A Tale of the Tavern (and Two Weddings)

As most of you know, I can be found the first Thursday evening of every month playing bass for the Bill Cooke trio at Dave's Darkhorse Tavern - a venerable StarkVegas institution known for good live music (even us!) and killer pizza. Last night was indeed one of those Thursdays.

I managed to meet Abi, Adam Cooper's fiance. She and I made a few mutual connections (MSU Philosophy major, FPC, Cameron) and now I hope we're friends. The big day's coming up really soon for those two - just a little later this month, in fact. Let me say that Adam is one lucky fellow - Abi's great.

On to the gig...

Bill and I knew that the Damminator (our drummer, Bob Damm) would be out of town, so we opted for a duo format since MSU was in between summer terms and everybody was out of town. Times like these routinely translate into a slim door take from the cover. On the bright side, Bobby Shannon, a long time friend and superb musician said he would drop by and sit in with his soprano sax. Very cool musical expectations on my part for the night. I even showed up a little early for the gig.

Bill arrived a bit later and had his stepson, Ben, and Ben's fiance (can't recall her name) tagging along. They're getting married in December in New Orleans - but that's another blog entry down the road. Anyway, Ben and his girlfriend find a table after helping us with the equipment load in. Bill offers to handle their tab, with the advice to observe "moderation".

Turns out, moderation was a whopping $72.00 bar tab for our lovebirds. In a little over two hours. The crowd was as measly as projected and that was certainly reflected in the door receipts. I'm reminded of the classic scene from The Blues Brothers movie when Jake & Elrod go to get paid and the bar owner says "here's yer $200 and you drank $300 worth of beer."

Easy come, easy go, I guess. At least our free pizza at night's end was excellent as usual. Ben and his woman ate half of that, too...