Road Trip
By Willie
For my fifth and probably final Red Elvises Show of 2003 I took a road trip to North
Baltimore, Ohio, the heart of Red Mania in northwestern Ohio. It was short five hour
drive and I got there minutes after the guys arrived to set up for the show. I went
straight to Ron and Linda’s and waited. Adam and Schramm were surprised to see me but
Oleg and Igor didn’t seem surprised at all because this was the sixth state in which I
had been to a show. We all went in and had a home cooked meal before the show, then it
was off to JR’s to see the warm up act.
JR’s is a long narrow space with stage just inside the front door. The bar is on a raised
level on the left as you enter and there are a couple of pool tables in the back. Thanks
to Jay, a friend of Ron’s, the sound system was better than average. Ron and Sean had set
up a remote recording studio and recorded the entire show. I had finally read the manual
to my new camcorder and taped the entire show on DV. The only problem I had was that the
lighting gave me some problems with the auto focus but it was still a lot of fun.
Ron and Linda had been promoting the show for a while and got a good turnout for a Monday
night in a small town. Everyone I talked to had a great time and hope they can come back again. Ron, who ran lights on the Spring Tour, was the soundman and did a very good job. We danced the night away and North Baltimore will never be the same.
After the show a select group of people congregated at Café Ron and partied on till the wee
hours. We started in The Red Room and finally ended up in the downstairs party room. Oleg
was showing pictures from his laptop from all over. Linda, Igor, and I spent about an hour
talking in the kitchen catching up on old times. Downstairs, Schramm found the broken piano
and pounded away on that for hours. This piano has a broken sounding board and a number of
notes are very out of tune. Schramm played old Blues, Boogie Woogie, and some Classical as
the night passed by. We finally called it a night about 5:00am and drifted off to find a
place to sleep.
The next morning (well really about noon) Ron made up a batch of Garbage Eggs and we all
moved off to what we had to do. For me it was a five hour drive back to Chicago, but it was
well worth it and I can’t wait for the next Road Trip.
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