Way more than you think

Whenever people ask me about playing in a band, I always have to mention how much fun it is. The whole process is fun: practicing, writing songs, buying show clothes and rockin' out.

I love playing my guitar loudly. It's powerful.

Last Saturday, my band, Riveter, played a pig-roast barbecue at Peach Street Distillers.

If you haven't been out to the distillery and enjoy vodka, gin, bourbon and the like, make haste. I love vodka and used to drink Skyy, now I drink Peach Street's Goat Vodka and it's lovely.

My only warning about drinking at the distillery is that they pour stiff drinks. One Bloody Mary or Dirty Hippie has the equivalent of at least two or even three shots of vodka. And their drinks are so tasty, you could find yourself drunk there on a Sunday afternoon without even meaning to. Not that that's a bad thing.

We played to a great, big ole crowd Saturday and we kicked all kinds of pig-roast ass.

One of the things that makes playing with my band so a kick in the pants is my band mates. Kelley, Laurena and Scott are exactly the kind of people with whom I want to be spending my time. We get along amazingly, so much so that we and our spouses are celebrating my 40th in Vegas together.

We love to tease each other. Like if I saw this picture:
Instead of deleting it because it's not a nice picture of Kelley, I've been posting it around the Internet with comments that Kelley was having a fit. Because one thing Riveter is, is not very nice. And also because that shit's funny.

Our practices are most always a giggle fest and no one can beat a joke into the ground like we can. Our favorites are ones with dirty words. Recently we all saw this on the Internet:
Now, we try to say that to each other as much as humanly possible, even if it doesn't make sense which, of course, lead me to type this to Kelley yesterday: "Shut your whore e-mail."

Most of the stuff we say might not be funny to everyone (or Scott — who does a lot of head shaking and meditating during our practices), but we think we're hilarious.

And if you don't agree with us, well, you can just shut your whore mouth.

Rockin' Tenacious Brother's Pub

Big show for Riveter tonight. We're playing all night long at Tenacious Brother's Pub in glorious downtown Grand Junction.

I love downtown and I love Tenacious Bros. It's such a fun vibe and they have Stella Artois on tap WITH the fancy glasses. Oh glory be.

Tonight we're playing a whole host of Riveterized awesomeness including two new kick-ass covers and by popular demand, we're bringing back an oldie but a goodie.

Over the past months, we've been weeding out some of our mid-tempo and ballad-y songs, in favor of the more in-your-face rockin' ones that really say "Riveter." Because we're not really happy unless we're swearing and playing as fast as we can.

Long live rock 'n' roll.

2009: A recap odyssey

As I sit here attempting to sum up this year, 2009, I'm overcome by a few strong sensations.

First is happiness. I have two really good jobs that I really like (I never really understood that idea of working at a job that made you unhappy), a devoted husband (again never understood staying with someone who didn't make you happy), a stepson of which I'm immensely proud and a daughter who blows my socks off in oh-so-many ways.

This also extends to the fact that my mom is now living with us. But that happiness is clouded, of course, by the stupid cancer that has tried — without success, I might add — to take her down.

Honestly, my mom's illness, coming on the heels of my dad's death two years ago, was initially devastating. I remember crying on the phone to my brother and asking, "Why is this happening to us?"

I now realize that sometimes sucky things just happen. You can either sit back and let the sucky things make your life suck or pick yourself up and get busy living.

And that's just what we did.

I wanted to include a few pictures from 2009 showing the places we visited and that stuff we did, but it turns out we had a really kick-booty year. I had a hard time narrowing it down. So without further ado, here's a kajillionty photos I'd like to title:

The stuff we done did in 2009

We climbed Mt. Garfield.



Skied at Powderhorn.



We celebrated Easter with my co-workers here at The Daily Sentinel.



My band, Riveter, opened for Bret Michaels.



I saw my beloved stepson, Sean, graduate from Palisade High School.



We hiked to Hanging Lake near Glenwood Springs.



Saw my daughter turn 9 years old.



We stood on the Four Corners Monument.



Visited the Pacific Ocean near San Francisco.



Climbed the ancient steps to the cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde.



Bill and I got to see our president speak on health care reform.



Took a motorcycle ride through scenic Gateway Canyon.



Visited the museums of our nation's capitol.



And I started the long and painful journey of getting a giant tattoo on my back.



