Darwin

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Outdoors.  I do love to camp out on occasion but I'm basically an indoors kind of monkey...especially when it comes to music.  Sure it can be fun listening to music outdoors at a big party...but it's not that much fun playing it.

The weather is always a huge factor.  It seems like it's either too hot or too cold.  It never seems to be "just right".  Playing in the Sun can be miserable.  It's usually hot.  You sweat all over your instrument, electronics are prone to overheating, and you invariably end up with some degree of sunburn. Guitar cases need to be kept in the shade so they won't be hot enough to warp the neck when it's put away, and the guitar itself needs to be in the shade every possible moment to prevent "weather checking" on the finish and warping of the neck. Playing when it's too chilly or cold, whether the Sun is out or not, aside from being uncomfortable, slows down fingers and makes timing difficult.  Tuning a guitar or keeping one in tune for any length of time is a constant challenge.  Wind can be problematic for a long-haired musician as well.

Lack of sunshine can be as much a problem as too much of it.  Playing at night means 2 things; bugs and dew.  The temperature at night is usually more comfortable than playing in direct sunshine, but it can tend to get chilly and on occasion, even after dark, it can still be irritatingly hot.  Then, there are the bugs.

Bugs of course, are drawn to the bright stage lighting and tend to swarm the band.  When you're playing an instrument, you're basically at the bug's mercy.  They land in your hair, they crawl all over you, and no matter what kind of bug it is, they end up biting you.  With both hands busy dealing with an instrument for 3 or 4 minutes at a time, or even longer, you don't really get much chance to untangle a wayward bug from your hair or even wipe one off your face, hands, or arms, much less dig one out that's gone up a pants leg or skittered down the neck of your shirt.

You might imagine that singers had less of a bug problem than someone playing an instrument since they always have at least one hand free, except for one thing.  A musician can keep their mouth shut.  The first time I remember a singer swallowing a bug was during an outdoor production of "Godspell" in 1976.  Little did I even suspect what a common problem that would be.  To date, I think every Full Moon singer has at some point, swallowed a bug while singing.  Jay did and I believe at some point both Megan and Jeff almost surely have.  And FM doesn't really do that many outdoor gigs!

Then there's dew.  The more it cools down at night, the more dew settles on everything.  Dew is murderous for musical equipment.  It rusts anything metal and there's always the danger of it shorting out something electronic.  That's not to mention the effect it has on the finish of your instrument, the rust that corrodes your strings, and that damp, wilted feeling you get standing out there on stage and later while packing up.  If you pack up damp or rain soaked equipment, the next day the inside of the trailer can smell something like a diaper pail in a penicillin factory.

What's the worst thing about playing outdoors?  As uncomfortable as the heat, the cold, the bugs, the dampness and everything else may be, the real problem is the unexpected storm, or even a minor rain shower.  When playing at night, you may see a storm approaching but you can never quite tell how much time you've got before it actually strikes.

You tend to think you should play up to the last minute before you start tearing down equipment, but you can never really tell when that last minute will be, and you really don't want your equipment caught out in the rain.  2 years ago, John lost a $120 piece of equipment to a rain shower, and FM was on a covered stage that night.

At one of FM's "Cornstock" shows in Syracuse, a serious storm came up before the band had time to even begin taking down equipment.  One drop of rain can blow a $50 amplifier tube, and more than a drop or 2 can be disastrous.  That night, people from the crowd held enormous tarps over the entire stage through driving rain and strong winds.  The winds were strong enough to blow a carport across the highway that night.  Some of the crowd were pretty nervous but they held on valiantly and helped save tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment.  Beneath the tarp, held down by the crowd and held up by a few microphone stands, several of the band worked feverishly to pack up equipment so that if the tarp did get blown away, equipment would still not be ruined.  It's a lot of work packing up equipment under the best of conditions.  It's all the harder under a flapping tarp, on your knees, and holding on to a microphone stand with one hand to use as a tent pole the whole time.

However a musician feels about playing outdoors, (some may actually enjoy it!) their instruments and equipment seriously despise it.  Darwin