To keep active and sane, I like to break away from the normal grind regularly and jump into ridiculous adventure. Our yearly hockey tournament / Hootenanny concert is a great example you can read about here @zekepickleman/another-pickleman-adventure-hockey-christmas
This part of the tale, it was The Groove's turn to take the stage.
Hootenanny
Going undefeated to that point in the tournament, it was time for us to take to the stage.
This is the coveted Dominion Award, given to the most inspired hootenanny performance. Much more prestigious than any of the hockey trophies in this tourney. If you look closely, you will see our name already on this award though I didn't think it was so long ago.
For this performance, we decided to go with one of the most epic songwriter supergroups ever assembled, The Traveling Wilburys Some of the guys were too young to know about this band so it was a bit of a challenge to pick and polish all the songs in only a couple rehearsals.
On stage, we have 4 forwards, 3 defensemen and a goalie on the keys.
Everyone is a good enough player and it is the vocals I insist we work on the most for the performance.
Everyone at the show is only 1 degree of separation so there are plenty of side stage action shots.
In the pocket.
Great to have Steve back on guitar and the goalie Nikita playing keyboards. Dins for the wins on vocals.
We went on earlier in the evening so the crowd was not yet packed but that left some room for dancing and fun.
On of the guys threw together a few signs for the stage and we dressed like Jeff Lynn, Tom Petty, Bob Dylan and random old guy rockers.
A rare shot of the trumpet player, drummer and a special guest. Paolo was visiting from Argentina so for sure we threw a wig on him and brought him on stage to be a part of the act.
One last shot after the show as we were now ready to party and watch the closing act.
Another fine chapter in the 25+ year journey of hockey and music coming together. Chances are we will add a few songs to this set and run it again at a music festival on labour day to end the summer.
Thanks for coming to the show!
We crammed 7 songs into our set but I feel compelled to share one so you can listen while reading this post. Not Alone didn't make the cut but this is the one I want to sing when we expand the set next time.
