Parmalee-Kix Brooks

Last day of the fair!  It's always bittersweet because we say goodbye to friends but I'm definitely looking forward to sleeping in my own bed tomorrow night.  This fair has been the best one yet of the New York State Fair for me.  Everyone got along great and things went really smooth for the most part.  I really hope to be back next year!

Today we had a pretty easy day.  Both bands were here pretty much all day, arriving as early as 7A.  Fortunately, I didn't have to be here until 8:30A.  We hit the ground running with load in at 9A.  Parmalee was our 2PM show.  They're a newer band with a hit at #25 this week, Carolina.  They were a great band!  Extremely entertaining, they've got the look, have the sound.  Hopefully we'll get to book them in several places next year.  The worst part of the day was dealing with the bus shore power (they had plugged two buses into a power source that couldn't hold two, only one.  It ended up  blowing the breaker and they all had to go to shore power.)  Plus we were dealing with rain all afternoon.  The atmosphere was horribly unstable and my phone was blowing up with alerts all day.  We were under a thunderstorm warning for most of the afternoon.  The little cells ended up splitting and going north for the most part but about 4P a huge cell popped up.  It was packed with 60MPH winds, hard rains and lighting.  The extreme part did go north of us but didn't spare us from a little wind, tons of rain and some lighting.  We ended up having to tell the folks that were saving the front row seats for Kix's show that they HAD to leave the metal bleachers.  Amazing!  Unbelievably, there was a poor lady sitting in the ADA section in a wheelchair.  When we told her she needed to leave, she said that her party had left her there (in a thunderstorm!!) and she couldn't move.  I sent the Troopers out to rescue her.  Some people!

Parmalee

With the rain we got last night everything was a muddy mess this morning and got even worse with the afternoon storm.  The lead singer of Parmalee even tried to help the staff get the forklift out of a mudpit.

Kix Brooks is half of the duo Brooks and Dunn.  He's a really great guy and is currently pumping out a good show.  They've been here all day just hanging out waiting for their turn to load in and do a show.  Sounds like they're going to be out of here quick as well.  Yay!!  Because of the rain the crowd didn't build as well as we would've hoped.  They escaped during the storm but it doesn't seem that anyone wanted to take the chance of another storm.  However, all of those that are here are loving the show.

Kix Brooks and I

We celebrated one of the staff members birthday's today!  Happy Birthday, Jason! :)