A musical group set to play in Iowa tonight had a long cold trip getting here. Just starting their Christmas tour, Michael Levine, director of the Dallas Brass, says they has no idea the scope of the blizzard also headed for the Midwest. He laughs that “It’s not like we were going to the North Pole or anything, and boy, we got hit with a blizzard like I’ve never seen before.”
Ten inches of snow and 70-mile-an-hour winds closed Interstate 80 and the Texas trumpeters were stuck in a Super-8 in Nebraska with fifty other stranded travelers. So, the musicians held a practice in the motel that turned it into a Christmas concert. Levine says it’s like a tale from a couple hundred years ago, traveling on a cold winter night and running into a troupe of traveling musicians. He says, “It had a certain European charm to it.” The group shoveled out in time for a show in South Dakota, and tonight (Thursday) they play in Forest Lake, Iowa, with stops tomorrow in Oskaloosa and Pleasant Valley Saturday.