It was 10 p.m. and Blame the Whiskey finished its last song at the True Symmetry Brewing Company in Suisun City.

Just another appreciated gig for the Celtic/”Newgrass”/rock band with shows booked through Christmas.

Uh, not so fast. Roughly eight hours later, the door slammed. No more live music. Hello pandemic. Bye-bye gigs.

“We were probably one of the last bands to play a gig in Northern California,” said mandolin player Bob McGowan.

Oh, it’s not like the group put their instruments in the closet and hid under the covers. McGowan, band founder Joseph Paganucci, Randy Carnahan, Meghan Arthur and Tymn Urban kept practicing, kept creating.

Some day, they believed, at least an outdoor performance awaited them. Ladies and gentlemen, boys, girls and random people walking by 615 Napa St., Blame the Whiskey plugs in and plays Saturday along with Urban and Camryn Graver-Dowd Urban of Everything Nowadays, plus Modus Opera & I, as part of their own version of the national 10th Annual Porchfest — call it the Front Porch Music Festival.

Excited? No doubt.

“We’re going to have a blast,” Paganucci said.

“It’s the first year we’ve actually done” Porchfest, he added. “Normally, we’re playing the Northern California Renaissance Faire. But there’s no live anything going on right now. So we’ll play some live music and social distance.”

And if all goes well, “we might think about doing this next year,” McGowan said.

Why gather the troops and play for a likely handful of people Saturday?

“Desperation,” said Paganucci, joining his chuckling bandmates this past Sunday on the very porch they’ll play this coming Saturday.

Blame the Whiskey decided two weeks ago to throw caution — but not their masks — to the wind and gather on the front steps of the 19th century house that’s home to Paganucci, Arthur, and Urban.

“We’ve all been rehearsing. What else is there for you to do … for months,” Urban said. “This comes along and we all feel ready.”

If the 3 to 6 p.m. production goes well, Blame the Whiskey might hit the porch again “in another month or two,” Paganucci said. “We don’t want to burn the neighbors out.”

And if some are annoyed by this Celti/bluegrass/rock stuff?

“We’ll bribe them with cookies,” Paganucci said.

“We feel pretty confident,” Arthur said. “We’ve rehearsed through this whole thing. There’s always a little bit of nerves.”

Paganucci said it’s not the talent or timing that is a concern, but the technical aspects of doing a show live and having it recorded with three temporary “stages” Saturday for Blame the Whiskey and two other acts.

“A whole bunch of equipment … but it’s pretty informal,” Paganucci said, acknowledging that “My only real fear is running into some exterior force causing problems. You can’t account for the weather, people and natural disasters.”

Blame the Whiskey started in 2009 and after sifting through a few members over the years, arrived at his current roster that includes McGowan, a full-time plumber, and Carnahan, an elementary school music instructor.

Carnahan “signed a contract in blood. He’s not allowed to leave …ever,” quipped Paganucci.

Carnahan — and the rest of the group — emphasized the importance of music during a pandemic.

“It’s pretty much all I do every day,” he said. “When I’m not here, I’m teaching music. For me, the music is just a constant, always there thing. I wouldn’t know how to function without it. It centers me.”

“It’s pretty much my primary focus,” Paganucci said. “Every time I start to feel I have no control over anything, I start working on a new song or planning the next show. I have control over that. It gives me something to do.”

“I think playing music is probably the best salve for everything,” said Arthur, a guitarist and vocalist. “As much as this (COVID-19) has been heart-breaking because we haven’t been able to play live, it’s been a way to stay creative and be expressive because we’ve written some new songs and our sound is developing more. It’s exciting as well as terrifying. Part of being a musician is being excited and terrifying.”

While McGowan has been a plumber “forever,” he said the music is his escape “and always has been. It gets my mind way from my 9 to 54 job. I’d love to be able to make a living at it, but it’s hard to make as much money as a musician as I do as a plumber.”

The music, added McGowan, “keeps my mind from going insane.”

The Front Porch Music Festival is Saturday, 3 to 6 p.m., at 615 Napa St., Vallejo. For more, visit facebook.com/blamewhiskey/