Quite a bit of drumming this month so far. This past weekend I did two engagements; one for Art on the Square on the Gainesville, GA downtown square, and another at Gainesville’s Harvest of Hope celebration for 2005. Art on the Square is an art show held annually at this time of year for the past year or two. They’re trying to push out an older festival, Mule Camp Springs. The later is more craft-centric and can be compared to several other, much larger shows throughout the Appalachian area. Of course, they’re all painfully aware of the commodity of a show like that, so many are gearing themselves more towards fine arts instead of “arts & crafts.” The problem, of course, is that people spend money on crap. If you put a lot of higher-priced items out, it doesn’t necessarily mean you make more money. At any rate, I played the venue with my wife, who both helped out on drums and did some dance numbers. She had with her, Kathryn, who shimmied herself silly. I’m fairly unpredictable when playing alone and spontaneously. I keep the same beat, though I may change up the rhythm a bit from time-to-time.
The other gig was for cancer survivors’ benefit, though the extension to other hopeful avenues is not lost on me. The idea behind the project is to allow doctors and patients a day to get together without being in their patient or care-giver role. There are informational sessions going on to discuss possible alternative medicine options, as well as general “quality of living” discussions. As such, the drum circle was a good fit to the project. However, we could have been better positioned for maximized attendance. We were located right on the water at Lake Lanier. While very beautiful and serene, it was a sharp flight of stairs down to where we sat. Those in cancer-fighting treatments don’t necessarily feel like making any unnecessary movement, so we were certainly out of the question to them. Regardless of the attendance, we enjoyed the experience and made the best out of it. The kids loved us!
Next weekend Alchemy is doing the drum & dance routine for the Georgia Theater Conference at Brenau and on the square downtown. It’s being hosted by Brenau and the Gainesville Theater Alliance. That should be a hoot. A couple thousand kids coming to town to see Gainesville’s fine thespian venues and projects. None of them have inhibitions, so we’re pretty sure we can have a ripping drum circle with about 40 of them at a time. We’re doing one at lunch time on Friday on Brenau’s campus, and then again opening for the headliner act that evening on the square. We’re also playing their breaks until 11:00pm, at which time we’ll informally rock out the night to midnight, or until we’re ushered from the premises by uniformed militia. Good times.