Scrapbooking Rocks!!

We wanted to send a quick "thanks" out to the ladies of the Northwest Regional Scrapbooking and Jewelry Making Association - the NWSJMA - for their participation in our Rookie's show last Saturday.

A bit of background:

Rookie's Bar and Grill, one of our top favorite venues to play, is attached to the Radisson Hotel in Rochester. Because of this, the bar gets spill over from any event, such as weddings, bar mitzvahs, car show, etc, which happens to be going on in one of the many hotel conference rooms. During the Summer it's not unusual to find an entire wedding party and many of its guests dancing to a band at Rookie's, eschewing the DJ who was hired for their wedding.

Well, this weekend was no exception, except there were no weddings happening. Instead, the NWSJMA - a group of 150-or-so women between the ages of 24- and what seemed to be 223-years old who enjoy scrapbooking, bedazzeling, and making jewelry out of beads, dried cereal and mixed nuts - were in town for their bi-annual conference.

If we're being honest here, our first impressions upon hearing this news were not positive. We expected to find a group of "librarian-style" women heading for bed around 5PM after eating some corn dogs and slaving over a hot glue gun all day. Sorry. We're shallow and unlearned like that.

Needless to say, we were WAY OFF... The group of women we met were hell bent on doing three things in Rochester; "Scrapin'" (as they call it), f_ckin', and getting drunk. Not your typical group of women, that's for sure.

We were definitely up to helping them achieve at least two of those - I'll let your mind take over.

With some additional incintive from Minnow, the bar's manager, in the form of free drink tokens, we hit the convention hall and started making friends. While a few of the women took the drink tickets and made them into jacket buttons, many others took the tokens and started in on the partying. Many of these women let us know they'd be back for our show later that night.

Since we like to perform in front of crowds larger than 4 people, we thought we'd nail the invite home by coming back later that evening, pre-show, and perform an acoustic song for them. Upon arriving back at the hall a couple of hours later, we found the group STILL scrapbooking - - 4 hours later!! We came to find out they spent over 12 hours in the same room, scrapbooking... holy shit!

After waiting for the ladies to finish an intense game of Deal or No Scrapbooking Deal, Grant and I took over.

Grant strummed the chords for Sleepy Jean and I sang for the group. It went over much better than expected, even so much that a few of the ladies took their bedazzled-blouses off, showing us their screen-printed t-shirts underneath emblazoned with saying such as "Scrapbooking is God's Gift" or "Bedazzling Gets Me Off."

They loved us, thanked us, and after they finished for the evening, many of them came in and watched us perform.

So, a special THANKS to you ladies for helping to make last Saturday such a success and a blast!!!