How NOT to do a show -- by Producer J.

One of the things you get by visiting this blog is the behind the scenes scoop. Sometimes it's on a party, sometimes it's on an interview, sometimes it's just gossip I've heard over lunch.

And sometimes... I'm telling tales on me.

I'm the first to admit I'm the Queen of Procrastination. I've talked about it here before. But yesterday, I took it all to a whole new level. COMPLETELY unintentionally, I might add.

We've been trying, since Nashville Star wrapped, to get a Highway 16 Driver's Ed scheduled with winner Angela Hacker. And we finally did for Wednesday afternoon. Then it moved to Wednesday noon. Then, last Thursday, when I was "off" I got an email that they needed to move it to Monday.

At the time, my flooring people were running ridiculously loud saws and I couldn't hear to call the studio and reschedule. So via IM I assigned Kim, who was working at the studio, to go up to the front desk and get it moved. Which she did.

What I didn't assign her to do was change the calendar appointment. And once she got it rescheduled, it never crossed my mind again.

So first thing Monday morning I was at the Hall of Fame studio and I called AP, our secondary location that we use for all our performance tapings. I was calling about a bluegrass booking. When I got that taken care of I said "Now I just want to make sure you have all the setup information for our other bookings this week."

And Katie, the very sweet scheduler, says "we're good for Angela Hacker at 11."

11? Today? Monday? NO!!! Angela is Wednesday on my calendar! "Well your assistant re-scheduled it last week for today." Much frantic checking of email, checking with Jon, and I discover, sure enough, it's today at 11. "Ok, gotta go!"

It was 10:40 at this point. Jon and I were both across town. And I didn't have a show written.

I had, thankfully, listened to the CD. But I didn't have any sort of bio information on Angela from the label, I just had a list of songs. And 20 minutes before she was due to show up.

Jon completely thinks I'm crazy for wanting to do the show, and suggested we reschedule. But I knew the reason we were doing it today at 11 was she was involved in some charity event later in the week, and the 11am window was the only time our studio had today. Angela still lives in Muscle Shoals, so we needed to grab her while we could.

So Jon chauffers me over to AP while I outline the show, and I jump on the computer and start writing. Our plan was to - as we usually do - have her lay down her acoustic songs first, and by that time I'd be done with the show itself. I could knock it out in 40 minutes, right?

11am rolls around and the show is shaping up nicely and her record label rep shows up, and says she's on the way. 11:10 comes, and I've got the show done. No Angela yet, so I get to go back and polish it up a little better. 11:20 gets here and I've got the show printed and even have time to type up the liners Jon had hand written while I was working on the show.

11:30 comes, and still no Angela. Her label person is trying to track her down. We're told she's still 20 minutes outside of Nashville. She was driving in from Muscle Shoals and had been told we were taping at Noon. Woops.

So after all that we've got time to spare. She arrives just a few minutes before noon - alone. We were told her brother Zak was going to be playing with her. This was news to Angela. Woops again. So I tweak the script a little. And we're off and running.

The show itself, after all that, turned out just fine, and Angela was amazing in her performance - just her and a guitar. She has that "just smoked a pack of cigarettes and washed it all down with some whiskey" quality to her voice -- it's very raw, and amazingly powerful.

So when the show airs later this month you'll know the back story. All's well that ends well - but it's sure not my preferred method of doing a show!