Had a fabulous weekend out on tour with The Raleigh Ringers. We played a concert Saturday north of Baltimore in Maryland, and one outside of Richmond, Virginia on Sunday. The two were both great experiences!
Friday night on the way up, one of our members ended up trying to help a lady break into her car with a hanger... we sacrificed another lady's costume hanger for this, but weren't able to open the car before we had to get back on the road... luckily, someone was on the way to help her.
Saturday we played at a church, to a crowd of ~600 or more. They were very enthusiastic and responsive! I talked to several sweet older ladies afterward ... one was like "I was watching you, I play your same bells. You're really good!" Another said "I'm 83 and I've been playing bells for 4 years now and it's so much fun!" I said, good for you for picking up a new hobby, that is awesome! Some girls came up to me as I was taking inventory of some of our sales stuff, and one of them said "They say I look like you!" I said, true, we both have the long blond hair, etc.. it was cute! We heard that parties had come from Youngstown, OH, as well as West Virginia to attend this Maryland show!
Sunday we were hosted by a church, and the concert was in the neighboring high school auditorium. The hosting church was so sweet, served us a sit-down lunch of fried chicken & awesome vegetables, blackberry cobbler mmm, we almost wanted to go into food comas instead of go perform after that! There were some really sweet people, everyone enjoyed the show so much. The sweetest thing was after the concert, when we let anyone from the audience who wants to to come up on stage and talk with us, see/play our music and instruments, and ask questions, etc. There was a mom with her two daughters, and one of her daughters was in a wheelchair. That girl was named Anna and she was getting each of the Ringers to sign her autograph book. At the end, she was talking to a few of us and made us count several times to make sure she had gotten each one of our signatures. Her mom said that she is so into us, and that everyone who comes to their house has to watch one of our videos on youtube because Anna says "this is so amazing, you have to see this." Her mom said that she had just lost her job two weeks ago and wasn't sure she'd be able to buy the tickets to the concert, and how she didn't know how she could tell her daughter that they couldn't go, but that then she won 2 tickets on the radio and so she only had to buy one, so she said "I guess God wanted us to come to your concert!" It was... really touching! Talking to all the people who love our music and getting to do what I love to bring joy to people makes me feel so blessed to be able to do this. It's an amazing thing, and I hope to enjoy it for as long as I can!