Dooley meets the Von Trapps

Dudley's Rush had a gig yesterday afternoon at the local art festival. We considered it quite an honor to be invited and were thrilled to close the festival on the main stage.

Before the gig, though, there was church. Our choir usually sings a total of ten to fifteen minutes, give or take, through the service. Immediately after church, Dudley's Rush was rehearsing downstairs. That went from noon-ish to almost two. Then we loaded up the church bus and went down to the festival, unloaded, and waited for our turn to go on at three.

The weather was almost ideal--sunny and breezy, and they had a tent up to keep us all out of the sun. We had a nice crowd and sang almost non-stop for almost an hour and a half. We had a good mix of gospel and hillbilly; "Every Humble Knee Shall Bow" was offset by "Dooley" and "Old Joe Brown." We followed "Where the Soul of Man Never Dies" with "Boney Fingers." We were all pretty tired by that point, after having sung for the better part of six hours.

That's when we realized that the pubs had apparently been doing brisk business. Just before our last song, a guy in the crowd yelled out, "Hey! Sing Edelweiss!" We thought he was joking and had a nice chuckle. It was one of those 'but seriously' moments. We were wrong--he really wanted us to sing Edelweiss.

I'm sure it goes without saying that while it's a lovely song, there is no Bluegrass anywhere near it. "The Sound Of Music" wasn't even filmed in Southern Austria! Our intrepid leader loves a challenge, though. She played a few chords on her guitar, sang a couple of bars away from the microphone, made an adjustment, and said, "Capo five--key of C!"

*L* So our Bluegrass band sang Edelweiss--twice, and the audience sang along. We launched right into our last song, and he kept shouting requests as we left the stage. We escaped before he yelled out, "Freebird!"

It was coming, I'm sure!