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| Thursday, February 3rd The Kings Palace Cafe' / Preliminaries This was the first night of the competition. We were all a little of nervous but ready to get down never the less. The first night is always some what scary because you're thinking in your head "What if I don't remember the arrangements, What if I forget my lines, Am I underdressed, I hope we make a good impression on the judges, I have to do this, I have to do that, etc......" We were scheduled that night as fifth in a line up of eight bands in our venue. |
| After hearing the first four bands, my thought was, "We have as good a chance as any of them." Finally it was our turn! The butterflies were really kickin' now!! Each band only gets 10 minutes to set their gear up and be ready to play. That included having to wait for the previous band to tear their gear down. It was such a big deal because you lost a considerable amount of points if you started late or ended late! Finally we're set up and ready to blow. The emcee announces our origin and our name and we're kickin' out "In The Basement" before the crowd stops applauding. We had a real cool arrangement for "Bye-Bye", which was our second song. The transition from "In The Basement" to "Bye-Bye" went smoothly and the audience really dug it! By now, everyone in the band is loose and playing their hearts out! Song three.... "Hard Times" by Ray Charles. The thinking in our decision to do this song is, Ray's movie had just came out, along with the soundtrack and another new album he put out just before he passed away. Not to mention, next to Areatha, Ray is my favorite vocalist and the song "Hard Times" does me justice, I don't mind saying myself. It was a huge success with the audience. Even the judges were up cheering with the audience. Definitely the strongest song we played all night. We had no problem getting through the next two songs, "Big Boss Man" and "Slick Woman Blues". All in all it was a good night but I thought our stage presence could have been a little stronger. The last three bands were all good but I still thought we placed in the top two or three bands that night. We wouldn't know if we advanced to the finals until the end of night two. Friday, February 4th The Kings Palace Cafe' Preliminaries This was night two of the preliminaries. We had to rise to a higher level from the before. We had a new panal of judges and tonight we were playing in the last slot. We all felt good about that. The same rules applied as the previous night. The band definitely rose to the occasion, as we floored the judges and the audience. The band was absolutely smokin'! Afterwards we all sat around talking and all agreed it was our greatest performance as a unit. Especially with Ian. Ian only had two weeks to prepare with the band for the competition. In fact, he had only been playing with the Houserockers for two weeks. he did two gigs with us prior to the competition and we all thought it was our best performance hands down! Now came the waiting. We would find out who were the finalists for each venue this same night. We had a couple of hours until they announced the 10 finalists from the entire competition. So we went to the Blues City Cafe' on Beale St. and had some ribs and gumbo before we went to hear the announcement. We were all finished and stuffed and went to the hall to hear who the winners were. Again, we were all nervous but there was a certain buzz of confidence in the air. Wild Bill was so nervous that he went back to his room and went to bed. The emcee started naming off the venues and the winner of each venue. Man my heart was pumping!!! They got to our venue and with a long hesitation.... "Johnny Reed & The Houserockers"! We were all hugging and grinning from ear to ear. We were going to the finals! What an accomplishment, i thought. We were one of the top ten, unsigned Blues bands in the world! We rushed back to Bill's room, woke him from a dead sleep and told him the good news. He jumped out of bed so fast, we thought he was going to crash through the wall. I went back to my room and couldn't sleep a wink! Saturday, February 5th The New Daisey Theatre Finals Here we were. The finals! We were playing in the 5th slot of ten bands. There were eight judges on the panal. They were all big wigs in the music industry. The rules were slightly different in the finals. We were allowed 15 minutes for set up and we only were allowed a 20 minute set instead of 30 minutes like we had in the preliminaries. The New Daisey Theatre was a huge theatre with a huge stage. It's always fun to work a big stage and a big audience. It get's the energy level to maximum. We had a decent set and thought we could've done better but we played well and rocked the house. Unfortunately, we did not win the finals but had fun trying. I made a lot of great connections and got some good gigs for us. I felt it was a hell of an accomplishment to be one of the top ten blues bands in the world. I think the total number of bands at the IBC was 96. If you include all of the bands across the world who tried to make it to the IBC in Memphis you're looking at thousands of bands! I'm happy to be working with Rolly, Bill and Ian. They're the best guys in the world to work with. Outside of the competition i had a lot of fun with my wife Rita and my two sons, Michael (16) and Jackson (3). They're truly the greatest driving forces in my life. They're very supportive of my love for music and wanting to make it my career! |
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