Cache Creek Resort and Casino, 1/6/19

Hey there party people!

After playing Friday and Saturday night at the Cowboy Country Saloon, I got a little less than three hours sleep then headed to the airport to fly to Sacramento to play a TW show at the Cache Creek Resort and Casino. On the way I picked up Johnny Magic Fingers in my trusty Astro van.

Here we are at ONT enjoying more caffeinated beverages while we wait to board.

I looked out the window on final into SMF but I couldn't see much.

Once we got above the treetops you could see the earth. I was hoping we wouldn't miss it.

This is inside the little tram we take over to baggage claim. This is where we'll be playing later.

Is there something in my hair?

We grab our bags and instruments and set about to looking like musicians walking through the airport.

TW got a car smaller than we are used to. We had to get creative when loading all of our accessories. My bass case would not fit in the cargo area and had to protrude into the passenger area between the back seats.

Then we begin almost an hour drive along country roads in the wet weather. It rained the whole time we were here.

Suddenly this huge construction project jutted up over the landscape. Cache Creek was building a huge new hotel.

The existing facility was not small by any means.

We pulled up to the front door just like we owned the place. Our handler, Zeke, met us and guided us around.

The main lobby was beautiful.

We headed straight to the showroom. I was happy to see such a well-appointed stage. This is going to be nice.

Drummer Dave's backline was a pretty cool DW kit.

Guitar Mike said he really enjoyed the sound of his Deluxe.

That's Dustin (FOH) helping Johnny Magic Fingers get his backline gear all connected and dialed in. John really liked the selection of keyboards the venue had available

All this gear belonged to the venue. They didn't have to rent any gear. This was my rig, GK 1001RB and the 115 cab. I really liked it.

I guess I don't get out much. I'm not familiar with this DI box. I guess they didn't want to take the DI out of the amp. It doesn't matter to me. I later heard from friends that these are really nice DI boxes.

These monitors sounded absolutely great, better then any d&b audio, better than Meyer. I don't know if that was because they were superior equipment or if the soundguy just knew how to EQ properly. Either way, they really were wonderful.

I thought the lighting arrays they had in this place were impressive. This was in front of me on the ceiling at stage left. There was another at stage right, plus all the lights directly above the stage, and spots out front.

Here's about half of the room looking from the stage. The bar was right in the middle.

Here's the other half of the room. Wow, that bass player is looking tired. He needs a ROCKSTAR or something.

Drummer Dave gets his kit tweaked the way he likes it. We are dangerously close to sound check, I think.

TW and Guitar Mike get ready to soundcheck.

While everyone is connecting, tuning, tweaking, etc, I thought I'd wander out front to see what it looks like.
 

Here's Dustin at the FOH console.

Guitar Mike checks his mic, monitor mix, guitar, etc, while Greg, the monitor guy, takes care of us on stage.

TW gets his monitors in order. They have a great crew in this room.

Monitor Greg takes care of Johnny Fingers and Drummer Dave.

Here's a picture of our meal before we ordered it.

After soundcheck we head to the green room. On the way I spot a familiar face.

Here's a look at the stage as we head toward the green room just off the main room.

It's not the largest green room we've ever had but it's very nicely appointed. We could watch the Bears game while we waited.

Dave almost ran into Mike at the hospitality table.

After we settled into the green room we went in search of food. It was time for a late lunch before the show at 4:00pm. There were several choices including a buffet, a seafood place, Asian, etc. We decided to try the Canyon Cafe.

John and Mike ordered the open faced turkey sandwich. Dave had a salad and some kind of panini.

TW had turkey on a croissant.

Guess what? I hadn't eaten all day. (Surprise!) So I started to dig into my five egg omelette before I took a picture. Oops.

After our late lunch we had a little time to kill so Dave and I wandered about the casino a bit. It's a pretty big casino. We'd heard that there was a new Willie machine on the floor so we went searching.

We found a Willie machine, but I don't think this is the right one.

Ah! Here it is. There was actually a group of four of them.

The video screens would show scenes from Willie's movies and concerts. As you played the machines would play clips of songs and Willie would "talk" to you saying things like, "Well, that was fun!"

I couldn't resist so I dropped $20 into the slot and played for a little while. At one point I was up to $24 but I just kept pulling the handle, rather than pushing the button, until all the money was gone. Then I walked away.

We headed back to the showroom to get ready for the show.

Here we are in the greenroom just about ready to take the stage.

There were still people filtering in as the introductory videos were playing. It seems Kris and some of Merle's old band will be here on Saturday. Kris will be working with Scott Joss, Doug Colosio, and Jeff Ingraham, whom we've shared the stage with.

I grabbed just a couple of pictures on stage under the subdued lighting.

The room eventually filled up to about half of capacity. It wasn't a huge crowd but they were very enthusiastic and were more than glad to meet us after the show.

We played almost two hours and wrapped it up. We meet-and-greeted the crowd and then security cleared the room so the stage crew could get to work.

On the way out I got a picture of True Willie next to the picture of Willie.

The valet was nice enough to back our car right up to the rear door of the green room. We didn't get too wet as we were loading out.

Then it was right back to the airport for the flight home. John and I flew out at 8:45AM and then were supposed to catch our flight back at 10:00pm. Our flight got delayed by forty minutes. I didn't mind too much. That just gave us time to have one more beer before we got on the plane. We had a nice fifty-five minute flight home.

It was a bumpy ride on the way home. We had no beverage service. I guess that's a good thing. Johnny was going to use his drink coupons for more beer. But it was late and I had to drive us home. I dropped John off at his house, got home about 12:30am, then managed to get almost six hours sleep before going to work the next morning, bone tired. I'm feeling a little better today after going to bed early last night. It takes longer for this old man to recover after days like today.

Tomorrow me and the TW Band are flying right back up to Sacramento to play at Feather Falls Resort/Casino but we're spending the night this time. That's a little easier on these old bones. Until then, thanks for looking!


Thank you for your indulgence,

BassCliff