Low

I had a close call with a great night last night. But it was not to be. Cracker, my favorite musical artist who is not Tom Waits, was to perform for free at Louisville's Waterfront Park. Cracker+free+pleasantly cool evening weather=wowness. However, there was a meteorological monkeywrench as a cold front moved in. During a preceding act, Soul Inc., you could see darkness in the west and some spectacular lightning flashes. It kept coming and coming. I'd known from the outset--indeed, I'd known days beforehand--that this was possible or even likely. And now it was coming to a stormy rock & roll head.

They sped things up in an attempt to get Cracker on and rockin' before things got bad. By about 8:30, I'd moved down to the foot of the stage, and David Lowery and Johnny Hickman were not more than six feet from me, plugging in cords and arranging stands. That alone significantly raised the coolness factor of the evening.

Lightning, lightning.

Some dude from WFPK (sponsor of the concert series) came out and said that they were shutting things down for fifteen or twenty minutes, because they didn't want Cracker standing on the metal stage, and all of us in the audience standing around the equipment, with all the lightning. Also, it looked like it would rain soon. Everyone held out hope that it would blow over or be mercifully brief.

For the next half-hour, I huddled and shivered beneath Interstate 64 like some disgraced junkie cosmonaut. A very cold wind blew, and the rain started to fall. Finally, another dude came over to the amassed huddlers and announced that they were calling it off. I wasn't sure this guy was official, since he didn't look official (long hair, shorts, and a windbreaker, and he was just sort of hanging out and talking.) The cancellation was confirmed when I looked around the corner and saw that the canopy over the stage was being taken down, and the tour buses and equipment trucks were leaving.

I got to hear some decent music from Soul, Inc., but it sure wasn't what I was there for. I also ate a free cupcake, which was given to me in celebration of the 20th anniversary of something Waterfront Park related. I also got a free frisbee and a WFPK magnet. Also important to note is that, despite the rain, I didn't get very wet.

Disappointed, I returned home. Glad-hearted, I got to spend time in my warm little house with Kim and Erin. Jill was in bed already.