Blues music inevitably seems to dominate at this event. It seemed like I knew somebody in every band, and it’s nice to get to hear other players. Since most musicians work 9 to 1 on the weekends, you don’t often get to check out your peers, and there are a lot of good players around here. That said, I am not a big blues fan, especially the stock, straight-ahead shuffles most bands in KC seem to play. As I walked along the “street”and one band faded into another, it sounded like they were all playing the same song.

Of course sound is only part of the equation. There’s the smell, the sweet smoky barbecue aroma of pork and beef and chicken and sausage and sauce and every kind of wood burning. An awful lot of guys seem to smoke cigars at this event, and why not? You barely notice them. There is other food—the team whose party we play for every year makes a jambalaya which has won national awards several times, and it is a thing of wonder. I actually took a picture last year. There’s baked beans and bread and coleslaw, and who knows what else. But those smells are lost in the overwhelming barbecue smoke. We marinate in this smoke for the nine hours we are there to set up and play, and the first year when I got home, I had to leave my clothes at the far end of the house so we could sleep (and Elise kept threatening to take a bite of my arm because I smelled like a big platter of meat).

Then there are the sights. According to the KC Star online, over 100,000 visitors were expected Friday, and I believe it. Naturally that doesn’t include the thousands of people participating in and supporting the event, including contestants, arena staff, entertainment, and so on. Yeah, there are an awful lot of overweight guys who look like they just jumped off a Harley, with shaved heads, ZZ Top beards and black t-shirts, but there is a lot of everything to see.

What did I forget? Alcohol. Beer and barbecue go together like—well, beer and barbecue. Rivers of beer, cartloads of ice. Sure there are wine drinkers and plenty of people surreptitiously sneaking a snort of something stronger, but malt makes the meat go down. Surprisingly, people seem to be very well behaved. I have only seen a few fights at any of these events, and if you had 100,000 people in bars you would expect a lot more. Police keep a fairly low profile.

We played for a hundred-some people in a tent, blasting out blues-oriented classic rock. I played hard, just trying to hear myself above the din. The crowd ate hard, drank hard, danced hard, and everybody seemed to have a good time. Big fireworks show at 10, then by 11:30 the bands stopped playing and everyone started tearing down equipment. People got on the shuttle buses back wherever they parked, and the party settled into what seemed like would be its all-night rhythm, barbecue teams tending their fires overnight in preparation for the judging on Saturday. Music still blasted from hundreds of small sound systems, but the cacophony was a fraction of what it had been.

It’s an exhausting gig. Nine hours of sensory overload and physically hard playing catch up with you. It’s sheer over-the-top madness, and I look forward to it every year.