Elders, May 4th, Gaslight Tavern, Lawrence, KS

(posted at the Elders message board, except with pictures also posted there)

Good show. :)

Outdoors. A small patio area outside an even smaller bar. And the crowd there before the show was pretty darn small. The setting and the crowd size made it feel like a private party in someone's back yard. The crowd grew as the evening went on. Not to the point of over crowded no room to stand, though.

It was odd for me seeing the Elders on a Wednesday. I'm used to seeing Norm playing with Bob Walkenhorst on Wednesdays. Like, right bass player, wrong band. That's okay, because Norm's awesome bass playing just reminded me of what I wasn't issing out on this particular Wednesday by playing hooky from Molloy's and seeing the Elders instead. :)

At one point, noises from outside the venue inspired Ian to start singing lines from a song, one I didn't know. The band evidently did know it, though, because they all joined in. And sounded real good. Although, Ian didn't seem to know many more words beyond what he first sang. Steve did a little singing on the song. The intruding sound that Ian, and then the band, were responding to, when I heard it I thought it was a truck or something, but I think Ian was singing about a train, so maybe I was wrong. Anyway, it was fun, and different, and some damn good music.

For the encore, they asked what we wanted to hear and played one of the suggestions (there were 3 that I recall), "Buzzz's Jigg". (Yes, unbelievably enough, they hadn't played that one.) As Steve put his guitar away and got the mandolin, Ian says "Steve had to change tools". While Steve was tuning, Ian commented, and said something along the lines of "just play, you don't need to be a perfectionist".