Okay, That Was Really Cool. REALLY cool!

So I’m on the road again, photographing casinos… AGAIN. Nothing too exciting especially considering all my properties have been in the middle of nowhere and I don’t have a car. Well, today, something really neat happened.

As most of you know, I am a big country music fan. Today, at the Caesars property I’m photographing, there was an outdoor concert for the band Big & Rich. Some of you may know them by their first hit, “Save a horse, ride a cowboy.” I was considering buying a ticket but the concert was held in the parking lot and, well, it’s HOT out here. I didn’t relish the thought of hanging out for hours on blacktop and I need to save money.

My hotel contact and I were going to grab some dinner but he was escorting a newspaper photographer at the concert and couldn’t get away. He invited me down to the concert to hang out so got me a media badge to enter the concert area. While watching the band, I noticed that the newspaper “photographer” really didn’t seem to know what she was doing. As it turns out, she was more the newspaper’s editor and was there to take photos for an article… not really a professional photographer.

At one point, my hotel contact introduces me to the woman as another professional photographer on property working with the hotel. She holds out her camera and says, “you want to take some picture?” Hell yeah! I took the camera before she had a chance to change her mind and with my media badge, proceeded to the front of the stage, in front of the audience! I was so close to the band members, I could hear their voices without the speakers. As I photographed them on stage, they segued into their first hit song, “Save a horse…” It was so incredible to be photographing them up close while they sang their signature song! I loved every second of it and had so much fun.

Upon returning to where my hotel contact was standing with the people from the newspaper, I thanked them for letting me borrow their camera. She then told me if they used one of the photos I took, they would give me a photo credit! She took my name and email and promised to send me copies of all the photos! Once I get copies, I will add them to this blog posting.

Wow, that totally made my day!

 

Nashville

Okay, so most of you know that I’m a big fan of country music. Well, yesterday, I had a day off and spent it in Nashville with some photographer friends.

Actually, the day started the night before. After finishing my shoot in Martin, TN, I headed to Murfreesboro to meet with my friend Leeann. When I got there, Filipe, another photographer friend told us that he was gonna have the next day off too so we told him to drive down and spend the evening with us. Once he arrived, the three of us drove down to Huntsville, AL to meet up with our friend Adele for dinner at 801 Frankin, a classy restaurant in this middle of nowhere town. After a great dinner and some fun trying to find coffee (“Oh, is coffee supposed to be hot?” – McDonald’s), we headed back to Leeann’s hotel.

The next day, Filipe and I booked a room in downtown Nashville and headed out. The Renaissance we stayed at was in the perfect location, right around the corner from the historic Ryman Auditorium and a block from Broadway where one can find a lot of cool pubs and bars. We spent a number of hours just wandering downtown, souvenir shopping and taking photos.

After a nap, the rest of the gang started to arrive. Once everyone was there, we headed back to Broadway and got a couple of beers at a couple of different bars. It was still early and because of the Nashville Predators hockey game and the Harry Connick Jr. concert, the bars were relatively quiet. The two bars we visited both had live country bands and the music was actually very good. In no time, it was time to head to the Capital Grille for our 8:30 reservation. The restaurant is located in the gorgeous and historic Hermitage Hotel and is one of the top restaurants in Nashville. Our waitress was funny and very down to Earth (ghetto as she put it). Dinner was fantastic. I had a perfectly cooked beef tenderloin that was so incredibly tender, it could have been cut with a butter knife. Absolutely delicious!

After dinner and a brief tour of the hotel (thanks to our waitress), we headed back to one of the bars we visited earlier. Tootsies Orchid Lounge is a famous bar where many of Nashville’s rising stars played. Famous customers include Willie Nelson, Patsy Cline, Kris Kristopherson and Loretta Lynn. When we arrived, the place was rockin’ and packed with people. We pushed our way through the crowd and eventually settled in a spot right in front of the stage. The band was awesome, the crowd was terrific and I almost lost my voice from screaming and singing the entire night. We also got to hang out a bit with a group of Canadian boys from Toronto who were there on a road trip, so that was cool. We also drenched the floor around our area with some beer bottle tapping (sorry Ronan). The highlight of the evening was when the singer got up onto the bar to sing and invited some ladies, including Leeann and Adele, to get up and dance on the bar! Freaking AWESOME. What a great night. After closing the place down, we headed back to the room and the 5 of us crashed. Definitely a night to remember!

 

The Emporium of Whistle Pigs

Tonight, I had dinner on the patio of the Emporium Restaurant, a nice place on Niles Avenue in South Bend, Indiana, along the St. Joseph River. I had the “Big Island Chicken”.

Apparently, it was the last night of a summer music festival, held every weekend just slightly down the river from the restaurant. During dinner, they had a performance of belly dancers which I could just barely see from my table. Afterwards, I could hear the band getting ready and after dinner, I went over and listened for a little while. The band was called the Whistle Pigs and played a mix of rock, R&B, folk and just about anything you can play with a guitar, drums and a sax.

Later, I headed off to the South Bend Chocolate Company and got myself an Irish cream latte and some gourmet chocolate. Mmmm… chocolate! Gotta love chocolate.

 

Opening a Pandora’s Box

So I just learned of this really cool online music service called Pandora (www.pandora.com). My old friend Cameron just introduced it to me. It’s created by a group of people who call themselves the “Music Genome Project”, which is actually a pretty good way to describe it. The site plays a music library that evolves depending on votes you cast for each song played. Nothing to download and all that is required is a high-speed Internet connection, a web browser and Flash Player.

What you do to start is to select the name of a band that you like. The site searches its database and plays a song from this band. You can give this song a “yay” or a “nay” to indicate if it is the type of song you enjoy. The site then continues to play addition songs of a similar genre and you can then cast a vote for each song. As it learns your preferences, it starts to play a very customized library of songs for you. On top of all the free music, you can create up to 100 different “music stations” and save them to your login.

Way cool. I can see this is going to be addictive.