Phew! Just thinking about it makes me exhausted ... and excited to see what 2010 has in store.

Happy New Year to all!

Silly girl, hooker shoes are for hookers

Last night the Riveter posse loaded up and hit the Social Distortion show at the Mesa Theater. It was a sold-out show and the place was hopping (but I have to say that Bret's crowd packed the front of the stage for the entire night).

Being the Riveter girls that we are, we got ourselves all gussied up, hooker shoes 'n' all — which seemed like a good idea at the time.

There were two opening bands and then Mike Ness et al. took the stage and rocked the hizzouse.

Man, they were good.

Bill and I worked our way to the front of the stage because that's where I want to be ... where the action's at. I clung to the rail as Bill deflected the moshers away. Ah, good times.

But as the night wore on, my feet wore down.

Four inch heels just ain't as comfortable as you'd think. And because I'm just not that smart, I agreed to stop at the Quincy briefly to check out local no-coast punk rock band, Loaded. 45, after the show. Our ride had to head home, so I nonchalantly insisted, "Oh, we'll just walk home."

I mean, we live downtown precisely so we can walk home. But walking home in platform stilettos after four hours of steady rockin' is an excruciating proposition.

I made it all the way across the street from the bar when I moaned in pain and took off my shoes. But the pain persisted and was exacerbated by the hard, pebbley ground.

Fear not, I'm married to a man that still believes in chivalry.

Bill quickly took off his Docs and passed them on to me.

So there I was slopping down the street in big Dr. Marten's while Bill walked along sock footed and carrying my hooker shoes.

So the moral that I'm gleaning from this story is that hooker shoes are for hookers who have pimps to give them rides home.

What you missed

If you didn't haul your cookies out to Riveter's 5th anniversary show with Holley 750 (or you couldn't get in), this is some of what you missed:

The show started with the kick-ass Denver punk band, Holley 750 throwing down some delicious tunes.

And guess what? Jamie on the left in the Triumph t-shirt has a Triumph motorcycle ... so does Bill. Of course, Bill just had to start his up when we got home from the show ... at 2 a.m. ... without the mufflers on. Thank goodness for awesome neighbors.

Then it was our turn to hit the stage:

Look how cute we are.

But sometimes we'd call everyone muthafuckas and drank beer.

If you weren't there, you missed Laurena riding the bass pony. Yee-haw!

And me looking like a blow-up doll.

Or force feeding my guitar to lucky fans.


Because it was our anniversary party, we let a boy (Jake from Holley 750) sing a duet with me. But just to make sure he knew his place, Laurena and Kelley flashed their guns.

Except for the pukers that we took back to our house after the show, the evening was truly epic — but I had so much fun that I didn't even care that I had to clean up tossed cookies the next day.

Rock 'n' roll is so much fun.

The Riveter Story, Part 4: OMG, there's a boy in our band

Once Kelley joined our group, we really started to take our rock 'n' roll selves more seriously.

We started thinking about playing shows out of town. We scored a couple of gigs at the Larimer Lounge in Denver and a GoGirlsMusic.com showcase in Littleton. We were also playing festivals such as the Fruita Fall Festival and the Fruita Fat Tire Festival here in the valley.

But our biggest gig came in March 2007 when we were selected to join the GoGirlsMusic.com's Invasion of the GoGirls in Austin during the famed South by Southwest Festival.

This was a huge deal for us and we were beyond excited to be selected to play. SXSW is an amazing festival just chock full of music with bands literally on every corner.

We all flew down to Austin with Scott and Bill in tow, except for Bridgett who drove to Austin with her husband, Johnny. It was a long trip exacerbated by Bridgett's morning sickness.

Yep, that's right, one of the Riveter girls had a little Riveterette in the oven.

The festival was amazing. Music on every corner. The GoGirls showcase was a blast and we brought some western Colorado rockin' down to Austin.

A few months later, Bridgett left Riveter. But she didn't abandon music for motherhood, instead she opted to continue playing with the Wrong Impressions with her husband (my husband's in that band, too).

Now we were down a drummer ... and not just any drummer, but a girl drummer. Girl drummers are hard to find anywhere and REALLY hard to find in our little Grand Valley. But we had shows coming up and the show must go on.

Luckily for us, Laurena's incredibly talented husband, Scott, volunteered to fill in on drums until we found a girl drummer.

