My favorite audience was at a place called "Lambs Farm", in Libertyville, IL. It's a huge place where many children with disabilities live. Each year they have a picnic with various musical acts, a craft show, and lots of animals to pet. I worked fulltime with a C&W Band, Cactus Jack, throughout the 70's and the show must have been in 1977 or 1978.

Lambs Farm is right next to the tollway between Chicago and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. As we approached the grounds, I saw a long line of cars waiting to get in and thousands of people on the grounds. We told the Officers directing traffic that we were performing and they escorted us to our "dressing trailer"!? We were moving through a sea of people, and we were being treated like celebrities!

We had been hired to do one set and then serve as the backup band for a Nashville singer named Gene Watson. He was very hot at the time (His song "Love on a Hot Afternoon" was riding high), and although we hadn't met him, we had been given a list of songs to learn and keys to learn them in. It was mostly country standards, Hank Williams stuff and songs from his album, which we dutifully learned note for note.

We thought we'd get a chance to go over his stuff in the trailer before we played, but his plane was late. Instead, we just started playing until he showed up, and the crowd was great. They loved everything we did, sang and danced and clapped. We felt like we could do anything!

Finally the star of the show showed up. Although he was the headliner, he was new to the business and not used to big audiences. And he was scared to death. His people rushed him to the stage, gave him a guitar (not amplified!) and we were on. He turned to the band and said "E", turned back the crowd and started playing one of the songs. After the first verse we figured out which one we were doing and fell in behind him. His confidence grew visibly as he began to realize we knew what we were doing, and it was going to be OK.

That's how the whole show went; he turned, told us the key and started on in. By the time we played his hit, the place was ours. We must have spent an hour signing pictures and autographs for the kids when it was over.

That was relatively early in my musical life and I have never since experienced that "STAR" feeling on that scale. As far as that crowd was concerned we could do no wrong.