What some hippies taught me about work ethic

Last night I went to the local county fair mainly to see the main entertainment act: Rusted Root.

If you don't know who Rusted Root are - they are a very eclectic sounding, percussion driven band that tends to have a very, um, peace loving fan base. They had a couple hits in the late 90's - most notably, "Send me on my way".

I was a pretty big fan of theirs myself and saw them three times in concert around that time. Each time was in a pretty big theater with a large, enthusiastic crowd.

So here I was, seven years later, seeing them play at our county fair. The crowd was small, and the seats were maybe 2/3 full. I felt kind of bad for the band, in seeing what they had been "reduced to".

But a funny thing happened - the band didn't seem to feel that bad about it. After a couple warm up songs, they started to really turn it on. By the end of the show, a large portion of the crowd was standing up and dancing. For the final song of the night ("Ecstasy" for you RR fans), they simply were on fire.

It could have been really easy, and understandable, for a group to "phone it in" on a show like that. But they didn't. Not by a long shot. They even met fans afterwords, and were very cool about it.

I truly think that even if there was one person listening, they'd have given it their all. That's something to keep in mind in all we do.