That was more than a year ago ... and Scott — aka "Boom Boom" — is still hittin' the skins for us.

We tease him a lot and give him tons of grief (not to mention that he's often stuck carrying the heavy stuff), but we're really happy to have him in the band.

Since he's been with us, he's coached Kelley and I in improving our guitar skills and helped us tighten up our playing.

We've cut out a lot of our ballads and mid-tempo songs for more hard-hitting, in-your-face rock 'n' roll. We discovered that the more Kelley swears and flips off the crowd, the more they love us.

We played SXSW at the GoGirls showcase again last year. This year, we scored the Bret Michael's opener and we've been writing kick-ass new music like crazy.

We're 100 percent rock 'n' roll these days and are always ready to flip you off ... you don't even have to give us a reason.

The Riveter Story, Part 3: Along came Kelley

When I left off the Riveter story last, we had four girls (some who knew how to play their instruments and some ... well, not so much), a name and our first gig.

We practiced and learned seven or so songs ... barely. The day of the party found me full of jitters. I'd never really performed like this before and knew little about how work all the music related equipment let alone my guitar.

But we did it. We played our songs and people looked on in disbelief because we didn't suck.

We probably should've sucked.

But we didn't.

After we were done playing, we were giddy with excitement. We were in a band ... and we did not suck.

We continued on, practiced, got another backyard party, then we got our first nightclub show.

We were ecstatic. A nightclub ... not a friend's backyard.

We practiced our songs and even included our first original "Ham Pants." We opened for a now-defunct jam bad from New Orleans, Saaraba.

Tons of people came to see our debut public performance. We were nervous. But we did not suck.

The crowd was generous and we ate it up. We were bitten.

We worked on more songs, originals and covers and worked on getting more shows. For the next couple of years we played festivals and clubs around the Grand Valley. We even got a show playing in a showcase in San Francisco.

Oh yeah, the big time.

We all took a road trip out to my old stomping grounds. Overall the trip was fun.

We played two shows. The first nightclub show was disastrous, but the showcase at Lennon Studios went really well. It was a crowd that knew music and they dug what we were putting out.

We were buoyed yet again.

Then our singer, Sally, said she was looking to move on to do other things, a new job, a new city, no girl rock 'n' roll band.

We immediately started putting out the word that Riveter was looking for a new lead singer.

The first girl that came to meet with us was a nice, hippie-type who played her acoustic guitar and sang at coffee shops. She had a lovely voice, but we weren't certain that her earthy ways were going to fit our rock 'n' roll band.

But she vowed to learn three of our songs and come back and rock us.

And she did.

That little hippie chick was our Kelley who is now our bona fide rock 'n' roll lead singer.

Kelley puts on a show like no other and we're super happy she joined our band. She's been working on her electric guitar skillz, too, so she's double awesome.

Since Kelley's arrival, Riveter has definitely taken on more of hard rock 'n' roll edge and we like it.

The Riveter Story, Part 2: Laurena picks the bass

So last time I left you with me not dying of the flu and Laurena wanting to start a girl band and vowing to learn an instrument.

Laurena decided on the bass. Smart girl, she rocks the bass.

Now it was just past New Years 2004, Mar and I had recovered from the flu and it was time to start creating a plan for our new band.

First, Laurena and I were going to start working on some cover songs.

Not having a clue, we just picked songs that we liked without regard for difficulty or whether or not our non-existent singer could sing it.

We picked songs like Tom Petty's "American Girl," AC/DC's "You shook me all night long," Sheryl Crow's "If it makes you happy." And also a couple songs that I already knew like Neil Young's "Heart of gold" and the White Stripes' "Dead leaves and the dirty ground."

Next we planned to audition singers and drummers.

I have to laugh at the audacity that Laurena and I — who had just started learning instruments — were trying out other musicians to be in our band. (Hello musicians, we don't know how to play yet, but let's hear if you're good enough for us ... crazy!)

We had a couple great gals sing for us and ultimately decided on Sally.

At the time, Sally was a copy editor for the newspaper where I work and she sang in an a Capella group in college (trying ... very ... hard to not ... make an Office reference ... 'Nard Dog ... doh). We found a cute young drummer, Nicki, from the local college, too.

We had all our pieces, now we just need to bring them all together. It was tricky at first coordinating all our schedules. Sally worked at night. Nicki was a student and Laurena and I were juggling full-time jobs and kids.

