We had fun in Ashland on Friday and played to an enthusiastic crowd. We met some great folks including some from the UK. They turned us on to some gig posiblities over there and heopefully we can get some touring routed in the UK for the future. The discovery of the evening, though, was heil mics. George (the sound man) turned us on to them and Jenn used the Heil Pr40 for her acoustic cello. The mic looks like like a side address condenser mic. However, it is actually an end fire dynamic mic. The cool thing is that it reached fairly loud levels with need any eq. Normally, with a condenser, you need to find problem frequencies that cause feedback and notch them out in order to get a good stage volume. The amazing thing about the Heil is that it required hardly any eq'ing. It sounded excellent too. Definitely in the same ballbark as many condensers. I am looking forward to using it more and getting used to it's tones.

Saturday, we had a great Vietnamese lunch at the Pho Noodle House. Richmond, has some of the best Vietnamese restaurants around. We haven't eaten at three different ones so, far and they have all been great. My favorite is the eggroll noodle bowl. It's basically like angel hair rice noodles, with cut up sections of eggroll on top and lettuce on the bottom. Pour the sweet and sour sauce over it all and stir it around. Mmm, Mmm good!!

Saturday, we played in Bedford. The community style series is hosted at the Library and we always enjoy playing there. The room is small so running sound can be a bit tricky. We had plenty of time and got things tuned in faily well before the show. Afterwards, we stayed at John and Kathy Graham's Bed and Breakfast. Savanah introduced me to "guitar hero" and we stayed up late rocking hard :) Actually, she rocked much harder than me as the medium level difficulty was about all I could handle on the first go round. After a great breakfast we loaded up the gear and headed out. We took the scenic route out of town through the Peaks of Otter. Bedford is an absolutely beautiful place to live. The green valleys stretched out below as we wound in and through the ridges headed towards the interstate that would take us to north to New Jersey. We had a great time with the Graham's and it was a highlight of the weekend.