Terrapin/Nashville Madness

We'd like to thank the folks at Terrapin Hill Farm for having us this past weekend at the Harvest Festival, and thanks to everyone at the festival who came to check us out. It was a blast to play for such an enthusiastic crowd. For anyone interested, here's our set list, or what I remember of it anyway:

9/20/08 at Terrapin Hill Farm (Harrodsburg, KY)

Mourning Dancers
Atlantis Vacation
Memphis Blue
Laurette
Idioteque (Radiohead) -->
Firefly
Across the Universe (The Beatles) -->
Melancholy Collide
The Sleeptalkers
Spun
Blowin' Up

We also just played to an empty room in Nashville this past Monday. Why was the room empty, you ask? Apparently, nobody in Nashville has gas for their vehicles. Don't they have gas stations, you ask? Nope, the gas stations are out of gas. I only bring this up because (a) most people I've mentioned it to didn't know about the situation, which is very strange considering the nature of the issue, which is that a whole city ran out of gas, and (b) because the reason why it happened is one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard. Truly a study in mass hysteria and the mob mentality.

So here's what happened. Somewhere, somehow, this rumor emerged that the entire city of Nashville was about to run out of gas. Sounds familiar, right? Hold on, it gets stupider. Anyway, as with most rumors, it wasn't true, and nobody knows where it started. In this age of text messaging and phones with internet service, it probably only took a day or less for this rumor to spread citywide. Suddenly, everyone in the whole city decided they needed to hoard as much gas as possible to prepare for this fake crisis. People packed themselves like sardines into every gas station in sight, filling up their cars and as many spare gas cans as they could carry. Cars were waiting in lines a mile long at gas stations across the city. Guess what happened? The city actually did run out of gas. The article I linked to was published last Friday, so over the weekend the situation only got worse.

If I met the guy who started that rumor, I don't know whether I'd be angry or impressed. In a roundabout way, the crisis did affect us, since any audience we might had was more concerned with conserving their precious gasoline stash than going out to see a show. So that sucks for us. Then again, you have to be somewhat awed by the way something that sounds like a second-rate Dr. Evil plot from an Austin Powers movie could punk an entire city. Between this and the power outage chaos that's still going on here in Louisville, I'm starting to think that maybe Canada really is the place to be.