Silvertone Files: A day in Denver

After a long drive from Flagstaff yesterday, I safely made it to Denver, Colorado. I arrived at my cousin's house just before midnight - and was very happy to get off the road and into a warm bed. The drive was actually quite nice. The scenery is amazing throughout the whole drive - from the San Francisco Peaks that look over Flagstaff, to the Painted Desert and where old Route 66 still winds through, to the red earth of New Mexico. I was in Santa Fe as the sun was setting and it lit up the pine trees and the mountains that had bits of snow here and there beautifully.
As night fell I cruised carefully up the road into Colorado - keeping my eyes open for highway patrol along the way. Overall it was a nice easy ride - a bit long though. I found that after 12 hours everything starts to go downhill a bit - usually the perfect time for a break. So I was glad to get to my destination right before that point.
This morning I was up early, since my cousin has 3 kids and also since I was going to be joining him with a group of people for the St. Patrick's Day parade through downtown Denver. We were going to be playing Irish tunes in the back of a decorated truck through the crowds of people along the parade route. Since I'm no stranger to Irish songs I felt fairly confident about playing along with everybody - 3 guitars, including me, a mandolin, and a fiddle. My biggest concern was that I didn't have enough green on, I felt, to be in a St. Patrick's Day parade (which I know was being held on March 12th and not the 17th, but I figured it was so everyone could celebrate on a weekend) but I was able to find some green garland to wrap around my guitar strap and that worked for me.
There were two trucks for us in the parade - for the section of the neighborhood and garden that my cousin lived in. When we made it down to the staging area the trucks were decked out and covered with flowers, ladybugs, garland and banners that wrapped around the trucks - some garden equipment was attached to the front of one of the trucks, and they were to be followed by some people pushing wheelbarrows. Down there we were surrounded by the craziness of the parade. It's truly hard to describe all of it, but I liked the float of St. Bernards, the Star Wars with the Hoth set-up, the giant Jameson bottle (where I think they were giving out small bottles or shots of the Irish Whiskey). We were followed by a group of kids on unicycles.
After about 2 hours of waiting we were able to go - and it was so much fun. We had 4 songs worked out and we played those over and over as we cruised down the streets, surrounded by crowds of people - mostly dressed in green. It was fun to see everyone celebrating and enjoying the music we were playing - although the others did most of the work - I just followed along as best as I could. I was glad that I had made to town in time to take part in all this craziness. By the time we reached the end it had gotten cold - the sun had peaked out a few times and made things warm, but then the clouds blew in and it got chilly. I was glad to get back to the house and inside finally.
After resting and dinner, I made my way to the gig at KJ's coffeehouse and wine bar right around the corner from the house. I had played there twice before as was glad that we were doing it again. It's not too big of a spot, so we set up as best as we could out of the way, and at 7pm it was go time. I took video of it all and my cousin Chris was recording the sound so hopefully we can get that pieced together then share it on the web. Since it's a neighborhood place, people bring their kids and hang out - and so there's a lot of running around, in and out the front door - which is right next to where you play. It makes it fun overall - but hard to concentrate on playing at times.
For the second set, and after most of the kids had gone away, the mandolin player from earlier in the day, Grant, sat in with us. It was cool and I'm looking forward to seeing and hearing how it sounded. I was happy with the night as a whole and look forward to playing there at KJ's again.
Now I think I'm ready for bed.
I would like to thank Susan, Katrina, Deb, Kristi - and my mom for supporting this Spring Tour. You can too through my Paypal account which is linked to my e-mail address: jeremiah125@hotmail.com. Every bit helps out here on the road.
Thank You,
Yours Truly,
Jeremiah