Before we knew it, we had our first gig. We were going to be play for Bill's work's end of the year party. This was a pretty big deal as the other band playing this party was a bunch of seasoned musicians, including my guitar instructor.

Not long after, we found out our drummer was going to be working at DisneyWorld for the summer.

So now we had our first gig, but no drummer.

I dug out the phone number for a girl I'd met at the bar through a mutual friend. This girl was a drummer (among other things). She said she wanted to be in a band with her husband, but barring that, she'd be interesting in being in an all-girl band.

I called her and pretty much convinced her that she would at least play with us for this one show. Now that I look back on it, it was pretty out of character for me to push a stranger like that, but I did.

Bridgett agreed and I said we'd be right over to bring her a CD of the songs we were working on.

Drummer problem solved.

We had four band members who had never practice together and about four weeks to get our set together.

Oh and we needed a name. Bill immediately started coming up with band names.

If you ever need a name for a band, Bill's your man ... most of the time. The first name he came up with was nixed summarily.

I'm hesitant to even mention it because he still thinks it's hilarious.

OK, Bill thought our all-girl band should be called "Camel Toe."

Yeah, no.

But I loved his second name ... Riveter ... after Rosie the Riveter, of course.

My Gramma Dearing was a Rosie the Riveter during World War II in the Alameda, California ship yards.

I ran it by Laurena and she liked it, too. As did Bridgett and Sally.

Riveter was born.

The Riveter Story, Part 1: Robin gets a guitar

Margaret turned three during the summer of 2003. We bought her a little drum kit.

Wha'?

What do you think that 3-year-olds want?

They want to make a bunch of noise and bang on things. Drums are the perfect gift. Plus Bill begged to have at least one of his kids play the drums. Who am I to deny my adorable husband a lifelong dream?

So for weeks she banged joyously on her drums that sat in the middle of the living room floor.

Sean already was playing the saxophone and Bill had been playing the bass guitar for years.

I was left out.

I decided I was going to buy myself an acoustic guitar, take lessons and learn how to play Joni Mitchell's "Big Yellow Taxi" so I could sign along.

And I did.

I got a beautiful Epiphone acoustic-electric guitar — cherry sunburst finish, oh so pretty. And I started taking guitar lessons from Guy Stephens (formerly of JT and the Big Dogs).

I practiced my scales and chords. The first song I learned was the Beatles "I've just seen a face" — sans the fancy intro.

I told Guy I wanted to learn "Big Yellow Taxi." He told me it wasn't a beginner song as it had the dreaded barre chords. I didn't care, I wanted to sing along to some Joni Mitchell, so I learned barre chords.

It was the first time in my life that my giant man hands were useful. Barre chords weren't that hard once I got the hang of them.

Next I learned Neil Young's "Heart of Gold."

I was having a really good time practicing my few songs and singing along. I played all the time and everyone in the house had to listen.

By November I had made some decent progress mostly because I had a teacher that made the lessons fun and I practiced all. the. time. I played everyday and played for everyone whether they wanted to listen or not.

Then Margaret got the flu ... the bad flu. Of course, I got it, too. The two of us draped ourselves over the couches languishing from the fever, cough, chills and other flu horrors trying to watch movies and not die.

Bill brought me the phone and said it was Laurena.

I had met Laurena when I started working at The Daily Sentinel in 2002. She had since left the paper but we remained friends.

I croaked my hello into the phone. These were her exact words (OK maybe not exactly exact, but pretty darn close): "I want to start an all-girl band and I want you to play guitar. I'm going to learn to play an instrument."

I said OK but I had to not die of the flu and then I was all in.

I didn't die of the flu and shortly after New Years 2004 we got together to talk about our "band."

Riveter turns 5

This spring marks 5 years since Riveter played its first show in a faculty member's backyard.

We had about 6 songs ... barely.

I'm going to have to write some about Riveter's humble beginnings. It's quite a story tell: one full of guitars, lip gloss and boobs.

Riveter opens for Bret Michaels: Part 2 Bret plays

So as I was saying, Riveter opened for Bret Michaels and his band, the Bret Michaels Band.*

We played well. We rocked the house and we loved every single second of it. The crowd was amazing and it was hard to pack up my stuff and get off the stage.

But Bret was a-coming, so off we went.

As we were loading out our gear, Big John was there to greet us.

