Big Time in Decorah!

Thanks to all the folks who came out in snowy Decorah last night for our annual concert/dance event. I'm pretty sure that it was a record crowd for the dance.

Pat and Patrice came down from the cities on Friday afternoon and we indulged ourselves in a series of rehearsals. We started Friday evening, after a great dinner at the Old Armory BBQ, with a lengthy session on Center Ave. We followed up on Sat. with a morning practice and then a trip to the Oneota Food Coop where we played ("will play for food") a short acoustic set. Then back home for a couple of more hours. Back to the Coop for dinner, then to the Elks.

We were amazingly organized (by our standards) and used our time well. We prepared (who plays what, where)(we even took notes!) several sets of tunes for a recording session that we have scheduled a week from Monday at Wild Sound in Minneapolis. Then we performed those arrangements as the bulk of our concert set last night. We hope this recording will be the first step towards a new CD for the band.

The concert audience was great, very attentive and forgiving. They also did a great job at providing percussion during Pat's tune, "Two Bits". Ted Hodapp, our caller for the evening, worked the soundboard during the concert and really made us sound good.

The dance itself was most excellent. The energy level was great. We could have used a much larger dance floor. We stopped promptly at 10:30 because Pat, Patrice, Ted & Lynn all needed to drive back to the cities and wanted to stay ahead of the worst of the snowy, windy weather to come.

This event kicked off 2014 for Contratopia, our 14th or 15th (we're really not sure when we started) year as a band. We'll be a little busy, by our standards, for the next couple of months with dances and recording work. Next dance will be Feb. 21 in Northfield, followed by a weekend of dances at Glen Echo Park, near DC (with an excursion to Shepherdstown, WV), at the start of March. Hope we'll see some of you out on the floor!