My ex-step-father-in-law (pick the peanuts out of that), used to say “it’s an ill wind that blows no one any good”. When he eventually passed on, a sad day for him, my wife effusively echoed this sentiment. The reason I draw your attention to the aforementioned aphorism (beyond the need to increase the word count of this post), is because we’ve recently been the beneficiaries of a number of “ill winds” that have resulted in us picking up gigs where another band has had to cancel. One such gig was a beer festival at The Wisewood Inn in Loxley, Sheffield.
The life of a musician can be a turbulent affair; trees step out in front of cars, ham sandwiches block intake valves, the list is ended. Fortunately for our prospective client on this day the members of TOAST are all quite dull and generally have nothing better to do on a sunny Sunday in June than rock up and rock out at the Wisewood inn in Loxley.
For this beer festival The Wisewood Inn had hired Pete from Purple Wave AV to manage the sound for the event. It’s always reassuring to hand this element of the performance off to a seasoned professional and Pete had us setup and soundchecked in no time. We kicked off at 6pm with Song 2 and Teenage Dirtbag. Our sun drenched, beer soaked audience was well up for it and the dance car park was full as we wound up set 1 with Dakota.
After a short break we launched into Set 2 with Take Me Out and Valerie. The tarmac came alive once again and Proud Mary was a big hit with the crowd. Somehow everyone always knows the dance. We finished off with Sit Down as the encore, with the crowd baying for more. Once the amps are off that’s usually it, but Ben persuaded us to do “one more song”. The amps went back on and we delivered a blistering version of Rock n Roll Star to finish off.
What a great afternoon. One for the books. We hope it becomes a regular feature of our calendar.
