During the summer of 2018 Tuba Skinny had the unique opportunity to perform as part of the Ashton Brothers circus in the Netherlands. We performed five nights a week for two and a half months, with an average audience of a thousand or more people filling the bleachers inside the big top for every performance. There were balancing and trapeze acts, pratfalls and dancing, juggling and magic, parades and aerial contortion, so many clowns and so much music.Tuba Skinny performed for a majority of the acts and performed a short concert outside the bigtop afterwards. If an act was over five minutes we would string together a medley of tunes, or play a minute and a half musical excerpt from a song depending on what the act called for. We wouldn't always play as the whole group either, and there were times we would not even play our regular instruments.For one of the trapeze acts Erika sang an original country number on guitar and for two other acts Shaye played solo ragtime piano.My favorite part of the circus was getting behind the drum set with Max on electric bass, Shaye on the Wurlitzer organ and Friso, one of the Ashton Brothers, on electric guitar. It was an improvised rock tune in which I got to play Ringo Star fills over the tom toms.Before the main show began every night, Tuba Skinny would parade around the grounds of the circus. We often played Starowka Stomp, a march I wrote, and a
