Loosen up, embarrass your kids, get loud.”
It was mostly a family crowd but she struck a nerve. The yells got louder.
“Still wanna rock?” she yelled.
The crowd was getting into it. More people were coming in, and they were there to see a show.
“We’re gonna do a song now that requires some assistance. I’ve got a couple of helpers lined up to give me a hand. Ya’ll ready?”
Jimmys’ two oldest, eleven year old Annie and nine year old Megan came onstage. Moira gave them both tambourines. I had put down my bass and had my SG ready to go. Moira put down her Squire and had a headset microphone on.
“Okay, when we get to the chorus I expect everyone to help out. Here we go.”
‘Walk Like An Egyptian’ was a fun piece of fluff from the Bangles, and most of the parents in the crowd were the right age to remember it. Moira worked it hard, doing the goofy hand movements to go with the song, accompanied by the girls. She was all over the place, the kids right behind. When she got to the ‘way-o, way-o’ she paused, waiting to hear from the crowd. More responded than I expected.
When it got to the part where they all whistled, I faked it on keyboard, extending it just a bit. The girls strutted back and forth with the hand movements again, and even a few of the audience joined in.
They cheered when she sidled up to a cop working crowd control and sang the part about the cops in the do-nut shop and stood on tip toe to kiss his cheek. I don’t know if he was more embarrassed than happy, but he had a grin a mile wide.
Jimmy was pounding away with an ‘I told you so’ look on his face.
The crowd was roaring at the end.
“Thank you, thanks so much. Give my assistants a hand.” Moira beamed as she and the girls took a bow.
It was the end of the set and we were due a fifteen minute break. I spent most of it retuning the instruments, outside venues, with varying heat and humidity, wreak havoc. Moira worked the crowd, beaming. For some reason the amount of attention she was getting from the men annoyed me. Jimmy grinned.
“I told you she could work a crowd. Look at her, she’s loving it.”
Usually crowds dwindle during breaks, there’s just too much going on at festivals. I was pleased to see the crowd hadn’t dispersed, actually, there seemed to be more than before. Moira whipped them right back up.
“You guys ready?”
Of course they were.
We started it off with ‘Shake Your Moneymaker’, the Foghat version. We could have used a bass, but my slide accompanied by Moira’s amazing guitar work had the crowd roaring. I sang lead on that one.
Not slowing down any we did ‘I Love Rock And Roll’ by Joan Jett, with Moira belting it out.
My Dad was a country music fan, and when I was ten or so he had a tape he played constantly in the car. A group called Molly and The Heymakers, who never made the big time despite being really talented. Their biggest hit was ‘High On The Mountain Of Love’, a remake of a Johnny Rivers song from the early sixties. I always loved it, and played it for Moira once. She insisted on learning it. We came up with an odd arrangement, Moira carrying the tune with her guitar while I did some counterpoint with my old Gibson lap steel guitar.
I had a machinist build a stand for it and could play it standing up. The rest of the set went by in a blur, and before I knew it we were done. There were calls for one more, and no one seemed to be moving. I looked at Sam and he gave the okay.
“All right, one more and we have to go. Anything special you guys want to hear?”
The ones who were there from the beginning started yelling for ‘Let it Rock’, so we finished with the song we started with.
I should say a word about how we were dressed. Jimmy and I had decided Moira was going to be the centerpiece for the group.
Aside from being drop dead beautiful she did most of the guitar work, so it made sense. Jimmy was tied to his drums and I did a lot of keyboard work so she was the only one free to move about.
Jimmy and I were wearing jeans, open white dress shirts with white ‘wifebeater’ tee shirts. I worked out and Jimmy kept in shape from his job and playing drums so we didn’t look too bad.
Moira had a black version of our tee shirts tucked into her tight jeans, with a black dress shirt over it. She also had black, high boots with a stiletto heel. She looked very, very, nice. Every male over the age of ten in the crowd thought so anyway.
I was too wound up to think about anything but the music. We wanted to leave them pumped, so we poured even more energy than before into it. I was to the far left and Moria was to the far right, allowing Jim the spotlight because it was his vocal. I was thinking about the Springsteen concerts where his saxophone player would slide across the stage and Bruce would raise him up for a kiss. It was a constant crowd pleaser.
I didn’t think, I just did. I took off across the stage while Moira was doing a solo and dropped to my knees. The plan was to stop just short, but the stage was a lot slicker than I thought.
Her eyes widened and I leaned back, trying to slow down. It worked, to a point. Instinctively she had raised one foot to try and stop me and I just slid right into it.
I was lying almost parallel to the floor with her foot on my chest. The crowd roared with approval
Then she surprised all of us by stepping up on my chest. She finished the solo standing on me, and to my credit I never missed a note. When the song ended she just hopped off and left me lying there. Damn, at least Springsteen kissed Clarence, all I got was bruises on my chest. Stiletto heels suck.