He said that we did a great job and that he really enjoyed us. He commented on our cover of Betty Blowtorch's "Hell on Wheels" — the song we lead with.

Big John was a friend of the lead singer and bass player, Bianca — one of the most bad-ass rock 'n' roll chicks I've ever heard of. John said as we started to play, he said, "That's Bianca's song."

That kicked ass.

Not only did he know the band we were covering but was good friends with the chick who made it all happen and someone we all think was the most rockin' chick.

So we all had a moment that put a beautiful cherry on top of getting to play for Bret Michaels' awesome fans.

We hung around the back of the club, waiting to see if we'd be able to meet Bret who had just come in on a plane.

We watched the small group of fans get moved to the other side of the parking lot so that Bret could make his jog from the bus to the stage door — while we got to stand inside the barricaded corral (which totally added to our rock-star experience).

The introductions happened just as Big John said they would in his pre-show security meeting and then he was walking to Bret's bus with Bret's silver cowboy hat in hand.

Moments later, the bus door opened and the wee figure of Bret Michaels stepped out followed closely by Big John.

Bret is much shorter than I imagined — probably around 5'7" or so — and much better looking.

He waved to his fans and as he jogged by we three Riveter girls, he smiled, waved and said, "Sorry I can't chat."

Next thing we knew, the band was striking up the chords to "Talk Dirty to Me" — the Poison song that we've been covering for a couple years.

We squeezed our way on to the packed dance floor and watched the pro work the stage and the crowd.

Dude knows how to put on a mofo excellent show.
The crowd of mostly becleavaged girls got what they had waited hours to see. Bret Michaels in concert.
They played Poison songs, Bret's originals and a host of covers that songs we were truly excited to hear.
All the while, Big John was videotaping the show from on stage. Bret later shared that they upload the video and send it over to for the troops to watch in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The band was great, the music was great and Bret Michaels exceeded all of our expectations.

After the show, we watched Bill sticker up Bret fan after Bret fan — which you read about here.

We lingered with the other fans out back, hoping to get to meet Bret and to even get on the now famous bus.

But ultimately we decided that we'd had our share of rock-star fun — meeting Bret would've been fun, but not meeting him didn't dampen a truly amazing experience.

This is one story that we'll be telling and reliving for a long time to come.

Thank you, Bret Michaels.



*The Bret Michaels Band is actually the band, Evick, just without Bret. It's headed up by Pete Evick who is a really cool guy and his band RAWKS. I totally go see them even without Bret (just don't tell Bret).

Here's Pete and I after the show:

Riveter opens for Bret Michaels: Part 1 Riveter plays

Let me start off this story by saying that if anyone had ever told me that I'd be in a band that was opening for the lead singer of '80s mega-hair-band Poison, I would have laughed in their faces and then probably kicked them in the ding dong for being stupid.

I mean look at the facts people:

• I have a bachelor's and a master's degree in art history. Art history. Not music.
  
• For the last seven years, I've been the executive secretary to a newspaper publisher. Secretary, not musician.
  
• I'm a mom and a wife. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
  
• I never played any instruments at all until six years ago this August (well I did play the clarinet in middle school, but that didn't leave me with much musical experience).
• I'm 38 years old.

Nothing on that list spells "rock star in training," but that's what I love about our band. We don't sit back and do what's expected, we reach out and snatch opportunities even when we don't think opportunities exist.

So, yeah, Friday night.

I got off work and went home to start the prep work that goes into being a part-time rock star.

I was curling the hair and gluing on eyelashes, packing my stage clothes and loading my equipment into the car when Bill and Mar got home.

As soon as they got home, my excited rushed out of the house like air out of a stomped on balloon. You can read about that over here, but it's depressing. Let's just chalk it up to my kid looking for her share of the attention.

I was determined to have a good time, child be damned (OK not really damned, but if there wasn't blood, it could wait as far as I was concerned). But my and Bill's mood was definitely dampened by the events that proceeded our trip to the club.

We were somber and sad ... OK Bill was somber and sad. I was pissed.

Until we turned the corner and I saw two black buses and this trailer parked behind the Mesa Theater:
I immediately turned into a 13-year-old groupie and started screaming "Bret Michaels is here" over and over.

He wasn't there, of course, but his band was. As was Big John, his uber-cool security guy and friend.

