Wildeye Gig Report

We played this past Friday night at the local VFW Hall in Tinley Park, IL and at a campground out in Yorkville IL.

VFW Hall
Friday Night (June 29) was less than stellar. When we approached the VFW (back in March) we told them we would play and a portion of the door and all the liquor money. We played this venue back in April, May and now just this past Friday (June 29). In April they never really promoted it. They never added us to the marque, so then no one on the street even knew a band was playing that night. They said they were going to invite all these people (etc etc) and really get the community behind it, and the only people that showed up were our friends and family. In May we had to constantly remind them to put us up on the sign outside, we put flyers out all over the place, we were on Public Access TV promoting it, and again only people who showed were our friends. On Friday night we didn't even bother to promote it anymore knowing it was going to be our last time there. We were up on the marque though...only it said "Wildfire" tonight. Whatever, our family and friends (who showed up) knew who was playing. The people at the VFW Hall are really unbelievable. Now our friends are not really a "dancing" crowd and we play very dancable classic rock, so we really didn't know how well an audience would react to us based on our friends reactions. That is until Saturday night...

Campground Yorkville
What a difference a day makes. We played here last summer and on Saturday night we had the crowd from beginning to the end. As is usual we started playing and a couple of people showed up to see "how we were." Then they started using thier cell phones to call down to the thier campsites and told them to come up and check out the band. By the middle of the first set the pavilion was packed, everyone was dancing, it was unbelieveable. There were people dancing on the picnic tables, taking our picture and video with their cell phones, girls trying to out dance each other (which for us...we highly encourage!!!). There was a cute girl who showed up with her boyfriend and after one song she got on the dance floor with everyone else. She tried to get her boyfriend to come out...but he didn't want to go out there and dance. I guess he got pissed and left because she was dancing with all the other girls and ignoring him (bonus for us). She was there until the end and he was no where to be found. We knew from last year that it would be fun, but even THIS exceeded our expectations. Cars were double parked outside the pavilion and there were so many golf carts outside nothing could get by.

We are playing this Saturday night at Delrocks in Oak Forest IL on July 7 (local bar). We REALLY needed this kind of a push going into our first "bar gig." We were really starting to doubt ourselves.