YPO Gold Christmas party at Outfitter's Cabin in Park City

One of Mark's pictures

We were approached by Howard a few months ago to play at his annual YPO Gold Christmas party. We've played a few events for him, so we were eager to play another one.

This was a formal event, where the participants were wearing tuxedos. We were told to wear formal/casual. We decided to be matching, so we all wore black shirts, black pants, black shoes, and red ties. Aaron joked that we looked like the mafia. I countered that black is sleek, white shirts would make us look like we're going to church, and red is a Christmas color.

A picture I took while I had a break

This cabin was kind of hard to find on GPS, but we all made it up there. It was an elegant and charming cabin that sat on top of a big valley, with a beautiful view. We were also fortunate enough not to have any snow while driving there.

This was our third time playing live with Dean, and the first time we played a lot of these songs. We were hired to play for 5 hours, so we practiced all of our material, just in case. In the past, we've mostly been ambiance/background music for Howard's parties, but this time, we had people dancing, so we mostly stuck with our dance songs, and mostly oldies and 80's stuff.

We were fed dinner, and it was fantastic! Several types of gourmet salads, fish, steak, potatoes, and delicious deserts!

One of the GoPro sills

I'm really glad that we started doing lighting at our shows, because we were on the porch, and there were only a couple of dim lanterns out there. I was excited because I had purchased a third light stand, to try and get a "halo" effect by placing it behind us. I wasn't expecting there to be a dance floor, so I didn't bring my derby disco lights.

For the past 40 shows, we've made it a priority to have at least one photo from each show. This night was tricky, because usually we have friends or family come and take pictures of us. I set up my GoPro to get stills, and Mark and I took some photos while we had large breaks on songs.

Overall, it was a great event and we had a lot of fun.

We'd like to officially welcome Dean, the new guitarist!

We'd like to officially welcome Dean Gallagher to our line-up! He not only brings his refined guitar skills to the band, but an amazing voice as well! He's talented, easy-going, and a lot of fun to work with. Dean is new to the area, originally from Philadelphia, where he was part of lots bands. We are excited for our debut performance with him tomorrow at the Utah State Fair, on the Xfinity stage, at 9pm.