Becoming Seasoned Performers

After returning from that first trip to San Francisco with Steve, Liberty had a previous commitment to the Ramada Inn in Minneapolis to fulfill.  On January 25, 1976, we boarded a flight for Minnesota. Vic and our friend Al Garber, who by that time was traveling with us regularly, drove a truck with all the gear, and Al met the rest of us at the airport. 

A typical winter in Minneapolis…

I think that the next morning was the first of many days when we awoke to great volumes of snow blowing sideways.  The Ramada became our home for the next three weeks; we slept, ate, and performed there.  After two weeks or so of eating every meal in the Ramada’s restaurant, we were desperate.  One morning we opened the curtains and decided that the pancake house about one hundred yards across the parking lot was worth the trek.  So, we bundled up and got about ten yards out the door before running back inside. We had lived in the Rocky Mountains for years, but Minneapolis in January was a whole different experience.

 That was an interesting gig, though. The Inn was on the outskirts of the city, and much of our crowd consisted of people who would come there by bus, stay for a set, and then board the bus and head off to some other place for some other form of entertainment. This seemed to happen over and over. When the weather finally warmed ever so slightly, we ventured to a mall, and we saw our record displayed in the window of a record store for the first time. It was a shock…for an instant it felt as if we had been revealed or exposed.