Ahoy! Free & Easy live at the White Bear Lake Armory
Saturday evening was a successful fund raiser for Bear Boating of White Bear Lake, a non-profit group offering fishing and boating excursions for Seniors, Active Duty Military, Veterans, and Disabled in our community. Bear Boating is a local organization that gets people out on the water who normally do not have access. Bear Boating website . This was the third year with Free & Easy, a record crowd of about 500 people rocked the old armory. Bear Boating operates on 100% volunteers – last year over 1000 people enjoyed outings on White Bear Lake. Their pontoon sees action Monday through Friday all summer long. The organization is hoping to purchase a new 90 horse outboard motor.
Free & Easy provided the dance tunes, they have a strong following in the twin cities & in White Bear Lake area. The band has kinda of an 80’s R & B style with a strong horn section & good vocals. The “young guns” in this band are singers, Brent Rice and Jeff Skidmore. Brent was on season one of the Voice and Jeff is studying music at McNally Smith with aspirations to work Broadway. http://freeandeasyband.com/calendar.html
White Bear Lake Armory is one of few local ”big places” to host live music- it would be nice to see more live music here. The stage this evening was extremely long & only a few feet out, if this band were playing that stage in the late 70’s you might have seen one or two classic rock musicians on the floor. The old wooden dance floor still holds up fine, I was thinking wow…the memories this dance floor/event place holds. The baby boomer & millennial crowd mixed well – you could almost sense an aura of spring is here… let’s get out on the damn water! There were some nice silent auction items & all volunteers were busy making this a well organized event. I’d give the folks handling the bar an A.
