Manage Handwrytten Notes

This fundraiser was held at Valley View Event center, a gorgeous refurbished barn down a gravel country road. Load in was a snap, with easy parking and long, flat floors perfect for dolly carts.

We chatted with the venue manager Mr. Inman during setup, who agreed that letting us run our sound through the large, quality house speakers was a good idea (this worked out especially well for the auction, see note #4).

As we set up, we also conferred with Sheree from the Lakeview PTO, who ran through the night's program with us and made sure we knew when to join the buffet line.

During dinner we met with Sheree and Sarah from the PTO, who wanted to move the live auction up a bit, so we shifted the piano show timing slightly, playing a half hour before giving the stage up to a live auction of desserts. The pro auctioneers used Jim's wireless mic for their fast-talking work, which worked out great since we had plugged into house sound but ran everything through our board, leaving Jim free to adjust levels optimally for the auction.

The crowd had the requests flowing both virtually and on paper before and after the auction, with more obscure Billy Joel and Elton John tunes and 90's country being the biggest hits. The crowd started out mostly requesting and singing from their seats, but as the night progressed we had a nice group of dancers singing along and getting wild on the dance floor.