Saturday, May 30, 2015

Mississippi river cruises I recently played


       This month I played 2 paddlewheelers on The Mighty Mississippi river. The first one originated at Oak Alley plantation .  We were picked up by a driver for BR Limo who transported us to the dock on the levee in Vacherie, La. We boarded the "Queen of the Mississippi" at 12:00 noon for a cruise up the river to Baton Rouge. Peter Duffield, Mike LeBlanc and myself were scheduled to play music for a tour group from Australia later that evening at 8:00pm. We walked around the boat for a couple of hours only to retire in a crew lounge on the 4th deck. Later before showtime we were served a gourmet meal directly in our private quarters. Come 8:00pm we did a sound check on the 2nd deck Riverboat lounge. At showtime the room was filled to capacity with the passengers and crew. We performed our usual set of classic rock and acoustic numbers along with some dance tunes later in our performance to a very appreciative audience. The passengers got up and filled the dance floor really enjoying themselves to our delight.

The second show we did was on the newest addition to American Cruise lines fleet of paddlewheel riverboats the "American Eagle" which docked next to the "USS Kidd" in Baton Rouge. The boat arrived at 7:00pm and we were escorted to Paddlewheel lounge. Again we played for a energetic crowd on the cruise from different parts of the United States.

We hope to play on many more cruises in the future and are really delighted that we were picked by Laddie Dwyer of A Unique Entertainment, Inc. to entertain the passengers on the Mississippi River.

stay tuned for more stories like this.