It was a wonderful, beautiful day and night for some live country music on a farm. There were no tickets sold, just a free-will donation put on by the online Millennial Farmer for fire department gear for grain bin rescue operations on these rural area farms. I didn’t get a photo with him but I did get to say hello to the online famous Millennial Farmer while at the merch booths to look at what I wanted to buy. He lost more to the May 12 storm than I did. Thanks to the cost of food & drink I kept my merch budget low but I snagged some signed items, nice!

We got there before the gates opened and were maybe somewhere about 10-12 people ahead of us, so we set up our chairs under shade of trees while we waited. Staff came down with free bottles of water and started putting 21+ legal arm bands on those of us who wanted to drink. I had to walk up a grassy hill for a Budweiser but it was worth it! There was food available on-site as well but at a price, well they didn’t let in anything from outside the grounds. We set up our chairs by the sound booth facing the main stage.

Now for the entertainment. On the smaller stage 12 yr old Austin from Sioux Falls got the music going, a very talented young man on the guitar. Decent voice, wonder what he’ll sound like after the change. After his set a group of sisters named Dozzi (Australian) took the main stage. Even had their drummer do a mini set of covers with singing, wow! We are brand new fans of theirs now! They live in Nashville, TN and went to their booth after their set so I went to say hi & took a quick selfie with them. I bought a koozie & the ladies signed it. We grabbed some food & Cokes during part of their set after a quick port-a-potty visit. After they finished, Austin again took over the smaller stage while the main stage was set for Confederate Railroad. I decided to go up and stand at the fence closer to the stage than where they marked the chair line, even though we were front row I’m too short to see over big guys. They did pretty much everything I wanted to hear except they left out “I hate rap”, that song CRACKS ME UP cause I also hate rap! After their set was finished I noticed they were by the gate behind the merch booth area so I had to go say hi and catch up, I hadn’t seen them since just before I left GA in 2007! Got a new photo with them and bought pre-signed photos. I also stayed up at the fence for Eddie Montgomery, it packed in behind & around me so I used up the last of the camera battery about mid-way into that set. He did a couple of new songs, otherwise all the good ole hits he had with Troy Gentry. I remembered all of it, saw them a couple times when they opened for Kenny about 20 yrs ago! I had a Kenny shirt & hat on so the merch guys kept calling me Kenny haha! Eddie also did the first part of “Some people change” which Kenny also recorded. There was a bachelorette party going on right behind me during Eddie so the bride-to-be got a shout out, so cute! Another band was on the small stage after Eddie but at that point we decided to grab our chairs & head home, as it was 11 pm. Got home right about midnight. I’m tired & a little sore now compared to earlier (ankles were not a fan of the standing & walking on uneven ground) but wow, what a fun night!

I tried again to record some videos, they made a terrible microphone on the Nikon Coolpix P950 – it looks fine with the stabilized 4K but it sounds so bad I’m not sure it can be fixed with editing. Same as my videos of Sawyer Brown last summer at a fair. So I don’t think I’ll be recording anymore live concert footage with it, I’ll try to put a piece of tape over it or something as its so close to the playback button that I often hit it by accident. I don’t know if its something that can be fixed with a firmware update but I’d be open to trying that. It adequately works ok for all other recording purposes, just not in the realm of live amplified music. I’ll check all the videos, maybe the ones that were a little more distant maybe sound ok.