As I said in an earlier post, Cindy and I won tickets to see B.B. King on December 16 here in Davenport. We won them as door prizes as part of the kick off party for the annual membership drive for the River Music Experience. I'd seen B.B. King three times already, and Cindy was going to be in Chicago with her sister all day Friday and coming home on Saturday night.
I ended up giving the tickets to our good friends Scott and Marcia Schroeder as they had never seen B.B. King in person before.
My Friday night was all planned out. I had gotten a big T-Bone steak and was marinating it, I had a half dozen big mushrooms with the meat all dug out so I could do Italian sausage stuffed mushroom along with them. The UNI Football team was playing on TV in the NCAA Division I-AA championships. I had a garage full of beer, it was cold, I was hunkered down.
Along about 3 p.m., Kristy Adams called me and asked me what I was doing. I said, "Nothing."
She said, "Randy's sick. He went home from work today. He can't go to the B.B. King show and I need a date. Will you go with me?"
Man, it was like I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. I really didn't want to go, but Kristy was literally pleading with me to go with her. Finally, I relented and said, yes, I'd go. She was happy and I told her I'd call her later.
We met up at a new bar in downtown Davenport called Below Brady (see map). Actually, the bar had been there for years, and no one could remember the name of the old place, but it was pretty nice down there. Cozy, not crowded. They had a Yamaha baby grand piano in the place as I understand that someone comes in a couple three times a week and plays the piano.
We had a few drinks and went to the River Center around 7:10. Ellis Kell and his band opened up for B.B. King and they were playing by the time we got there. Kristy's seats were up toward the front at one of the tables they had set up in kind of a night club fashion. We found an usher to direct us to the seats and it turned out that we were about 25 feet from the front of the stage. Nice seats.
Ellis and his band did a nice job, as always. Ellis said it was the third time he and the band had the pleasure to open for B.B. King.
They finished about 7:45, and there was about a 25 minute wait for B.B. King's band to take the stage. They came out, did a couple songs, then B.B. King came out. 80 years old, diabetes, two bad knees - B.B. don't stand no more. But, boy - he sure doesn't sound like an 80 year old guy when he sings and plays that guitar. He still can sing and his chops on the guitar are still those of when he was playing 40 years ago.
His band was tight, the music was good, B.B. told stories and played off the audience. He said that he had now played in 80 countries around the world and he said that his goal in 2006 was to play in some countries that he'd never been in before.
He finished about 10 p.m., no encore. He thanked the crowd, stood up and was helped off stage.
It was a good show, I was pleasantly surprised at how well he played and sang.
Now, before the show, Kristy told me that there might be a chance that we'd be able to get backstage after the show and meet B.B. King. That story comes up next in Meeting the King.
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