Stranger in My House-Every Storm

What a day!  We had four different 'events' on the stage today and it made for a long one.  We were here by 7:30A for Gary Allan's load in.  Shortly after dumping his gear the stage turned in to a Catholic church.  Mass was held and then Gary's load in continued.  Then Ronnie Milsap's gear was loaded in.  Ronnie had to change travel arrangements late last night so they weren't going to arrive until shortly before the show.  It might have been a record turn around.  They left home at 6AM, got to Syracuse did a show, were back at the airport by 4:30PM and then home.  Ronnie is such a sweety.  He was just singing everyone's praises on stage before he went on.  You can tell his crew is great because they really take care of him.  The show was really good and they had a decent crowd.  With all the hits his has it was sure to be a show full of legendary hits. 

We had started load in for Gary Allan at 8AM but after Ronnie's show they had to continue building Gary's stage and linecheck.  They were able to do that before 5PM when we had a different kind of entertainment.  Hofmann hotdogs, a Syracuse based sausage company, sponsored to bring Kobi, the record holding champion of hot dog eating.  He was to attempt to break the record of number of hotdogs eaten in 10mins.  Disgusting.  I think the best part was figuring out how he does it.  While I didn't have a pleasant experience with the CEO of the company it turned out to be entertaining for about 5,000 people in the crowd.  For some reason people think that if they're "someone" they can get in people's faces and scream and stomp their feet and get what they want.  Fortunately, when this happened I had three guys come stand behind me (literally) when they saw the guy getting in my face.  Kill 'em with kindness people.  I decided it was best that I just stay backstage for the most part after that.  If they needed something done they needed to find someone else to do it.  But the guy did it.  He ate 110 hotdogs in 10 mins.  Again, disgusting!   He would take two of them, break them in half and swallow them.  I've never seen anything like it.  He drinks three gallons of water before and we believe throws that up.  It stretches out his stomach and leaves room for the hotdogs.  He eats the hotdogs and well then, throws those up.  Puke!

 

 



Finally, after this marathon of a day we got Gary Allan finished on stage and ready to put on a show!  I've loved Gary's music for years and for the first half of the show every song was a hit.  His new stuff is REALLY good!  Hopefully the new single is going to sky rocket.  He finally has the support behind him with the label.  The show was really good.  His crew was great for working through all the stuff they had to deal with on the stage.  He is a really great guy.  His band is extremely talented.  His road manager is a great friend of the company so I hardly got anything done with him floating around and visiting, but it was a nice break.  I actually took a few minutes to sit on the side stage to watch the show. 

Crowd building for Gary Allan

 

Had to get the shot of the musician in a kilt

Now that I have this written and the crew is finally packed and ready to leave (midnight) I'm ready to end this 17 hour day and head home. Finally get to sleep in a little and run in the morning. Happy camper right here! :)