As we loaded in my gear, we had to negotiate the buses and the barricades places around the back entrances to the club. I'd never seen anything like that before at the Mesa and it was pretty impressive.

The band was all there and we were trying to be nonchalant and hang around and be cool. Then it was our turn to load our gear on the stage. I set up my amp next to a giant rack of Bret's guitars which were being tended by Bret's guitar tech, Joey.

This is the stack of cases for the bands guitars and drums:
Like all the people associated with Bret, Joey was friendly and talked enthusiastically about the tour. He said they'd had great crowds with many sell outs.

Here we are hanging out with Joey before the show, right after he asked if we were all married:
After loading our gear on stage, we decided to spend some time getting all rockstared up. On go the fishnets and hooker boots, out came the hairspray and eyeshadow.

Once that was done, we had nothing to do but wait. There was about a half hour until the doors opened. While we were hanging around, I heard Big John gather the theater's security guys together for a briefing on how the evening would run.

I made Laurena sit with me and eavesdrop on the whole thing:

Oh man, it was interesting. They have their shows very closely choreographed and scheduled down to the minute. Anyone who knows me, knows that kind of stuff excites me (sad, but true). I think I audibly sighed in delight when Big John said, "... then the band will play a 72 to 75 minute set."

So now, not only did we know that Bret likes a plan, but we knew exactly where he'd be and what was going to happen.

Afterward, it was time to open the doors.

We were hoping there'd be a crowd for us as we opened. Boy were we in for a surprise.

First of all, the other opening band had another gig in town and asked if we could switch places with them.

That meant that they'd go first and we'd go ... right before Bret.

Um, hell's yeah! Awesome. We figured we'd have a better chance at getting a bigger crowd the later we played.

Silly girls.

When the doors opened, it look like this:
We were at the bar and the fans were pouring in.

They were stopping at the bar or hanging out. Nope, they were bee lining it straight to the front of the stage.

Where they stood until after Bret was done playing.

The place was packed. They were a few dozen tickets from selling out. It was amazing. I'd never seen the theater so packed for hours upon hours.

Now that the security work organized, Big John was hanging out, getting his picture taken with fans — like us:
We told Big John and we were the second band that night and he said, "Yeah, I know. I'm gonna come check you guys out." I then whipped out one of our "Snatch" EPs which included "Get Out" and told him about the song.

He genuinely seemed excited that we had recorded a song about his friend and the show that was making him famous (which is way more of a positive reaction than the one we got from Eddie Spaghetti when we opened for the Supersuckers and had TWO songs recorded about him).

Big John also said that he'd make sure to play the song for Bret.

Oh hell's yeah!


John is a very cool guy. Very laid back, not pretentious — he's totally someone that would be fun to be friends with. Plus he treated us great all night long.

8:30 came and Goodman, the first band, started belting out their hard rockin' covers. The crowd was into it. They were generous with their cheers and applause.

My excitement was building.

Then Scott started putting his drums together in the breezeway next to the stage. Unfortunately some asswipe decided the breezeway was a good place to blow chunks ... all over Scott's drums. Luckily they were still in their cases and he didn't have to play through the puke.

Before we knew it, Goodman was done and we were getting ready to play.
I stood on stage and gazed through the lights out to the packed club. And it was mostly packed with girls and their cleavage. It was like booby city out there.
I was nervous, but not terribly so. Really, I was excited. I wanted the crowd to like us. I wanted to play well. I wanted us to rock.

We got set up and the club owner introduced us — including in our introduction the fact that we begged and pleaded to get this show.

Then Scott clicked us in and we were off to the races.
And it was amazing.

Our songs were going well. We were rockin' really hard.
And the crowd really seemed to be digging us. Every song was followed by thunderous applause. It was intoxicating.
Our third song was "Get Out" which we wrote about Bret Michaels and Rock of Love. When I found Bill out in the audience, Big John was standing right beside him.

We played for 25 minutes, but it seemed like five. And while it happened so fast, I made sure to savor every moment, to try to play the best I could and look cool doing it.

And the crowd seemed to love us. Every time Kelley said the f-word or "Bret Michaels" they went crazy. They went crazy after every song. I can honestly say that Bret's fans are amazing and I'd play in front of them any day of the week.

I truly felt like a rock star.

I didn't want it to end.

It did, of course.

But the night didn't. Next time I'll write about our brief encounter with Bret, more about Big John and the Bret Michaels Band show.