Well, in a kind of poetic follow up to the last blog I posted about the price of gas, I have some sad news to impart. The Bilge Pumps will not be at the Louisiana Renaissance Festival in 2008. A weird scheduling quirk of the calendar this year is the cause. Since there are 5 weekends in November this year and the LA Ren Fest always starts on the 1st weekend in November, that puts its final weekend as the first weekend in December instead of the second. Since the Bilge Pumps are booked at TRF through the end of November, that would only leave us the last weekend of Louisiana to perform at. Unfortunately, that's the same weekend as Dickens on the Strand which always occurs on the first weekend in December. So, a choice had to be made, Dickens or Louisiana.

It's always tough to make a choice like that. Louisiana has always been good to us, both from a patrons and management standpoint. Last year, when we could only make the final weekend of the festival, Alvon was good to us and gave us the peninsula to play on (luckily there were no weddings that weekend) and we had a good time with everyone. The thing is, Hammond is an 8 hour drive from Dallas/Ft. Worth and Galveston is only 4 1/2 hours away. That makes a big difference when you're talking 3-4 cars hauling us mangy pirates down the concrete seas. We ran the numbers and it's really a no-brainer in terms of cost. The only thing was we REALLY hated to not do Louisiana due to our numerous friends and fans in cajun country.

It was a tough call, but one we had to make. We have many fans and friends in Galveston as well, so it's not like we're doing it all for the $$$ (no, really) and we hope that Alvon will give us a chance to come back in 2009 when the dates line back up again. We apologize to all of our Louisiana fans that we won't be there this year, but we're hoping and planning on it being a temporary thing. Since we began in 2000, Louisiana is the only festival we have performed every year and and we hate to see the tradition die. It's just one of those bad luck things that happens. If you're dying for your Bilge Pumps fix this fall, though, we hope maybe you'll get a chance to come see us at TRF or Dickens and say hi and throw gator meat at us in retribution. Squeegy's can still be alive if you'd like.

Because it's all for me blog. Me jolly jolly blog.
....Maroon