Fireman's Social 2009

Hi everybody,

I'm not posting on this blog as much as I thought I would, but I guess when it comes down to it my life is pretty boring most times and it's hard to find interesting things to write about.....

But such was not the case last weekend as my band Edible Rex played for the sixth consecutive year at the annual Fireman's Social, an event put on every year by our volunteer firefighters during Sioux Lookout's Blueberry Festival.

This year's event was NUTS! I'm not sure how many people attended but my guess is between 300 and 400 souls, most of whom got into the spirit of things and danced the night away as our band played.

Our first set began at roughly 10:15pm, a little later than usual but that was on purpose because in the past, we went on earlier and played to a pretty much empty room. This year was different and the late start helped, I think. People got up and started dancing right away, much to our surprise and delight. Our last song of the set was "Long Cool Woman" by the Hollies, which features a righteous solo by our guitarist Neil at the end of the song. When we were done our first set I remember thinking "Man, I can't believe we have two sets left!"

After about a 10 minute break we tore into set two, with people dancing again like crazy. Unfortunately for me, I had some "technical difficulties" when the batteries for my wireless transmitter somehow became disconnected, forcing me to connect straight to my amp via patch cord. All in all I think it was about a one minute delay, I have to give a special thank you to our singer Suzanne, who noticed I didn't have enough slack in my patch cord to reach my vocal mike, so she moved the mike stand closer for me! The highlight of the set for me was our version of Bille Jean, which we played as a tribute to Michael Jackson. People dug it, and some started shouting "wooo!" when the bass and drums grove kicked in.

After a five, yes five minute break we were back at it with set three, usually our most danciest set of tunes. I was able to fix my wireless, therefore I spent some time during the set walking through the crowd while playing. I thought I would get more of a reaction than I did, but most folks were pretty juiced by then and were having too good a time to notice one of the musicians jamming away right there on the dance floor. We do a version of Van Morrison's "Brown Eyed Girl" in this set, I say "a version" because we funk this song up with Ryan's awesome drumming and Neil's
jazzy guitar picking during the intro to the song. At a little before 1am we finished off with "Move it on Over" by Hank Williams, but made more famous by George Thorogood. We finished off to a sparser crowd as most folks trundled off to get in line at the bar, but that's ok. By the time I toweled off and hauled my gear out of there I was home at 1:30am.

I'd just like to conclude with some thank you's. Thanks to Heather and Aaron for helping us haul gear, and thanks to Scotty for being our DJ in between sets. And I just want to especially thank Rob, Kevin, and all the firefighters for having us come and play and building our stage to boot! Thanks guys, see you at hockey!

"Edible Rex" is composed of me, Neil on guitar, Ryan on drums and Suzanne on lead vocals. We've been together for six years or so. We only play one or two times per year and are always on the lookout for more gigs. If you want us to come and play your bar or event, you can email me at rickmckenzie_69@hotmail.com and we'll talk. We don't play for free, but we play for cheap!