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This is the Sears Tower. Located in downtown Chicago, it's the tallest building in the United States of America. There are alot of useless facts we could be telling you like... "There are approximately 50,000 miles of electrical wires inside the Sears Tower." but we will spare you that. What is of importance to the Gin Palace Jesters was we got a paying gig there playing down home country music in the courtyard entertaining big city folks eating their lunch on a Friday. Hey...a band has got to start somewhere right? |
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For quite a while this was all we could see of the Sears Tower what with all the heavy traffic and congestion we didn't think we'd ever get there! |
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| Aw dang it!!! We're gettin' closer! |
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| Finally we made it to the entrance. The staff and security working in the lobby of the Sears Tower were about the nicest, most attentive and helpful bunch of people you could ever imagine. Quite frankly that surprised us a bit for some reason but it's true. They ALL should get HUGE raises and bonuses this holiday season! Thanks for steering us in the right direction. |
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| Here's Cousin' Buddy sitting against the wall in the courtyard steeling away. The whining sound of his rig could be heard echoing off the steel canyon walls of downtown Chicago for BLOCKS! |
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| Here you can see the whole bunch of us. That fella there with the hat and acoustic guitar is our pal Ken Mottet strumming rhythm for us. Ken is the songwriter of "Nashville Penny" which we recorded on our brand new CD. Any guy that can put together an ingeniously funny rhyme like "China" and "line-a" is alright in our books! |
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| Behind us is a sign for the entrance of the Sears Tower Skydeck which is an observation deck. It is so far up there in the clouds it takes a while for an elevator to make it to the top. They show a little funny animated movie on the way up which it just so happens our very own Casey Stockdon (animater extraordinaire) worked on. How's that for a small world? |
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| Right now Casey is thinking about those two pigeons in the animation discussing all 50,000 miles of electrical wires. |
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| But he can multi-task and add a harmony vocal with Dave too! |
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| Here's Buddy and Rick who were fortunate enough to be out of the sun from the get go. Buddy still has the shades on which people tease him about but we don't anymore. You should have seen the ones he USED to wear! |
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| Rick Murawski ponders about Buddy's glasses? |
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| They are either singing or sneezing. |
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| The day was a beautiful, sunny and comfortable 72 degrees but about halfway through a cold wind blew in and ALL the wood instruments went out of tune at the same time. Judging by Dave's serious look, this must have been snapped at one of those particularly difficult and trying moments. |
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| So thanks to all who came out and said "Howdy" and thanks to Lisa Collins for booking us. We had a swell time bringing country back to the city that used to be so "country." |